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The Golden State Warriors, with today's win at San Antonio, tie the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls NBA regular season record with their 72nd win this season. The Warriors can still break the record; on Wednesday, they host the Memphis Grizzlies in their final regular season game. | nce again, the Golden State Warriors met a challenge they didn’t like and whipped it anyway. Once again, they were congratulated and fawned over for the wrong reason. And in the end, none of it mattered, because when you win eight of every nine games, you get to say whatever you want about what it all means.O
In beating San Antonio Sunday night in the Pop-O-Drome, 92-86, the Etats d’Or re-established the true pecking order in the Western Conference while reacquainting themselves with the difficulties that await in the postseason. They started slowly, had a hard time establishing an offensive rhythm, and then used their defense to make the offense go and run away from the second best team in the sport.
You know, the way they used to in the good old days of 2015, when winning a title was merely unthinkable.
Yet all anyone really wanted to discuss was how they were now within Wednesday’s final regular season game against Memphis of breaking the single season wins record currently held by . . . well, you know. It’s not like you could avoid it given that it has become the nation’s principal numerical fixation.
You know, using the regular season to explain the things we have traditionally used the playoffs to do – define greatness in April because we haven’t the patience to wait until June.
After all, the Warriors as they currently exist serve us by allowing us to force a perspective upon their era while their era is still emergent. We want them to be called the best team ever without having won the requisite number of rings, and we resent when the oldtimer/coot element diminishes their accomplishments without our permission.
[INSTANT REPLAY: Warriors win 72 in San Antonio, tie Bulls' record]
Fortunately for the Warriors themselves, none of this seems to penetrate. They needed a few brushes with failure to remember how difficult winning championships is supposed to be, but now they seem fully cognizant of what really is at stake here.
Rings. Not reputations.
We are an odd group of sports fans, you see, in that we say we want one thing but much prefer the other. We claim we want good behavior from our athletes, but we are most interested not in the behavior but the quality of the apology when the behavior goes bad. We claim to enjoy the rags-to-riches tale when in fact we much more greatly admire the towering colossus, to the point where we feel compelled to say that sports is better when the Yankees/Dodgers/Lakers/Celtics/Patriots/Cowboys/UConn women are at their butt-kicking, name-taking best.
Indeed, we put it to you that more people are fascinated by the Warriors chasing a relatively valueless regular season record now than were interested in them a year ago. Coming off the pace to win isn’t what we really enjoy. It’s a good old-fashioned competitive curb-stomping, and it’s how we really like to keep score these days.
Never mind that a year ago, the Warriors were making history rather than chasing it. Last year, they were working against their own threadbare legacy with a clean slate and the unbridled joy that comes with filling it. Now, they are being asked to redefine Chicago’s legacy twenty years later, thereby proving that what we are really searching for is a way to say, “They’re the newest bestest ever” a year after saying, “Holy hell, who saw this coming?”
Maybe it’s me, but the “holy hell” stories always seem like more fun – the way Leicester City is going to win the English Premier League despite being even more persistently forlorn than the Warriors ever were.
In the last 15 years they nearly went broke, they got relegated twice, they fired coaches left and right and the year after made it back to the Premiership, the son of coach who orchestrated their late-season rally to avoid being sent down again got caught in a racist sex tape and helped get his father fired again.
No, the Warriors never managed that one.
But they have continued their steady climb from irrelevance to iridescence, going from 23 wins to 47 to 51 to 67, and now to 72 (or 73), with the best chance to get the next 16 they need to continue their merry march to actual rather than mere mathematical glory.
They are, Wednesday or no Wednesday, still in the early stages of that path. Winning the title means being the 13th NBA team to repeat, while winning 73 games is a neat affectation along that way.
Because the truth is, history runs at its own pace, and the Warriors are still in the early stages of what they really want. And no, 73 wins isn’t that thing. | Sports Competition | April 2016 | ['(NBC News)', '(NBA)'] |
Novak Djokovic defeats Daniil Medvedev in the final to win the Men's Singles competition of the tournament. | The victory for the top-ranked Djokovic, in three sets over the fourth-ranked Daniil Medvedev of Russia, gave him his 18th career Grand Slam title over all.
By Matthew Futterman
MELBOURNE, Australia — They come nearly every year now, this new crop of challengers in men’s tennis who so desperately want to begin their time in the sun, to win the championships that everyone in the game values most and beat the three players considered the best to ever play on the biggest stage.
And each year, they fall short, making the task seem even more impossible.
This is how it went Sunday night at Melbourne Park, where Novak Djokovic did what he always does. Djokovic, the veteran from Serbia ranked No. 1 in the world, both defeated and discouraged the fourth-ranked Daniil Medvedev of Russia, 7-5, 6-2, 6-2, in the Australian Open men’s singles final.
| Sports Competition | February 2021 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
Juan M. Thompson, a 31-year-old ex-journalist, is arrested and charged with making at least eight threats against Jewish Community Centers in the United States, as well as a threat made against the Anti-Defamation League, while allegedly impersonating a former girlfriend. | A former journalist has been arrested on suspicion of making threats against Jewish community centres - in a bizarre plot against an ex-girlfriend.
Juan Thompson, 31, "allegedly caused havoc, expending hundreds of hours of police and law enforcement resources", said NYPD Commissioner James P O'Neill.
New York prosecutors said he was "stalking a former romantic interest". The Missouri man was allegedly behind eight of some 100 threats to Jewish Community Centers (JCC) this year.
Muslims offer to guard US Jewish sites 'Disruption and anxiety' in US Jewish centres Mr Thompson was arrested on Friday in St Louis, Missouri, and will be in court later in the day.
As well as the threats against the JCCs in January and February, he is also accused of emailing a threat in his ex-girlfriend's name to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in New York City.
The next day the offices of the Jewish anti-bigotry group received a phone call claiming that explosive material had been placed inside the building.
"Today, we have charged Juan Thompson with allegedly stalking a former romantic interest by, among other things, making bomb threats in her name to Jewish Community Centers and to the Anti-Defamation League," New York-based US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.
A spokesman for the White House said "it's still too early for us to say too much about it, but the process worked".
Mr Thompson is accused of cyber-stalking his ex-girlfriend - known in court documents as Victim-1 - which can carry a sentence of up to five years in jail.
He is also alleged to have made threats using his own real name, in a ploy to make it look like she was trying to frame him.
On 7 February, he allegedly wrote an email to the JCC offices in Manhattan, saying: "Juan Thompson put two bombs in the office of the Jewish center today. "He wants to create Jewish newtown tomorrow." This was a reference to the 2012 school shooting in Connecticut in which a gunman murdered 26 people.
In several tweets presented by investigators, Mr Thompson repeatedly accused his former girlfriend of making bomb threats in his name, in order to pin the crime on him.
He claimed she had hacked his email account.
"[Victim-1], though I can't prove it, even sent a bomb threat in my name to a Jewish center, which was odd given her antisemitic statement," he posted on 24 February 2017.
He also made several posts condemning the anti-Jewish threats.
It was allegedly part of a months-long campaign against his former partner after they broke up in July 2016.
Thompson began by sending an email to her manager at a New York-area social service organisation.
The message claimed she had been pulled over for drunk driving and sued for spreading a sexually transmitted disease.
He allegedly went on to threaten to publish nude photos of the woman, before escalating to the bomb threats this year.
On 24 February, he posted on Twitter: "Y'all know how to get a social worker in NY barred? I'm being stalked and harassed by a white nasty white woman."
Mr Thompson was fired last year from the Intercept, a news website, over "fabricated sources and quotes in his articles". Intercept management released a statement on Friday saying they were "horrified" to learn about the arrest, and that they condemn the "heinous" threats.
At least 100 phone threats have been made to Jewish centres, childcare facilities and schools in three dozen states since the beginning of January, according to the JCC Association of North America.
Three Jewish cemeteries, including one near St Louis, have also faced vandalism attacks. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | March 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Los Angeles Times wins five journalism awards in the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. | LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles Times on Monday won five Pulitzer Prizes, the second most ever won by a newspaper in a single year, for coverage that included wildfires, wars and Wal-Mart.
The awards recognized the paper's work in breaking news, criticism, editorial writing, national reporting and feature photography.
"It's overwhelming. What's amazing to me - not amazing - is that all areas of the newspaper were recognized. That, to me, is very gratifying," Publisher John P. Puerner said.
The Times was nominated in nine categories, and the five Pulitzer Prizes were the most ever won in a single year by the paper. Before this year, the most the paper won was three, in 2003. The New York Times won seven in 2002, a record.
When Los Angeles Times photographer Carolyn Cole's Pulitzer was announced for work done in the besieged capital of Liberia, the paper's editor, John S. Carroll, commented that she was "one who could just not be denied the Pulitzer Prize." He praised her intrepidness, skill and "great eye."
"Even though this prize is for my work in Liberia, it seems ever since 9/11 there have been so many issues to cover. It's been one big story for me. Wherever the U.S. government is involved, it's our job to go and show how American policy affects these various countries," said Cole, 42, who recently has reported from Haiti and Iraq as well. The 10-year veteran of the Times was a 2003 Pulitzer finalist.
Members of the team that reported a three-part series on giant retailer Wal-Mart hugged and exchanged kisses when they learned they won for national reporting.
Carroll praised the team's work in creating a portrait of an institution that is changing life in America and around the globe.
"This story took what everyone thought they knew and expanded their understanding of it," Carroll told the staff.
Other winners included editorial writer Bill Stall, who's been with the paper 28 years.
"Truly it's hard to believe. We knew for some time we were a finalist, but you don't want to come to expect it, because it's like lightning striking," said Stall, 67.
Auto critic Dan Neil won after joining the paper in September. He previously had been a freelancer and wrote promotional stories for the advertising department of a North Carolina paper.
Neil, 44, said the Times was required to submit 10 columns to qualify for Pulitzer consideration, but at the time he had published just 16.
"They didn't have a lot to choose from," said Neil, whose reviews were singled out as "one-of-a-kind" by the Pulitzer board.
In breaking news, the Times won for its coverage of the wildfires that swept Southern California last fall.
"I like to think it's because we're good but it may have something to do with the fact we live in a disaster area," Carroll said.
Carroll said 70 reporters contributed, along with an untold number of photographers, editors and copy editors. Carroll joked he was ordering more copy paper and toner for the paper's printers. | Awards ceremony | April 2004 | ['(Mercury News)'] |
A vehicular attack in Jerusalem leaves one person dead and injures fourteen others as Hamas claims responsibility and calls for similar acts. | Israeli police say a man has rammed a car into a crowded train platform in east Jerusalem in an "intentional attack."
The police then shot and killed the attacker.
Police officials say the car hit the train platform, then rammed into cars after which the driver jumped out and tried to run away. The officials say he then attacked a group of policemen with a crowbar before he was shot and killed.
Wednesday's attack came just over a week after a similar attack by a Palestinian motorist that drove into a train platform and killed a baby girl.
Palestinian protesters and Israeli police have clashed almost daily in east Jerusalem in recent months.
Israeli police on Wednesday dispersed dozens of masked Palestinians who threw rocks and firecrackers at the officers near a contested holy site in Jerusalem's Old City, angered by a planned visit to the area by Israeli supporters of a right-wing activist.
The Israelis had planned to visit the site to commemorate a week since a Palestinian shot and wounded American-Israeli activist Yehuda Glick who has campaigned for more Jewish access to the location. Palestinians view such visits as a provocation and often respond violently.
Several police officers were hurt in the clashes, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, adding that the police used stun grenades to disperse the Palestinians. Quiet was soon restored, he said.
There was no immediate comment from Palestinian officials on Wednesday's incident.
Palestinian protesters and Israeli police have clashed almost daily in east Jerusalem in recent months, with much of the unrest focused around a sacred compound revered by both Jews and Muslims. It's the holiest site for Jews, who call it the Temple Mount because of the revered Jewish Temples that stood there in biblical times. Muslims refer to it as the Noble Sanctuary, and it is their third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
Israel captured east Jerusalem — with its sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians — from Jordan in the 1967 war. Palestinians demand the territory for their future capital. The fate of the area is an emotional issue for Jews and Muslims and its future lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Glick, a leading voice in a campaign to expand Jewish prayer rights on the hilltop complex, was wounded a week ago when a Palestinian gunman on a motorcycle opened fire at him as he left a conference in Jerusalem.
Muslim worshippers view Jewish prayer at the site as a provocation, and Israeli authorities place tough restrictions on it. Everyone visiting the area from the Israeli side has to be screened by police.
East Jerusalem has experienced unrest since the summer, with Palestinian youths throwing stones and firebombs at motorists and clashing frequently with Israeli police. The violence gained steam last month, when a Palestinian motorist rammed his car into a crowded train station, killing a 3-month-old Israeli-American girl and a woman from Ecuador. | Riot | November 2014 | ['(AP)', '(Times of Israel)', '(ABC News)'] |
More than 270,000 people in the US city of Chicago, Illinois, are left without power due to thunder storms with some reports of funnel clouds. , | Commonwealth Edison expects to restore power to most of its customers by Thursday night, two days after a violent wave of storms that spawned at least two tornadoes and packed 80 mph winds at one point left about 440,000 customers without electricity throughout the Chicago area. As of 7 p.m., 160,000 customers remained without power, down from a peak of about 430,000. The majority of the outages were in the northern suburbs hardest hit by the storms, with about 116,000 customers without power. About 27,000 customers were without electricity in the near western suburbs, 15,000 in the south suburbs and 1,300 in Chicago. Some 274,000 have had their electrical service restored, and the utility expects to have 90 percent of all customers' power restored by midnight Thursday, said ComEd spokeswoman Alicia Zatkowski. ComEd has 700 crews, including some 300 from utilities in neighboring states, working to restore power. More crews are expected to arrive from ComEd's sister utility Pico in Pennsylvania tomorrow morning, Zatkowski said. The outage is the worst since a year ago, when storms knocked out power to 310,000 ComEd customers on June 23. Tuesday night's storms spawned funnel clouds and tornado warnings. Based on damage patterns, tornadoes appears to have touched down in Downers Grove and Mount Prospect, according to the National Weather Service. Mount Prospect was hit by winds estimated at 90 to 100 mph. The Mount Prospect tornado cut a 200-yard swatch from Golf Road to Kensington Road a few miles away, the weather service said. "The damage found consisted of large hardwood trees snapped and large soft and hardwood uprooted trees, along with roof damage to area buildings," the weather service said in a statement. The winds also knocked out power to most of the downtown. The storms forced the closing of some two dozen schools, most of them in west suburban Elmhurst, because of power outages (check HERE for updates). The Maywood courthouse also was closed for lack of electricity. At Northwestern University's Evanston campus, 42 buildings were without power this morning, according to an alert on the university website. School officials said they weren't sure when power would be restored, though they said ComEd crews were working to restore service. The rough weather also forced the cancellation of about 330 flights Tuesday night stalled Metra trains on their tracks and left streets littered with tree limbs and debris. There were lingering transportation problems this morning. As of mid-afternoon, airlines atO'Hare International Airport had canceled about 500 flights, and incoming and outgoing flights were experiencing 20 minute delays, according to the city's Department of Aviation. At Midway, there were about two dozen flights experiencing delays of up to 40 minutes, with minor cancellations. The CTA suspended service on its Yellow Line and briefly did the same on the Purple Line due to ComEd issues affecting crossing gates. Metra experienced delays of at least 5 to 10 minutes on inbound trains on the Union Pacific Northwest, Union Pacific West, Milwaukee District North and Milwaukee District West lines due to signal problems in the vicinity of Western Avenue. North Central Service line trains were 10-20 minutes behind. (For continual weather updates, check the Chicago Weather Center.) Two people were taken in serious to critical condition to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston after their car was crushed by a fallen tree near Farragut and Leavitt avenues in the Bomanville neighborhood on the North Side. Chainsaw crews were out in force. Large limbs were downed — and some trees uprooted — in Deerfield, Des Plaines, Elmhurst, Morton Grove, Mount Prospect, Norridge and Skokie, among other suburbs. A Niles apartment building lost its roof, as did a building in Elk Grove Village. Funnel clouds were spotted in Naperville, Aurora, about 5 miles west ofGrayslake in Lake County and four miles north-northwest ofSugar Grove in Kane County. Winds were recorded at 60 to 75 mph, with an 81 mph gust in Wheeling. But damage was still heavy, with roofs ripped off and tree branches and power lines left strewn across streets and yards. A truck driver on the Illinois tollway a quarter mile east of the Des Plaines plaza reported that strong winds blew the back of a billboard onto the highway. InNaperville, a City Council meeting was stopped and everyone in attendance was evacuated to the City Hall basement because of "tornadic activity." People attending a book signing in downtownNaperville similarly were ushered into the basement. Joliet was deluged with nearly an inch of rainfall in only 16 minutes. Tuesday night, more than 300 flights were canceled at O'Hare International Airport and another 30 at Midway. Incoming and outgoing travelers also encountered delays of an hour and more. One of those delayed getting out of town was Vice President Joe Biden, who had been here for a couple of fundraisers. The severe weather also delayed numerous Metra trains and forced the cancellation of others. One outbound commuter train was stuck for about five hours when the storm knocked down a power line onto the rail, said Metra spokesman Michael Gillis. After 2 a.m., the train was headed back downtown, and passengers were being asked to find alternative transportation or wait even longer for another train. For updated schedules check the Metra website. Today's weather outlook is much tamer. The National Weather Service forecasts a 40 percent chance of showers in the late morning and afternoon, with southwest winds of 15 to 25 mph. The high will be in the mid 70s. Before last night's storm, June already had shaped up as one of the wettest on record. Through Monday, 6.94 inches of rain had been recorded at Midway Airport, making this the third wettest start to June since observations started at the airport in 1928, according to WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | June 2011 | ['(Chicago Tribune)', '(NBC Chicago)'] |
A diesel fuel leak in Shaanxi, China reaches the Yellow River, a water source for millions of people. | A worker collects a water sample from the Wei River for testing in Weinan, Shaanxi, Jan. 3, 2010. [Xinhua]
The Yellow River, the water source for millions, has been contaminated by a diesel fuel leak despite efforts to contain the spill in a tributary, forcing authorities along the river to suspend water supplies. The oil slick reached the Fenglingdu section of the river in Shanxi Province, and was flowing at up to 8 km per hour, China National Radio reported yesterday. People living along the river in Ruicheng, Pinglu, Yuanqu and Fenglingdu towns have been warned of contaminated water. The contamination might have been worse if not for efforts by hundreds of workers in neighboring Shaanxi province who dug diversion channels and used floating dams and solidifying agents to stem the leak flowing into the Yellow River from a tributary. More than 700 workers worked overnight through yesterday morning in Weinan to contain the spill that leaked from a pipeline into the Weihe River - a tributary of the Yellow River - following a construction accident on Wednesday. The Weinan municipal environment protection bureau received a report from the pipeline project office on Wednesday afternoon that an underground pipeline in Huaxian county leaked in the morning and diesel flowed into Chishui River, one of the tributaries of Weihe. The leak was found in the afternoon, 2.75 km from a pipeline sub-transmission station, or about 3 km from the point where the Chishui joins the Weihe. An investigation by the Huaxian county environment bureau showed that 150 cu m of diesel leaked, of which 100 cu m flowed into water, according to Zhang Jianxi, director of the bureau. Altogether, 15 floating dams were set up in Chishui River and 12 in Weihe River to try and stop the diesel running downstream to the Yellow River. A diversion ditch was dug to allow clean water to flow from upstream to bypass the leak area. The pipeline, owned by China National Petroleum Corp, runs from Lanzhou in Gansu Province to Changsha in Hunan Province. | Environment Pollution | January 2010 | ['(China.org.cn)', '(Reuters)'] |
A shelter-in-place is issued after a chemical fire breaks out in Lake Charles, Louisiana. | A large chemical fire has broken out over Lake Charles, Louisiana, hours after the eye of Hurricane Laura passed directly over the city. Louisiana State Police say they're responding to a chlorine leak at a company that makes chemicals along Interstate 10 just west of Lake Charles, which was hard-hit when the storm slammed into the Gulf Coast early Thursday. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said the fire was burning Thursday morning just outside the city and advised storm survivors to shelter in place. He tweeted to residents in the area: "Shelter in place, close your windows and doors and TURN OFF YOUR AIR CONDITIONING UNITS."
Police say the chlorine leak is at the BioLab chemical manufacturing facility in Westlake. Authorities say they're working with plant managers to try and contain the leak.
Images of the fire showed a massive stream of smoke billowing over Lake Charles on Thursday morning.
The city of Sulphur said in a Facebook post it was "issuing a shelter in place until further notice" because of the dangerous cloud created by the chemicals.
BioLab's Lake Charles plant was built in 1979 and manufactures trichloroisocyanuric acid, chlorinating granules and other chemicals used in such household cleaners as Comet bleach scrub and chlorine powder for swimming pools.
Both trichloroisocyanuric acid and chlorine are potentially acutely toxic to people and animals if ingested or inhaled. Chlorine gas, which can appear in the air as a greenish yellow cloud, was used as a chemical weapon in World War I. It is a potent irritant to the eyes, throat and lungs.
At least three deaths in the state have been blamed on Laura. The storm brought "catastrophic storm surge, extreme winds and flash flooding" to portions of the state, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm had intensified rapidly into a Category 4 hurricane before slamming into the Gulf Coast near the Louisiana-Texas border. The storm is now moving north, bringing damaging winds and flooding rainfall to central and northern Louisiana, according to forecasters. | Fire | August 2020 | ['(CBS News)'] |
Demonstrations in Muthanna Province, Iraq, leave 16 protesters killed or injured and 33 others arrested. | by Nehal Mostafa Jul 15, 2018, 9:47 pm Muthanna (IraqiNews.com) Sixteen protesters were killed and injured, while some headquarters of political parties were burnt in Muthanna province on Sunday, Alghad Press reported.
Protests in Muthanna left a protester killed, as protesters stormed headquarters of the National Wisdom Movement. Fifteen protesters were injured as they attempted entering the provincial council building.
The protests, according to the report, saw burning of headquarters of Virtue and Daawa parties and Badr Organization, in addition to TV station of Badr al-Samawa.
Thirty-three protesters were arrested.
Mass demonstrations against unemployment, widespread corruption and poor services have been sweeping through southern Iraq, particularly in the provinces of Maysan, Karbala, Najaf, Babil, Wassit, Diwaniya and Dhi Qar, for seven days in row, prompting the outgoing Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi to rush from a NATO summit in Brussels to Basra to meet with local officials and tribal leaders in a bid to restore calm.
In a bid to quell the unrest, Abadi ordered security forces to be on high alert and imposed curfew in several southern provinces.
On Saturday, two protesters were reportedly killed in Najaf on Saturday as members of the Shiite militia of Asaeb Ahl al-Haq were shot at the demonstrations. | Riot | July 2018 | ['(Iraqi News)'] |
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visits his country's embassy in Hanoi on Tuesday in preparation for the summit. | HANOI (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited his country’s embassy in Hanoi on Tuesday, a first outing on a visit to Vietnam, the highlight of which will be a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Kim entered the embassy shortly after 5 p.m. (1200 GMT) after he left the central Hanoi hotel where he is staying by limousine.
Kim arrived in Vietnam earlier in the day, after traveling from North Korea across China by train, for his second summit with Trump.
They will try to reach agreement on how to implement a North Korean pledge, made at their first summit, in Singapore in June, to give up its nuclear weapons.
| Diplomatic Visit | February 2019 | ['(Reuters)'] |
United States v. Manning: Bradley Manning pleads guilty to 10 counts out of 22 against him for leaking classified material in the WikiLeaks case. | The US soldier accused of leaking large numbers of secret documents to Wikileaks has pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges against him.
But Pfc Bradley Manning, 25, denied the most serious charge against him, aiding the enemy, and may still be prosecuted.
A military judge later accepted the guilty pleas, with which he could face up to 20 years in prison.
On Thursday, Pfc Manning told a court he divulged the documents to spark public debate about US actions.
At the military court in Fort Meade, Maryland, Judge Col Denise Lind accepted Pfc Manning's guilty pleas, but prosecutors can still pursue a trial on the remaining 12 charges, including aiding the enemy.
That charge carries a potential life sentence.
Pfc Manning read out a statement to the court on Thursday saying he believed the leaked material would stimulate public discussion.
"I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information... this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general," Pfc Manning told the court.
He said he would plead guilty to sending the documents to Wikileaks in violation of military regulations but would not plead guilty to a violation of federal espionage laws.
"I thought these cables were a prime example of the need for a more open diplomacy," said Pfc Manning, who addressed the court in uniform.
"I believed that these cables would not damage the US. However, I believed these cables would be embarrassing."
The soldier also mentioned his shock at discovering a video of an aerial combat mission in Iraq in which two employees from the Reuters news agency were killed.
"The most alarming aspect of the video to me was the seemingly delightful bloodlust the aerial weapons team happened to have," he said, comparing the troops to children "torturing ants with a magnifying glass".
Pfc Manning is accused of sending thousands of battlefield reports from both Afghanistan and Iraq, 250,000 diplomatic cables, and other classified material to the Wikileaks website in 2009 and 2010 while working as an Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad.
It is considered the largest-ever leak of secret US government documents.
The Obama administration has said the leaks threatened valuable military and diplomatic sources.
Supporters, who consider him a whistleblower who exposed war crimes and helped trigger the upheavals of the Arab Spring, held events on Saturday to mark his 1,000th day of detention.
The judge has ruled any eventual prison sentence should be reduced by 112 days due to his treatment at a maximum security facility in Virginia earlier in the case.
He has since been transferred to a medium-security jail. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | February 2013 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters)', '(CBS News)'] |
In China, the death toll of the Xinjiang mine explosion rises to 65. Eighteen are still missing. (People's Daily) | 65 miners killed in Xinjiang gas explosion By Qin Yan (China Daily) Updated: 2005-07-12 05:44
Sixty-five workers were killed in a coal mine gas explosion early yesterday morning in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Rescuers wait at the pit entrance before going down to rescue victims after the blast in the Shenlong Coal Mine in Fukang, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on July 12, 2005. [newsphoto]By yesterday evening, hopes were fading for the 18 workers still missing at the Shenlong Coal Mine, in Fukang, 62 kilometres northeast of the regional capital Urumqi, Xinhua News Agency reported. Four teams of rescuers were searching for the missing, the report said. "At 8 am, rescuers entered the mine to find the missing miners. There are 20 rescuers in the shaft right now, but the situation is unclear. We don't know what the situation is like down there," a man surnamed Hu at the mine's office told AFP. The blast ocurred at around 2:30 am, when 87 workers were working in the mine, four of them escaped. Xinjiang coal mine safety authorities received reports of the accident about an hour later and immediately sent rescuers to the site. By noon, the mines ventilator had been repaired and began working again, said the Xinhua report. | Mine Collapses | July 2005 | ['(Xinhua)', '(China Daily)', '(Reuters)'] |
The BBC sacks Jeremy Clarkson, one of the three presenters for the television program Top Gear. | Jeremy Clarkson's contract will not be renewed after an "unprovoked physical attack" on a Top Gear producer, the BBC's director general has confirmed.
Tony Hall said he had "not taken this decision lightly" and recognised it would "divide opinion".
However, he added "a line has been crossed" and he "cannot condone what has happened on this occasion".
Clarkson was suspended on 10 March, following what was called a "fracas" with Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon.
The row, which took place in a Yorkshire hotel, was said to have occurred because no hot food was provided following a day's filming.
An internal investigation began last week, led by Ken MacQuarrie, the director of BBC Scotland.
It found that Mr Tymon took himself to hospital after he was subject to an "unprovoked physical and verbal attack". "During the physical attack Oisin Tymon was struck, resulting in swelling and bleeding to his lip."
It lasted "around 30 seconds and was halted by the intervention of a witness," Mr MacQuarrie noted in his report.
"The verbal abuse was sustained over a longer period" and "contained the strongest expletives and threats to sack" Mr Tymon, who believed he had lost his job. Mr Tymon did not file a formal complaint and it is understood Clarkson reported himself to BBC bosses following the incident.
After that, the BBC's director of television, Danny Cohen, felt he had no choice but to suspend the presenter pending an investigation.
The decision caused an outpouring of support from Top Gear fans, with more than a million people signing an online petition to reinstate him.
Announcing his decision, Lord Hall said Clarkson's dismissal was unavoidable. "For me a line has been crossed. There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations."
However, he added: "This decision should in no way detract from the extraordinary contribution that Jeremy Clarkson has made to the BBC. I have always personally been a great fan of his work and Top Gear."
In a statement, Mr Tymon thanked the BBC for a "thorough and swift investigation into this very regrettable incident".
"I've worked on Top Gear for almost a decade, a programme I love," he continued. "Over that time Jeremy and I had a positive and successful working relationship, making some landmark projects together. He is a unique talent and I am well aware that many will be sorry his involvement in the show should end in this way." North Yorkshire police have asked to see the BBC's internal report, saying it will be "assessed appropriately and action will be taken... where necessary".
Responding to the news, Prime Minister David Cameron said he believed that "if you do something wrong at work there can be consequences" and that "aggressive and abusive behaviour is not acceptable in the workplace".
Jeremy Clarkson took a slightly dull and failing car programme and turned it in to the biggest factual TV show in the world.
But this sacking has nothing to do with style, opinions, popularity - or even his language on the show.
It's about what stars are allowed to get away with off screen, a topic that's been top of the agenda for the BBC in recent months.
The corporation has had to overhaul all of its policies and attitudes towards bullying and harassment, and a long verbal tirade and a physical assault would have crossed the line for any member of staff. Clarkson may be popular with the audience, and the BBC really did not want to lose him, but this was a star who admitted he was on his final warning and a corporation that was under intense scrutiny over what its top talent can and cannot get away with. Top Gear, which is one of BBC Two's most popular programmes, will continue without Clarkson, who will now become the subject of a bidding war by other broadcasters.
The magazine show is one of the BBC's biggest properties, with overseas sales worth an estimated £50m a year for the corporation's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.
350 million
Top Gear's estimated worldwide audience
1977 Top Gear began as a local show on BBC Midlands 170 plus episodes in its current format (since 2002) 3 million YouTube subscribers 1.7 million global circulation of Top Gear magazine Whether Clarkson's co-presenters James May and Richard Hammond will remain on the show has yet to be confirmed. All three had their contracts up for renewal this year, with Clarkson's due to expire at the end of March.
Hammond tweeted: "Gutted at such a sad end to an era. We're all three of us idiots in our different ways but it's been an incredible ride together."
May also updated his Twitter profile to say: "Former TV presenter".
Lord Hall said he had asked BBC Two controller Kim Shillinglaw to handle "big challenge" of renewing Top Gear for 2016, and to investigate how the channel could broadcast the last three episodes of the current series, which were pulled when Clarkson was suspended.
Meanwhile, Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans, has rubbished press speculation that he was to join the show.
"Not only is it not true, it's absolute nonsense," he told his listeners on Wednesday morning. Reaction to Clarkson sacking | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | March 2015 | ['(BBC)'] |
Serbia formally submits its application to join the European Union. | Serbia has formally submitted its application to join the 27-nation EU, in a move to end years of isolation.
President Boris Tadic handed over the application in Stockholm to Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, current holder of the EU presidency. The EU is granting 50m euros (£45m; $71m) to Serbia in budget support. But Serbia still has to cross a major hurdle - the capture of two remaining war fugitives, before membership negotiations will begin in earnest. Visa-free travel
Serbia feels it has built up a certain momentum on its path to the EU in the past few weeks, the BBC's Belgrade correspondent Mark Lowen says.
It was Serbia that decided this was the right time to apply, but some countries - notably the Netherlands and the UK - think it is premature... The authorities in Belgrade feel strongly that the momentum of the last few weeks needs to be kept up. Opinion polls suggest overwhelming Serb support for joining the EU, at 60-70%. But a majority also opposes the hunt for Gen Mladic, seeing him as a national hero.
An important trade pact with the bloc has now come into force and since 19 December Serbs have enjoyed visa-free travel to most EU countries. The EU says that in 2010 Serbia will receive a second instalment of 50m euros in budget support, as well as a loan of 200m euros. But Serbia's attempts to gain membership have been hampered by concerns, particularly in the Netherlands, over its failure to capture the two remaining war fugitives indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), based in The Hague. Chief among them is the former Bosnian Serb military commander, Ratko Mladic. Earlier this month the UN's chief war crimes prosecutor said Serbia's co-operation with ICTY was "progressing". Belgrade has handed over all the necessary documents. However, in his report to the UN, Serge Brammertz said Serbia must continue searching for both Gen Mladic and Goran Hadzic, who is wanted for war crimes in Croatia. Long road ahead
Belgrade is now pinning its hopes on the next report by the chief prosecutor, expected in June. Our correspondent says a long road lies ahead: it is likely to take at least four years before the hand of EU membership extends to Serbia. Slovenia is the only former Yugoslav republic to have joined the EU so far. That took place in 2004, and its neighbour Croatia is on track to be the next to join, in 2011 or 2012. It was Serbia that decided this was the right time to apply, but some countries - notably the Netherlands and the UK - think it is premature, our correspondent reports. They believe Serbia should have waited for its Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU to be ratified. The authorities in Belgrade feel strongly that the momentum of the last few weeks needs to be kept up, Mark Lowen says. Opinion polls suggest overwhelming Serb support for joining the EU, at 60-70%. But a majority also opposes the hunt for Gen Mladic, seeing him as a national hero. The granting of visa-free travel to Serbs does not apply to those living in Kosovo. The territory's independence declaration is not recognised by Serbia, but neither do five EU member states recognise it, so that is not officially an obstacle to Serbia joining the EU, our correspondent says. Serbia has signed a security co-operation agreement with Eulex, the EU police and justice mission in Kosovo. But Belgrade is treading carefully, conscious that Serb nationalists feel their country's interests were betrayed in Kosovo. By forming closer links with Serbia and encouraging reforms there the EU is showing it is serious about Serbia's membership bid, our correspondent adds. It is also a way of keeping together a region that is still quite fragile after the wars of the 1990s, he says. | Join in an Organization | December 2009 | ['(Tanjug)', '[permanent dead link]', '(BBC)'] |
A court in Minya, Egypt, sentences 528 supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi to death for a range of offenses including murdering a policeman and attacks on people and property. It is the largest mass death sentence handed down in recent history anywhere in the world. | Outrage as court hands out the biggest mass death sentence in recent history to alleged members of the Muslim Brotherhood
An Egyptian court has sentenced 528 alleged supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood to death, in the largest mass death sentence handed down in recent history, anywhere in the world.
The sentence is the latest blow in a crackdown which has sent the Brotherhood reeling since the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi – a prominent member of the organisation – in July last year.
Defence lawyers at the court in Minya, south of the capital, Cairo, claimed they were neither given time to review the evidence against their clients, nor cross-examine witnesses for the prosecution.
One of those sentenced to death, accused of a violent attack on a police station which left one officer dead, was Assem Mohamed Ahmed, a 34-year-old man paralysed on one side of his body, according to his brother Ahmed Mohammed, a mechanic.
Assem is one of more than 400 of the defendants who are not currently in detention. Another is Sayyef Gamal, 20, a medical student at Minya University, who said that he could not have participated in the attack on the police station in Minya, Upper Egypt, because at the time it occurred, in mid-August last year, he was fleeing police attacking a sit-in in Cairo, several hundred miles away.
That sit-in, calling for the return of Morsi, was cleared on 14 August, leading to the deaths of more than 900 people. The violence of the clearing sparked attacks on both police and Christians in Minya and elsewhere, including the attack which Sayyef is now accused of participating in.
Sayyef now moves discreetly between safe houses, watching the news, and hoping for a reversal of the verdict at a retrial.
A senior Brotherhood figure, Ibrahim Moneir, denounced the verdicts, warning that abuses of justice will fuel a backlash against the military-backed government that replaced Morsi.
“Now the coup is hanging itself by these void measures,” he said, speaking to the Qatari-based Al Jazeera television channel.
The sentence was being viewed as exceptionally harsh, even in Egypt’s polarised climate. But some lawyers support the judge’s decision.
“It’s good that terrorists be sentenced to death,” said Gamil Dorgham, a Cairo-based lawyer.
The Muslim Brotherhood was designated a terrorist organisation in December, although the government has produced no evidence to support its designation.
“This decision is not a final one, but if it were final, it’s all right. You have to know we are fighting terrorism. We have to deter them,” Mr Dorgham said.
Nathan Brown, a professor at the George Washington University in Washington, and an expert on Egypt’s judiciary system, says the verdict is likely to be lessened.
“If it were implemented in its current form, that would shock me even more than the verdict itself,” he said.
Despite the outlandish harshness and volume of the verdicts, several features of the case have become typical of the widening crackdown on Morsi’s Brotherhood and the secular opposition.
At least 16,000 people have been arrested since July, according to state officials, and thousands have been tortured, according to the monitoring group Nation Without Torture.
The accused and their lawyers also routinely complained of judicial abuses, according to Heba Wanis, of another monitoring group, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.Amnesty International said that it was the largest simultaneous mass death sentence handed down in memory, anywhere in the world.
“There is no case that we are aware of that is of this magnitude,” said Jan Wetzel, a death penalty researcher at Amnesty.
“It’s grotesque, using death sentences like small change.”
Maha Sayyed, 30, a teacher, said she believes her husband Ahmed Eid, a lawyer, was detained in an act of revenge after he secured the release of four of his clients accused of participating in Brotherhood-related activities.
“We want to talk about that case with those four guys,” one security officer said to him, according to his wife, before arranging the meeting that led to his arrest.
Now he is one of the more than 100 people who are in custody, accused over the police station attack.
The 528 sentenced on Monday were among more than 1,200 Muslim Brotherhood supporters accused of participating in the violence in Minya. Many of the remainder are due in court today, including Mohamed Badie, the Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood – its most senior figure.
Egypt’s judiciary repeatedly clashed with Mohamed Morsi during his year in power, and was one of the pillars of the alliance which deposed him on 3 July, replacing him with the then head of the Supreme Constitutional Court.
The Brotherhood has accused judges of aiding the crackdown through harsh and politicised verdicts.
“We have become used to decisions like this from the courts,” said Ahmed Shaheeb, a lawyer for 25 of the defendants.
Mr Shaheeb’s own brother Hossam fled the country after being accused in the same case.
Professor Brown believes, however that most verdicts are arrived at without interference from the state, but that deep problems nonetheless skew the system.
“First, the security apparatus seems unscrupulous and that is where evidence comes from,” he said.
“Second, large parts of the judiciary seem to have been spooked by the Morsi regime, sometimes for good reason and sometimes not. That seems to have clouded the judgement of many.
“And third, the judiciary has a world view that is very respectful of law but also one that can be less than liberal, especially when the law is less than liberal or there is a perceived threat to judges’ own self-image as pillars of order and justice.”
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | March 2014 | ['(BBC)', '(The Independent)'] |
Voters in Guatemala go to the polls in the Guatemalan general election, 2007. | GUATEMALA CITY (AFP) — Guatemalan voters on Sunday cast their ballots in presidential, legislative and municipal elections after a bloody electoral campaign that highlighted the rampant violence candidates have pledged to tackle.
About 50 candidates, campaigners and relatives were killed during the run-up to voting day. The deaths have been partly blamed on criminal gangs seeking to gain political influence.
But earlier fears of renewed violence on election day itself appeared unfounded, with no significant incidents reported as the voting was still under way Sunday afternoon.
The presidential election was seen as a race between Otto Perez Molina, a retired general who wants the army to fight crime, and social-democrat Alvaro Colom who has pledged to battle endemic poverty.
Also among the 14 hopefuls, but trailing far behind with single-digit support, was Rigoberta Menchu, whose activism for indigenous people won her the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize.
The vote appeared set to go to a November 4 run-off between the top two vote-getters, as none of the candidates looked likely to garner the 50 percent needed to win outright on Sunday.
Casting his ballot, Perez Molina, called for a clean campaign for the second round. "We want it to be a quality campaign between the two candidates so Guatemalans can chose the best," he said.
The last voter intention poll ahead of the voting gave Colom 34 percent and an eight-point lead over his right-wing rival, but just days earlier the two were seen to be running neck-and-neck.
Perez Molina's pledge to use a "hard fist" against street gangs, drug dealers and other common criminals has struck a deep chord in a country where 6,000 murders were reported last year.
The retired general wants to double the size of the police force and bring back the death penalty to combat street violence.
Colom, for his part, has pledged to clean up the notoriously corrupt police force and overhaul the judicial system, which many see as slow and inefficient. He also to promised to comply with pledges to pay a financial indemnity to thousands of former paramilitaries who had supported the armed forces during the country's 36-year civil war.
Experts say many former fighters became easy recruits for crime organizations after a peace accord was signed in 1996.
The brutal civil war, which claimed as many as 200,000 lives, was on the minds of many in this Central American country, where officials say just over 50 percent of the 13 million population live in poverty, a figure which aid groups believe is closer to 80 percent.
"Let us not return to an era of blood and terror," Colom said in his final campaign rally, in a jab at his rival, whose credentials include stints in the 1990s at the head of military intelligence and a now-disbanded elite army corps blamed for executions of political opponents.
Perez Molina, 56, who signed the 1996 peace accords, retired from the army in 2000 and later won a congressional seat.
Colom, also 56, is an industrial engineer and businessman-turned-politician, who made two previous bids for the presidency.
His critics claim the uncharismatic Colom lacks the strong hand needed to battle the ills that plague Guatemala.
Almost six million people were eligible to participate in Sunday's elections. Among the first politician to cast his ballot in the capital was former dictator and congressional hopeful Efrain Rios Montt, who has been accused of human rights violations during his 1992-1983 rule. | Government Job change - Election | September 2007 | ['(AFP)'] |
1,000 students protest at Kabul University as protests continue in Afghanistan over the burning of a Qur'an "found guilty" by pastor Terry Jones' church in the U.S. state of Florida. | Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- About 1,000 protesters gathered in front of Kabul University on Tuesday morning, as protests continue throughout Afghanistan to condemn the burning of a Quran by a pastor in the United States.
The demonstrators marched toward the city center amid a heavy police presence but without incident, said Kabul City police official Abdullah Mahboob.
The sight was in marked contrast to earlier demonstrations, some of which turned deadly.
On Sunday, police and stone-throwing demonstrators clashed in Kandahar with as many as three people killed in the violence.
At least nine people were killed and 73 injured in Kandahar on Saturday, and 12 people died Friday -- including seven U.N. employees -- when angry demonstrators stormed a U.N. compound in Mazar-i-Sharif.
The demonstrations were sparked by the actions of a controversial Florida pastor who presided over what he called a trial of the Quran on March 20.
The holy book of Islam was "found guilty" by members of Jones' tiny church and burned, according to a release posted on the church's website.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned the burning as did various U.S. officials, including U.S. President Barack Obama.
"The desecration of any holy text ... is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry," he said Saturday in a statement released by the White House. "However, to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity." | Protest_Online Condemnation | April 2011 | ['(CNN)'] |
The President of the United States Barack Obama announces that he will visit Cuba next month becoming the first American president to visit Cuba since 1928. | On February 18, 2016 White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes announced President Obama and First Lady Michelle will travel to Cuba next month. He will be the first American President to travel there since President Calvin Coolidge in 1928.
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President Obama on Thursday promised to raise human rights concerns when he makes a legacy-defining visit to Cuba in March, as the White House tried to beat back Republican charges that the trip will hand an important symbolic victory to the authoritarian government in Havana.
“We still have differences with the Cuban government that I will raise directly. America will always stand for human rights around the world,” the White House announced on Obama’s official Twitter feed.
Obama had told Yahoo News in an exclusive interview in December that he could not imagine visiting Cuba without meeting face-to-face with advocates for political change, dissidents who experience regular harassment or worse from the authoritarian government in Havana.
“If I go on a visit, then part of the deal is that I get to talk to everybody,” Obama said at the time. “I’ve made very clear in my conversations directly with President [Raul] Castro that we would continue to reach out to those who want to broaden the scope for, you know, free expression inside of Cuba.”
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters that the president would meet with dissidents during the March 21-22 trip, the first by a sitting American president since Calvin Coolidge steamed the 90 miles separating Florida and Cuba aboard a battleship. Rhodes said the administration had already warned the Castro regime that Obama would meet with some of its domestic critics.
“That doesn’t mean that we’re seeking to overthrow the Cuban government,” Rhodes said of the planned meetings. “It means that we’re seeking to support basic universal values that we would care about in any country.”
Rhodes acknowledged a deeply worrisome spike in arrests and harassment of dissidents and journalists in Cuba over the past year and promised “that’s an issue that we’ll be raising directly with the Cuban government.”
Magnets, including one showing an image of President Obama smelling a cigar, for sale at a tourist shop in Havana. (Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP)
Republicans denounced the planned trip. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, one of the two Cuban-Americans seeking the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2016, wrote a letter to Obama condemning it as “disastrous,” “dangerous” and “a mistake,” and pushed the president to cancel his announced visit.
“You will send the message to the oppressed Cuban people that you stand with their oppressors,” Rubio wrote. “I urge you to reconsider visiting Cuba and instead insist that the Castro regime finally make some serious concessions.”
Republicans have repeatedly said that easing restrictions on investment and tourism by Americans in Cuba will merely put much-needed dollars in the pockets of the government.
And White House officials acknowledge that Cuba appears to be following the example of Vietnam or China, where authoritarian governments have sought to harness the benefits of limited free-market reforms while reining in political change. While greater openness to the outside world can sow domestic discontent, improvements in people’s economic well-being can ease pressure on governments to change.
“If the Cuban economy improves, there’ll be more resources for the government. But there’ll be far more resources for the Cuban people,” Rhodes countered. “We believe that American business is a net positive for the Cuban people and that, over time, it is going to bring about real benefits and improvements in their lives.”
Rhodes suggested that one major difference between Cuba and Vietnam was that the Cuban-American community “is deeply invested in the future of Cuba, that cares deeply about the well-being and the rights of the Cuban people.” Rhodes added, “What we’ve heard from many of them is they see that Cuba is changing. There is an evolution taking place in Cuba. And we can either be a part of that or not.”
The outreach to Cuba has emerged as a major legacy issue for Obama.
On Dec. 17, 2014, he and Raul Castro stunned the world by disclosing that they had held secret negotiations and were prepared to usher in a new era of U.S.-Cuba relations, starting with the resumption of full diplomatic ties.
Embassies reopened in Havana and Washington, the United States removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and the two sides took steps to increase travel and business opportunities.
Obama has undertaken many changes using his executive powers, and he indicated in the interview that he would continue looking at ways to do so in 2016. But the president needs Congress to roll back the centerpiece of America’s Cold War-era pressure on Cuba and lift the U.S. trade embargo.
The embargo has its roots in the years after the 1959 Cuban revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power. Castro nationalized some U.S. businesses and ultimately declared himself in the Soviet Union’s camp. The punishing sanctions are thought to have kept Cuba from trying to foment revolution in other Latin American countries but failed utterly in getting Cubans to rise up against Castro. Instead, Fidel and Raul each blamed the embargo for the island’s economic ills. The collapse of the Soviet Union cost Havana its major economic patron, but traditional U.S. allies in Western Europe as well as Canada and Mexico invested in Cuba and sent tourists there, in effect countering the embargo.
While Republican presidential candidates have vowed to roll back Obama’s policy, the White House has been working on ways to make the outreach “irreversible” should the GOP capture the presidency in November.
The White House has also highlighted commercial exchanges between the United States and the socialist-run island nation that it said are already improving material life for Cubans and pointed to modest promises by Havana to expand access to the Internet on the island and embrace other limited economic reforms.
“Still, this progress is insufficient,” Rhodes said in a post on Medium, a favorite site of politicians looking to publicize press releases. “We want the Cuban government to open up more opportunities for its people to benefit from that engagement.”
It was unclear whether Obama would be able to announce any breakthroughs before or during the trip. Cuba has resisted one of his priorities: enabling American businesses to hire Cubans directly rather than going through the government. And the president has yet to nominate an ambassador to Cuba.
| Diplomatic Visit | February 2016 | ['(Yahoo!)'] |
US President Barack Obama meets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a three–day visit in India. | NEW DELHI — President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Sunday they reached "a breakthrough understanding" in freeing up U.S. investment in nuclear energy development in India, as Obama began a three-day visit to India.
Picking up from a stalled 2008 civil nuclear agreement between the two countries, the deal would allow U.S. firms to invest in energy in India. It also resolves a dispute over U.S. insistence on tracking fissile material it supplies to the country and over Indian liability provisions that have discouraged U.S. firms from capitalizing on the agreement
The White House said the understanding on India's civil nuclear program resolves the U.S. concerns on both tracking and liability. "In our judgment, the Indians have moved sufficiently on these issues to give us assurances that the issues are resolved," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser.
As Obama began his second trip to India – a first for a U.S. president – both he and Modi said they hoped to reach other agreements on defense, trade and environmental issues.
During a news conference with Modi, Obama said the political vacuum in Yemen hasn't affected U.S. counterterrorism operations in the country. Shiite rebels overran the capital Sanaa last week and President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and his ministers resigned.
Obama also said his administration is "deeply concerned" about the latest violence in eastern Ukraine, and that he'll keep trying to isolate Russia and will examine options short of military conflict with Russia.
"Your election and your strong personal commitment to the U.S.-India relationship gives us an opportunity to further energize these efforts," Obama said.
"Barack and I have formed a bond, a friendship," Modi said. "We can laugh and joke and talk easily on the phone. The chemistry that has brought Barack and me closer has also brought Washington and Delhi closer."
On Monday, Obama will be the first U.S. president to preside as a guest over India's Republic Day celebrations, marking the 65th anniversary of India's constitution. That invitation underscores the importance of the ties.
"This is a very symbolically significant event — it's the biggest invitation India has to offer to a foreign head of state and in the past India has been wary of inviting the United States given that the two countries have not always had the warmest of relationships," said Sanjay Kumar, a political scientist at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi.
"In one instance, at least, America declined the invitation as well," he added. "So it's a huge achievement for Modi to get such a powerful leader as the presiding guest. It symbolizes the beginning of a friendlier chapter between the two nations. It's also symbolic of a new post-Modi era in India's foreign policy."
At the beginning of the visit, Modi broke protocol to personally welcome Obama with a hug as he disembarked from Air Force One in New Delhi. The warmth of this relationship between the two leaders — which was on display on Modi's September visit to the USA — has been a source of surprise in both countries.
Obama later walked in his socks into a walled courtyard to lay a large white wreath at the site where Mahatma Gandhi, the father of India's independence movement, was cremated, and then shoveled dirt and poured a pitcher of water around a young tree planted in his honor at the memorial.
As Obama and Modi opened their talks Sunday, the prime minister presented the president with a copy of a 1950 telegram from the United States congratulating India on the adoption of its constitution.
Modi was banned from the USA for almost a decade over his alleged role in permitting the massacre of 2,000 Muslims when he was the governor of Gujarat in 2002. Obama lifted the ban last year after Modi took office, and the September visit began warming up ties that had been strained for years.
"Forging deeper ties between our two nations has been a key part of my foreign policy since I took office," Obama told India Today weekly magazine. "(It) can be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century."
Part of that is due to India's surging economy, say analysts. Since taking office, the Modi administration has focused on economic progress and fulfilling the prime minister's campaign pledges of downsizing India's notoriously bloated bureaucracy, curbing widespread corruption and strengthening overseas trade.
While it is too soon to tell if the reforms are taking root, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund recently predicted that India would surpass China as the fastest growing economy in the world in the next two years.
Analysts said the trip won't yield everything the U.S. is looking for. "It's unclear what the two will achieve — the nuclear liability bill is a given — but on broader, more crucial issues like cross border terrorism, and Pakistan, President Obama is in not in a great position to offer India anything on that front," said Kumar. "He is not as strong as when he last came to India five years ago, and besides, America may not want to discuss a third country at this stage."
New Delhi prepared for the event for weeks, and locals said they were pleased about the visit's impact.
"It's very exciting – they have fixed the road and whitewashed all the buildings near my school because President Obama will take that road," said Reshama Patil, a school teacher. "Everything is looking perfect, first class. … He should come more often."
The chaotic streets of the city were cleared during the visit, with security forces visible at road blocks and along the route the president was to travel from the airport. Some said they hoped security in the country would improve.
"I will be on duty around the clock, the entire police force has been mobilized in Delhi, security is our major concern," said N. Trivedi, a police officer on duty Sunday (It's common in India to have an initial as a name). "I am too small a fish to want or expect anything from the president of America but if he can do something about all this terrorism from Pakistan, that would be helpful for us."
In a phone call from India on Sunday, Obama offered his condolences to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after an online video purportedly showed that a Japanese hostage was murdered by the Islamic State group.
A video released by the extremist group — also known as ISIL or ISIS — on Saturday shows freelance journalist Kenji Goto holding a photo that purportedly shows the dead body of the second hostage, Haruna Yukawa.
High on Obama's agenda with Modi is progress on getting heavily polluted India to agree to curb carbon emissions. White House officials hope the surprise climate agreement the U.S. struck with China in November might spur India to take similar steps, though that's unlikely to happen during Obama's visit.
Obama is cutting his trip short to go to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to pay respect to the royal family following the death of King Abdullah. In doing so, the White House had to cancel a tour by the president and first lady of the Taj Mahal, the famed white marble monument to love in the city of Agra.
On Saturday, India's communist parties held a protest march and burned an effigy of Obama, voicing fears of a U.S. domination in economic, nuclear and defense ties with India. "Barack Obama, Hands Off India," chanted nearly 100 protesters during their march in New Delhi. | Diplomatic Visit | January 2015 | ['(USA Today)'] |
A plane crash near St. Louis, Missouri kills four people. | A 35-year-old pilot from Grand Blanc and a Mount Morris man were among four people killed over the weekend when a small plane crashed outside of St. Louis, Missouri.
Joshua Daniel Sweers of Grand Blanc was piloting the single-engine Piper PA28 that crashed at about 3:45 pm Sunday. Also killed in the crash was 39-year-old Daniel Schlosser of Mount Morris, 39-year-old John Camilleri of Buffalo, New York, and 37-year-old Daniel Shedd of St. Charles, Missouri.
Authorities say the small plane crashed into a farm field in southern Illinois, about 45 miles north of St. Louis. The circumstances of the accident are yet to be determined.
The Macoupin County Coroner has been on the scene of the crash and the local sheriff's department is now conducting an investigation.
One of the men, Daniel Shedd of Missouri, had texted the photo above to his mother just minutes before the plane crashed. | Air crash | May 2020 | ['(WCRZ)'] |
Sixteen civilians, including five children and four women, are killed in bombing attacks of the Syrian army in Yalda village, south of Damascus. | Sixteen civilians were killed in bombing attacks by the Syrian army on the village of Yalda, south of Damascus , said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). According to the NGO, five children under sixteen and four women were among the victims of the shelling. According to a statement by the General Committee of the Revolution, this new "massacre" was perpetrated by "helicopters that fired on the village" and some houses collapsed on their inhabitants.
Nearly 50 people were killed Thursday in violence in Syria, according to a preliminary assessment by the SOHR.
Meanwhile, helicopters fired Friday on some quarters of Aleppo and troops massed near this Syrian second largest city for a crucial battle between the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the rebels.
One week after the opening of this new front, the regime's special forces were deployed on the eastern flank of the city and other troops arrived to participated in a massive offensive, according to opposition sources. The United States said on Thursday it was fearing a massacre in Aleppo.
In a related development, a member of the Syrian parliament representing the city of Aleppo, Ikhlas al Badawi, Friday became the fourth member to defect. "I crossed the Turkish border and left this tyrannical regime because of the repression and savage torture to which it uses against a nation that calls for minimum rights," she told Sky News Arabia.
"She arrived yesterday [Thursday] in Turkey with her six children and is expected to visit Qatar, "confirmed Samir Nashar, a member of the Syrian National Council (SNC). He said the Syrian authorities have asked MPs to leave Aleppo, because the city "could be subjected to a military offensive [against the rebels] in the coming days." | Armed Conflict | July 2012 | ['(Albawaba)'] |
Security escort Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott from a restaurant in Canberra after indigenous protesters surrounded the building on Australia Day in response to comments made by Abbott. | The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, had to be extracted from a restaurant near Parliament House as angry protesters banged on the glass.
Supporters of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra picketed the Lobby restaurant over comments by Mr Abbott this morning that he understood why the tent embassy was set up, but it was "time to move on".
Julia Gillard is dragged away from the protest by her security officers.
As many as 200 gathered in front of the restaurant, banging on its glass walls and yelling "shame" and "racist".
The incident, about 2.30pm at the restaurant several hundred metres from Parliament, occurred while Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott were presenting the National Emergency Medals.
Close call ... Julia Gillard protected by one of her security detail as she is rushed to her car.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
The pair were forced to stay inside for 30 minutes while the protest outside continued.
As many as 1000 people had gathered as part of a march to mark the 40th anniversary of the Tent Embassy.
Ms Gillard was escorted in dramatic fashion from the building by her federal police Close Personal Protection team.
Fairfax photographer Alex Ellinghausen, who took the pictures on this page, said that, contrary to the claims of Ms Gillard's office that she merely "stumbled", she was "dragged out" by her bodyguards.
The Prime Minister is hurried away by her security detail.
"The police were pulling her out and they were clearly a bit faster than her and along the way she lost a shoe and tumbled," he said.
One of the protesters, the chairman of the Northern Basin Aboriginal nations, Fred Hooper, spoke to Sky News shortly after the politicians’ dramatic exit, explaining why they caused the incident.
Riot police push their way through the protesters at the Lobby restaurant.
‘‘We were peacefully celebrating the 40th anniversary of the aboriginal tent embassy. The opposition leader on national television made a comment to tear down something that have built over 40 years, which is sacred to us,’’ he said.
‘‘So what do you expect us to do when we're 200 yards away from the person that makes that comment? Do you expect us to say, ‘yeah Tony we're gonna do that now? We're gonna rip it down?’’’
The Prime Minister is bundled into her car.
The police were pulling her out and they were clearly a bit faster than her and along the way she lost a shoe and tumbled
Earlier today one of the tent embassy's founders, Michael Anderson, addressed a rally at the site.
"To hell with the government and the courts in this country. You haven't got a high hope to take us on," he said.
Tony Abbott after the drama at the Lobby.
"We will force these issues. Too many of our families have suffered for some bastard to get in the road."
Mr Sean Gordon, Darkinjung Aboriginal Land Council leader from North West NSW, said the protest had been peaceful until an announcement was made in which Mr Abbott's comments were read to the crowd.
"It was like waving a red rag at a bull. This is the 40th anniversary of the tent embassy and these blokes are 200 metres away. If Tony Abbott is a visionary then why did he fail to see what this would do to our people."
"In answer to the Opposition Leader's comments an NSW Aboriginal Council member, Roy RC, told reporters "maybe Abbott is right and it is time for the tent embassy to go."
"And then it is time to erect a black Parliament with politicians we can choose, politicians who are going to have a say in our lives," he said.
Mr Gordon said further protests were planned for the rest of the week and that "we're going to keep the fight going. We are standing up here and we are not going away."
Mr Abbott's comments about the Tent Embassy were made during an event at the Sydney Opera House this morning in response to a question from the media about whether the Tent Embassy was still relevant.
"Look, I can understand why the Tent Embassy was established all those years ago. I think a lot has changed for the better since then," he said, in comments which appeared on Sky.
"We had the historic apology just a few years ago, one of the genuine achievements of Kevin Rudd as prime minister. We had the proposal which is currently for national consideration to recognise indigenous people in the constitution.
"I think the indigenous people of Australia can be very proud of the respect in which they are held by every Australian and yes, I think a lot has changed since then and I think it probably is time to move on from that."
After the incident at the restaurant Mr Anderson spoke to the media, saying Mr Abbott's comments were disrespectful and they wanted know if Mr Abbott was serious about removing the Tent Embassy.
"He said the Aboriginal embassy had to go, we heard it on a radio broadcast. We thought no way, so we circled around the building," he said.
"You've got 1000 people here peacefully protesting and to make a statement about tearing down the embassy - it's just madness on the part of Tony Abbott," Mr Anderson said.
"What he said amounts to inciting racial riots."
- with AAP
Correction: This article has been amended to remove the suggestion in the original version that Tony Abbott called for the tent embassy to close. | Protest_Online Condemnation | January 2012 | ['(CNN)', '(Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
Hong Kong voters go to the polls in District Council elections, with pro–Beijing parties expected to recover. | The main Democratic Party slumped, winning just 60 seats, down from more than 90 in the last poll.
Local officials have little power but the vote is seen as an important test ahead of assembly elections next year.
Democrat Party leader Albert Ho offered his resignation after the result, but his colleagues refused to accept it.
"[The party] needs me to stay during this difficult time to stabilise the situation," he said.
'Vague' timing
His opponent, Tam Yiu-chung of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, hailed his party's success as reflecting people's desire for stability.
"Hong Kong people now attach more importance to the society's stability and harmony as well as sustainable economic development," he said.
Analysts say the pro-Beijing parties benefited from a strong economy and good organisation at district level.
Sunday's poll came amid ongoing reforms aimed at achieving full democracy.
China's communist rulers pledged to introduce democratic rule in Hong Kong when they took over the territory from the British in 1997. But Beijing has been vague about the timing of reforms.
Thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators attended a rally in October calling for the right to elect Hong Kong's chief executive and legislature by 2012. | Government Job change - Election | November 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
39–year–old Russian Orthodox priest Father Alexander Filippov is fatally shot in the back outside his home in Satino–Russkoye after challenging a group of drunks who were urinating in his hallway. | A Russian Orthodox priest was shot dead outside his home near Moscow after challenging a group of rowdy drunks, Russian media report.
Father Alexander Filippov, 39, died from a pistol shot in Satino-Russkoye, a village in Podolsk district. His widow Yelena, quoted by Interfax news agency, said some of the drunks had been urinating in the hallway. Police have arrested three suspects. Last month another Moscow priest was shot dead in his church. One of those held over the killing on Tuesday night had served a previous jail sentence for murder, prosecutors said. Father Alexander reportedly died from a single shot fired at his back. He is survived by his widow and three teenage daughters. | Famous Person - Death | December 2009 | ['(BBC)', '(Radio Free Europe)', '(The Age)'] |
Former Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz is shot in the Dominican Republic during a reported robbery attempt. He is expected to fully recover following surgery. | David Ortiz was shot in the Dominican Republic on Sunday, June 9. The former Boston Red Sox player underwent successful surgery before being flown to Boston via air ambulance. He was admitted to Mass General Hospital where he underwent a second surgery. Ortiz is said to be in stable condition and is recovering in the ICU.
Ortiz’s wife Tiffany released a statement on her husband’s condition on Tuesday, June 11.
“David arrived at Massachusetts General Hospital last night and underwent a successful second surgery. He is stable, awake, and resting comfortably this morning in the ICU where he is expected to remain for the next several days. On behalf of me and my family, I want to thank John and Linda Henry, Tom Werner, Sam Kennedy and the Boston Red Sox for all that they are doing for David and our family, as well as Dr. Larry Ronan and the amazing staff at Massachusetts General Hospital. Lastly, I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of support and love that we have received during this incredibly difficult time. We ask for privacy as David works towards recovery.”
Ortiz’s father Leo Ortiz was first to confirm the news of the shooting to ESPN Digital.
“They called to tell me that David is injured and that they took him to a medical center, but they did not tell me how he is or exactly where he was transferred,” Leo Ortiz told ESPN via telephone from the Dominican Republic. “At the moment, everything is confusing. I’m trying to find out where they took my son,” Ortiz’s father added.
“One of the doctors who performed the surgery told Dominican TV station CDN 37 that Ortiz is out of danger,” ESPN reports.
It was initially reported that Ortiz was shot during an attempted robbery, but the local police later said it was not believed to be a robbery. The police declined to provide more information about a possible motive, saying that the investigation is ongoing.
“Our thoughts are with David Ortiz, who is reportedly hospitalized after being shot in his hometown of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic,” the MLB tweeted.
The baseball league also retweeted several current players offering prayers for Ortiz. His friend and former Red Sox teammate, retired pitcher turned TV analyst Pedro Martinez, tweeted, “I’m at peace knowing you out of danger; you a strong man Compai, can’t wait to hear your voice. My thoughts and prayers are with you, see you soon.”
Here’s what you need to know:
Getty
Ortiz is currently in a hospital in the Dominican Republic where he is listed in “stable condition.” The latest update on Ortiz’s condition was tweeted out by Dominican journalist Dionisio Soldevila.
“David Ortiz’s surgery was six hours, not two like his father said. It’s been confirmed to us that part of his intestines, colon, and gallbladder were removed. He’s in the ICU, stable and recovering,” the translated tweet reads.
The Boston Red Sox have offered the Ortiz family any and all available resources and was responsible for sending a plane to the Dominican Republic to transport Ortiz to Massachusetts.
#RedSox Statement Regarding David Ortiz: pic.twitter.com/zl2yp8NREs
— Boston Red Sox (@RedSox) June 10, 2019
Ortiz, 43, was shot while at Dial Bar and Lounge on Santo Domingo Este. El Dia reports that the unidentified suspect walked into the club and shot Ortiz who was there with a group of friends.
Videos of Ortiz at the club before the shooting have been shared on social media.
Aquí un video de momentos previos al incidente donde resultó herido David Ortiz. Según fuentes oficiales “Big Papi” estaba en la terraza de un centro de diversión. Una persona se le acercó y le disparó en la espalda. pic.twitter.com/gfnnM4Q8PZ
— Guillermo Schutz (@memo_schutz) June 10, 2019
Dominican journalist Jose P. Monegro recently tweeted that Ortiz was transferred to Abel Gonzalez clinic on Lincoln Avenue after receiving initial treatment at the Integral Medical Center in the Eastern Zone. Monegro also tweeted that Ortiz was being operated on.
At least one report indicates that Ortiz was shot in the lower back and that the bullet came out through his abdomen. That report also claims that Ortiz pleaded with the doctor, begging him, “please, don’t let me die.”
.@dSoldevila tweet translated: pic.twitter.com/eFMMXrBCQl
— Alex Speier (@alexspeier) June 10, 2019
Dominican reporter Dionisio Soldevila recently tweeted that Ortiz’s brother Eloy confirmed that Big Papi was in surgery but that everything was going well. Another report indicates that Ortiz is “out of danger.” You can see that below.
.@CDN37 – A local network in the DR – Tweeted this picture who they identified as one of the doctors that took care of David Ortiz; they say he just informed them that he is out of danger. https://t.co/XWuaku7sfS
— Marly Rivera (@MarlyRiveraESPN) June 10, 2019
Eddy Feliz Garcia, el que disparo a David Ortiz, segun policia nacional. pic.twitter.com/OC4crKy09P
— Dionisio Soldevila (@dSoldevila) June 10, 2019
Soon after the shooting, one suspect had been taken into custody. Police identified him as Eddy Feliz Garcia (pictured above). In the days following the shooting, additional arrests have been made.
Oliver Mirabal, who has alleged ties to a drug trafficking gang, has also been arrested.
On Wednesday, June 12, police said that Rolfy Ferreira Cruz (pictured below) had been arrested and that he had admitted to being the person who shot Ortiz.
This is Rolfy Ferreyra Cruz, alleged to have shot @davidortizA group of people were allegedly paid 400,000 pesos ($7,600 USD) for the hit.#wcvb pic.twitter.com/WLZc9ekp5G
— Shaun Chaiyabhat (@ShaunWCVB) June 12, 2019
Police have also arrested Joel Rodriguez de la Cruz, Porfirio Ayendi Dechamps Vásquez, and Reynaldo Rodríguez Valenzuela.
A motive is not clear. According to El Dia, a police source said the incident may have been the work of “hired killers.”
“Video footage shows a man, with a bloody face, who was presumably sitting near Ortiz, stood up from his seat and shot Ortiz in the pelvis. Another version of a woman who was nearby when the incident occurred said that some individuals dismounted to shoot at a person, but the shot hit Ortiz,” Listin Diario reports.
Video of the shooting has been uploaded to YouTube. You can see it below.
There have also been videos that appear to show the suspect being beaten after the shooting. You can see one of those videos below. Please be advised that some may find the video to be graphic.
It’s unclear if police are seeking any other suspects.
The former Red Sox player was at the venue with television presenter Jhoel Lopez, who was also injured. The extent of Lopez’s injuries are unknown at this time, however, his wife Liza took to Instagram to let the public know that her husband is in “stable condition.”
Lopez is the host of Me Gusta de Noche, which premiered in 2017. He also has a number of producer and actor credits to his name. His most recent credit is for Love Kills in 2016, in which he played the role of Kachu. He doesn’t have any recent credits to his name on his IMDb page.
Lopez posted the above photo, taken with Ortiz, approximately six hours before the shooting.
Lopez is a dad to one little girl named Lenash.
Ortiz has family in the Dominican Republic, the country where he was born. He’s been known to spend a great deal of time in the Dominican Republic, where he has a home and family.
Ortiz is married and is a father of three children. He and his wife Tiffany are parents to a teenage daughter named Alexandra and a son named D’Angelo. Ortiz has another daughter, Jessica, from a previous relationship. According to the Boston Herald, Jessica graduated from high school in the Dominican Republic.
Also known as Big Papi, Ortiz played in the MLB for 20 seasons. He originally signed with the Seattle Mariners in 1992 and was traded to the Twins in 1996 where he played six seasons. Ortiz was released by the Twins and signed with the Red Sox in 2003.
He won three World Series titles with the Red Sox before retiring in 2016. You can watch Papi’s farewell to Fenway Park in the video below.
READ NEXT: Tiffany Ortiz, David Ortiz’s Wife: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know Read More | Famous Person - Sick | June 2019 | ['(Heavy)', '(ESPN)'] |
At least 10 people are killed and at least 16 others are injured as a United Nations plane breaks in two and ignites at Kinshasa Airport in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. | A United Nations plane has crashed at Kinshasa airport in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing 32 of 33 people on board, the UN says.
The CRJ-100 jet broke in two and burst into flames as it attempted to land in heavy rain.
It had reportedly flown from Goma via Kisangani in the north-east.
Twenty UN workers were listed as being on the plane, which had a Georgian crew and both Congolese and foreign nationals aboard.
The nationality of the lone survivor remains unknown.
The UN Stabilisation Mission in the DRC, Monusco - previously known as Monuc - has been operating in the country since 1999, and its mandate is due to expire at the end of June.
| Air crash | April 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(Indian Express)'] |
Voters in Belarus head to the polls in the country's latest parliamentary election. The election is closely watched by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe due to the country's poor human rights record. | Belarusian elections are being watched to see how much leeway authoritarian President Lukashenko gives to opposition candidates. Belarus has sought to balance close ties with Russia and a nascent opening to the West. Belarusians head to the polls Sunday to elect members to the ex-Soviet republic's rubber-stamp parliament.
The elections are being closely watched by the West to see how much President Alexander Lukashenko will loosen his iron-fisted grip on power.
Often dubbed "Europe's last dictatorship," the nation of 10 million has been ruled by Lukashenko for 25 years.
| Government Job change - Election | November 2019 | ['(Deutsche Welle)'] |
Former Vice President of Zimbabwe Joice Mujuru is expelled from the ruling party for allegedly planning a coup against President Robert Mugabe. | ZANU PF has expelled former Vice President Joice Mujuru on allegations of undermining the party leadership and for continuing to fan divisions within the party.
Party spokesman Simon Khaya Moyo confirmed the development.
Mujuru lost her job as vice president of the party and the country after she was accused by First Lady Grace of plotting to dethrone President Mugabe.
The decision to fire Mujuru followed a politburo meeting which saw the return of President Mugabe’s wife after weeks of absence due to an unknown health problem.
Mujuru joins former spokesman Rugare Gumbo, former secretary for administration, Didymus Mutasa, former war veterans’ leader, Jabulani Sibanda and former Mashonaland West Provincial chair, Temba Mliswa, who have all been booted out of the party.
Gumbo and Mutasa were fired when Grace returned from the Far East a few months ago.
Khaya Moyo told journalists after the seven hour politburo indaba that Mujuru was found “unworthy to be a member of the ruling party”.
He said the decision to expel Mujuru was reached after the disciplinary committee, which is chaired by vice president Phelekezela Mphoko and has Grace among its members, had presented a detailed report on the former VP.
Khaya Moyo said legal affairs secretary Patrick Chinamasa presented a report which had 10 allegations against Mujuru and the former VP was eventually found “guilty of plotting to assassinate the president, and of promoting factionalism within the party.”
“She was also found guilty of orchestrating the Bhora Musango strategy in the 2008 elections which resulted in the party performing badly in the elections.
“She promoted divisions within the party that led to it ungovernable,” Khaya Moyo said.
He said Mujuru was also accused of corruption and of criminally abusing office, both accusations which made her unfit to remain a member of the party.
“She was found guilty of colluding and providing leadership to the party's enemies and being part of the regime change team. She has been working with the country's enemies therefore making it impossible to be a member of the revolutionary party,” Khaya Moyo said.
He added: “The politburo felt that she was behaving in a manner which undermined the leadership of the party led by President Robert Mugabe”.
The politburo further upheld all votes of no confidence passed on senior members in the build-up to the December congress as well as the ruling that they should not hold office in the next two years.
Statement from Simon Khaya Moyo
THE Politburo today resolved to expel Joice Teurai Ropa Mujuru from Zanu
PF after receiving a detailed report from the National Disciplinary
Committee chaired by Vice President Mphoko. The Secretary for Legal Affairs
Cde Patrick Chinamasa did of course present the report.
This follows submissions from various structures of the party particularly the Women’s League, the Youth League, the war veterans and war collaborators.
The grounds for Joice Mujuru’s expulsion from Zanu PF include but not limited to the following
1) Plotting to unconstitutionally remove the President and First Secretary of the party from office
2) Orchestrating the *bhora musango* campaign to the detriment of the party’s interests
3) Orchestrating factionalism in the party thereby causing acrimonious divisions
4) Abusing party structures to create a competing centre of national power
5) Engaging in behaviour unbecoming of a vice president and second secretary of the party.
6) Systematically collaborating and colluding with the enemy in a manner that undermines the party and risked bringing it into disrepute.
7) Engaging in activities that smirk of corruption
8) Engaging in criminal abuse of office
9) Impugning, maligning and undermining the party and the President1.
10) Providing leadership to the regime change agenda and Fifth Column politics
within Zanu PF.
The Politburo felt that she lacked the quality of strong moral principles, honesty and decency and therefore ceases to be a member of Zanu PF from today. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | April 2015 | ['(BBC)', '(Herald)', '(NewZimbabwe)'] |
Three young backpackers are killed and eight injured in a rural Queensland, Australia bus accident. | Three young backpackers from overseas are dead and eight other people are seriously injured after a mini-bus and a four-wheel-drive crashed in rural Queensland yesterday.
The accident happened at an intersection on Rosedale Road at South Kolan, north-west of Bundaberg, just after 2pm.
Police said there were nine people on board the 10-seater bus.
"Some of the dead and injured are believed to be foreigners but we can't confirm identities or what countries they are from yet," a Queensland police spokesman said.
However, it is believed some of the tourists were from France, Germany, South Korea and Canada and had been working in the region as fruit-pickers.
Energex rescue helicopter spokesman Peter Marris said the driver of the four-wheel-drive and his wife, who were both Australians, had been taken to the Bundaberg Hospital.
The Queensland Ambulance Service said paramedics stabilised the injured before taking them to Bundaberg and Gladstone hospitals.
They were suffering serious head, chest and abdominal injuries.
Paramedics told Seven News some of the victims were trapped under the mini-bus, hampering rescue efforts.
An ambulance spokesman said the most critically injured were to be flown to Brisbane last night.
A police spokeswoman said the cause of the accident was not yet known.
However, Mr Marris said both intersecting roads had a 100 kmh speed limit and a nearby sugarcane crop would have obscured each driver's view of the other vehicle until moments before the collision. | Road Crash | September 2005 | ['(Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
A fire at the Sindika Trade Center, a construction materials shopping center in the northwestern edge of Moscow, Russia, forces the evacuation of at least 3000 people. , | Around 3,000 people were evacuated when the construction market in north-west Moscow went up in flames.
Despite the scale of the blaze, no casualties have been reported.
Blaze engulfs shopping centre in Moscow. | Fire | October 2017 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters)'] |
A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs, with the full moon dimming slightly as it passes through the Earth's penumbral shadow. It is visible from most of North America, the Pacific Ocean, parts of East Asia, and New Zealand. | Early on Monday morning (Nov. 30), careful skywatchers across all of North America can watch the full moon undergo a slight penumbral eclipse.
The moon will take 4 hours and 21 minutes to glide across the pale outer fringe (penumbra) of Earth's shadow, never reaching the shadow's dark umbra. However, penumbral lunar eclipses are rather subtle events which are usually difficult for most people to detect unless at least 70% of the moon's diameter is immersed within it.
In this particular case the November full moon, known as a Beaver moon, is going to pass rather deep into the penumbra. In fact, at the moment of the deepest phase/greatest eclipse (09:42 UT) the penumbra will cover 82.9% of the lunar disk. Put another way, the uppermost limb of the moon will be 566 miles (911 kilometers) away from the unseen edge of the much darker umbral shadow of the Earth.
About 20 minutes prior to the deepest phase of the eclipse, you might see some evidence of this faint penumbral shading on the moon's upper edge. This corresponds to around 4:22 a.m. EST (0922 GMT); 3:22 a.m. CST; 2:22 a.m. MT and 1:22 a.m. PST. About 70% of the moon's diameter will be immersed in the penumbra, so any unusual shading on the upper part of the moon should — in theory — be detectable. Some might even detect lesser traces of penumbral shading for some minutes beforehand.
After about 20 minutes, we will arrive at the deepest and most obvious part of the eclipse; the moon’s upper limb should appear sensibly shaded with a light charcoal gray or brownish colored hue.
After the deepest phase has passed, you might be able to perceive a slight darkening or "smudginess" on the moon’s right edge for around 20 additional minutes. So, while the moon will be inside the penumbral shadow for over 260 minutes, most will probably only be aware of it for only about 40 minutes.
The penumbral eclipse will also be detectable from parts of the Caribbean and South America as the moon sets. For observers in east-central Asia, Indonesia and Australia it happens on Monday evening as the moon is rising. At mid-eclipse, the moon will appear in the zenith (directly overhead) over the North Pacific Ocean, not far from the Hawaiian Islands. From the 50th state, greatest eclipse comes late on Sunday night as the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend winds down, at 11:42 p.m. Hawaii Time.
Here is a diagram showing the moon's passage through the outer penumbral shadow on Monday, courtesy of Fred Espenak, Eclipsewise.com.
It might be easier to understand why the penumbral shadow of Earth is so faint, by imagining actually being on the moon when Monday's event takes place.
An astronaut on the moon during this time will see an eclipse of the sun, but it would all depend on where on the moon our hypothetical moonwalker is located. As seen from the Tycho crater, the famous brilliant lunar impact crater whose rays make it appear like a sunflower on the southern part of the moon, the Earth's silhouette will appear to only take a tiny nick off of the top of the sun; hardly enough to cause any noticeable diminishing of light on the surrounding lunar landscape. That’s why the lower part of the full moon will appear to shine normally.
In contrast, near the moon's upper limb is the region known as Mare Frigoris — the "Sea of Cold." From here, the Earth will appear to cover more than eight-tenths of the sun's diameter; consequently, the brilliant solar illumination of the surrounding lunar landscape will turn considerably more somber.
And this diminished effect of the glare and illumination of sunlight on the moon's surface is precisely what those of us in North America will be trying to detect during the deepest phase of the eclipse, when concentrating their gaze toward the upper rim of the moon early on Monday morning.
In 2021, two lunar eclipses will take place, so skywatchers should mark their calendars now for these exciting moon phases.
On May 26, a total eclipse will take place. As total eclipses go, it will be unusually short, with totality lasting less than 15 minutes. The total phase will be visible before the moon sets across the western U.S. Farther east, the moon will set in total eclipse near and along a line running from the Montana-North Dakota border, southeast to the Texas-Louisiana border. Going still farther east, only the opening stages of the partial phase of the eclipse will be visible before the moon disappears beyond the west-southwest horizon.
On Nov. 19, 2021, North Americans will be treated to an almost-total eclipse. At greatest eclipse, more than 97% of the moon's diameter will be immersed in the dark umbral shadow; only a narrow sliver of the moon’s bottom edge will remain just outside of the shadow. Enough of the moon will be immersed in the umbra to allow it to light up with a coppery color as usually happens during a total eclipse. Night owls take note: Like our upcoming eclipse next Monday, as well as the eclipse in May, next November's eclipse will occur during the early morning hours.
One final note: If the weather does not cooperate and you end up being clouded out on Monday morning don't feel disappointed. Even at its peak the darkening effect on the moon will be at best, subtle.
Some may say "underwhelming." | New wonders in nature | November 2020 | ['(Space.com)'] |
At least 13 people are killed as a rockslide hits shanties in the Gulistan–i–Jauhar in the Pakistani city of Karachi. | KARACHI: At least 13 people, including seven children died as a rockslide hit shanties erected in Karachi's Gulistan-i-Jauhar area early Tuesday, rescue sources said.
Rescue teams reached the site of the incident and recovered the bodies of three women, three men and seven children from beneath the rubble.
Rangers and police personnel also arrived at the scene and participated in the rescue operation.
Heavy machinery was called in to help clear the area as the rocks hit shacks built on a plot in Gulistan-i-Jauhar's Block 1 area. Two families comprising 13 people were living in the shanties hit by the rockslide, area residents said.
The recovered bodies have been shifted to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) for legal formalities.
Commissioner Karachi Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leaders Faisal Sabzwari and Muhammad Hussain visited the site and inquired about the rescue operation.
Speaking to the press, Shoaib Siddiqui said that the administration was making efforts to rescue the survivors, if any. He said heavy machinery had been engaged to clear the rubble, but that no time frame could be provided for completion of the rescue operation.
When asked about allegations of china-cutting of the land, Shoaib Siddiqui told DawnNews he had directed the Karachi Municipal Corporation land department to investigate the matter and submit a report immediately so that appropriate action could be taken. He said the matter was not clear as yet, and he could only confirm once he received the record.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has expressed grief over the incident and instructed authorities to aid the families of the victims, Pakistan Television reported. | Mudslides | October 2015 | ['(Dawn)'] |
United States National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi agree on a draft resolution that would expand United Nations Security Council sanctions following North Korea's latest nuclear test. U.S. President Barack Obama participated in the meeting. The draft is now headed to the full 15-member council. | The United States and China have agreed on a draft resolution that would expand U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea over its latest nuclear test and hope to put it to a vote in the coming days, council diplomats said on Wednesday.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, two council diplomats said Beijing and Washington reached a deal on the draft, which could go to the full 15-member council soon. The two veto powers had been negotiating on a draft resolution for the past seven weeks following Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6.
“It’s a substantive, long, full draft ... which I hope will be adopted in the coming days,” a senior council diplomat said. “There were a significant number of blockage points between the two countries ... There is an agreement between those two countries.”
The draft resolution is expected to call for the blacklisting of a number of individuals and entities, diplomats said. They were reluctant to provide further details.
North Korea’s Ministry of Atomic Energy Industry and its National Aerospace Development Agency or ‘NADA’, the body responsible for February’s rocket launch, will be amongst the sanctioned entities, South Korea’s Yonhap news reported.
The secretive General Reconnaissance Bureau, already sanctioned by the United States for its suspected role in the 2014 cyber attack on Sony Pictures, was also included in the blacklist, Yonhap said.
The council is scheduled to discuss the U.N. North Korea sanctions regime on Thursday at 3 p.m. ET (2000 GMT), the U.N. press office said.
China and the United States have had different views on how strong the response should be to North Korea since Pyongyang’s nuclear test last month with Washington urging harsh punitive measures and Beijing emphasizing dialogue and milder U.N. steps that are confined to non-proliferation.
Western diplomats told Reuters that restricting North Korean access to international ports was among the measures Washington was pushing Beijing to accept.
Washington also wanted to tighten restrictions on North Korean banks’ access to the international financial system, the diplomats said.
North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 because of its multiple nuclear tests and rocket launches. In addition to a U.N. arms embargo, Pyongyang is banned from importing and exporting nuclear and missile technology and is not allowed to import luxury goods.
China and the United States signaled on Tuesday that they were near agreement on a draft sanctions resolution on North Korea.
| Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | February 2016 | ['(Reuters)', '(AFP via Bangkok Post)', '[permanent dead link]'] |
A Eurocopter AS350B3 helicopter crashes into a glacier near Anchorage, Alaska, killing five people, including Czech billionaire Petr Kellner. One crew member survived and has been hospitalized. | ANCHORAGE (Reuters) -Five people were killed and one injured in a helicopter crash at a glacier near Anchorage, Alaska State Troopers said on Sunday.
Searchers found the crash site and survivor late Saturday night after the chopper was reported overdue, the troopers said in a written statement. The injured person was reported to be in serious but stable condition.
The helicopter was ferrying skiers who had been on a backcountry tour, the troopers said. Killed were Petr Kellner, 56, and Benjamin Larochaix, 50, both of the Czech Republic; Gregory Harms, 52, of Colorado; Sean McManamy, 38, and pilot Zachary Russell, 33, the troopers said. The survivor, who was not identified late Sunday, was hospitalized, the trooper said.
The crash site was near Knik Glacier northeast of Anchorage. The helicopter was an Airbus AS350B3 owned by Soloy Helicopters of Wasilla, Alaska, the troopers said.
The victims’ bodies were recovered Sunday by the Alaska Army National Guard and volunteers from the Alaska Mountain Rescue Group, the trooper said. The remains have been turned over to the state medical examiner, the troopers said. A temporary flight restriction imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration was lifted late Sunday.
The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash, the troopers said.
Knik Glacier, in the northern Chugach Mountains, is a destination for sightseeing flights and, in summer, hiking and boating tours. The crash site is near the Knik River outflow of the 28-mile glacier, according to a map provided by the troopers.
Knik Glacier and other glaciers in the area have been the sites of numerous military and civilian air crashes over several decades.
Another backcountry skier was killed this weekend in a separate accident in the same general areas. Erin Lee, 40, of Fairbanks died Saturday after being buried in an avalanche near Matanuska Glacier, also northeast of Anchorage.
Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage; Editing by Dan Whitcomb
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Exclusive: Fed’s Neel Kashkari opposes rate hikes at least through 2023 as the central bank becomes more hawkish | Air crash | March 2021 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Battulga Khaltmaa is sworn in as the new President of Mongolia following his victory in the second round presidential election on 7 July. | Mongolia's new President Khaltmaa Battulga speaks during the inauguration ceremony in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, July 10, 2017. (Xinhua/Asigang)
ULAN BATOR, July 10 (Xinhua) -- Khaltmaa Battulga of the Mongolian Democratic Party was officially inaugurated here as president of the country on Monday.
The inauguration, held at the State Palace, was attended by Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat, Chairman of the Constitutional Court Jugnee Amarsanaa, parliament and government members, among others.
Taking the oath, Battulga pledged to respect and protect the rights and freedom of Mongolian citizens, "observe and protect the Constitution of Mongolia, protect sovereignty and independence, security and integrity of the state, and truly serve the people."
Aiming at reducing poverty, Battulga said he will restore the economy, develop the industrial sphere and ensure ecological balance.
The new president said he will also "expand friendly relations with China and Russia in all spheres" before receiving the seal from outgoing President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj.
The inauguration came three days after the General Election Commission announced that Battulga won the election Friday against Miyegombo Enkhbold of the Mongolian People's Party, with 50.6 percent of the vote in the runoff.
The Mongolian president serves a four-year term and can be re-elected only once. Weekly choices of Xinhua photo | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | July 2017 | ['(Sina English)'] |
Contributions from Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland allow the World Bank to cancel $36 million in Haiti's remaining debt following January's devastating earthquake. | WASHINGTON, May 28 (Reuters) - The World Bank said on Friday it has written off $36 million of Haiti’s remaining debts to the lender with the help of contributions from 13 countries.
With the decision, Haiti has nothing further to pay to the World Bank, the institution said. The debt was owed to the World Bank’s fund for its poorest borrowers, the International Development Association, or IDA.
Canceling the debt will free up funds -- which would have been spent on servicing the IDA debt -- for rebuilding after Haiti’s devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
The Bank said funding to write off the debt was received from Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
“Relieving Haiti’s remaining debt is part of our effort to pursue every avenue to help Haiti’s reconstruction efforts,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick said.
Since the earthquake, the World Bank has committed $479 million in grants for Haiti’s recovery through June 2011. It is also supervising an international donor fund for Haiti through which contributions will be funneled.
Global institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund last year wrote off $1.2 billion of Haiti’s debts. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by James Dalgleish and Jeffrey Benkoe)
| Financial Aid | May 2010 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(The New York Times)', '(Reuters)', '(CNN)'] |
39 people are killed in Iraq in attacks against Shiites Muslims. | KARBALA: Attacks mostly against Shiites, including the suicide bombing of a religious procession, killed 44 people in Iraq Thursday despite massive security for one of the holiest days of their faith.The bloodshed came as a flood of worshippers, including tens of thousands of foreign pilgrims, thronged the central shrine city of Karbala for the climax of Ashura, braving repeated attacks by Sunni militants that have marred the festival in previous years.The suicide bomber, disguised in police uniform, struck in a Shiite-majority area of confessionally mixed Diyala province, north of Baghdad, killing 32 people and wounding 80, security and medical officials said.It was the third attack of the day targeting Shiites.Earlier, coordinated blasts in Hafriyah south of the capital killed nine people, while twin bombings in the northern oil city of Kirkuk wounded five.Violence near Baghdad and in Diyala's provincial capital Baquba left three others dead.Shiites from Iraq and around the world mark Ashura, which this year climaxed on Thursday, by setting up procession tents where pilgrims gather and food is distributed to passers-by.An estimated two million faithful gathered in Karbala, site of the mausoleum of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, whose death in the city at the hands of soldiers of the caliph Yazid in 680 AD lies at the heart of Islam's sectarian divide.Tradition holds that the venerated imam was decapitated and his body mutilated.To commemorate the occasion, modern-day Shiite devotees flood Hussein's mausoleum, demonstrating their ritual guilt and remorse for not defending him by beating their heads and chests.In some cases they make incisions on their scalps with swords in ritual acts of self-flagellation.Black-clad pilgrims packed the shrines of Hussein and his half-brother Abbas, listening over loudspeakers to the story of the battle in which Hussein was killed, as volunteers distributed food and water."I have been coming since I was young, every year, even during the time of the tyrant Saddam," said Abu Ali, a 35-year-old pilgrim from the southern port city of Basra, referring to the rule of the now-executed Sunni Arab dictator who savagely repressed Iraq's Shiite majority community.Saddam Hussein barred the vast majority of Ashura commemorations, and the associated Arbaeen rituals, until his overthrow in the US-led invasion of 2003."I challenge anyone not to cry," the worshipper said, describing his emotions on taking part in Ashura ceremonies.The commemorations, which also included a ritual run to Hussein's mausoleum and a reenactment of the attack that killed him, wrapped up in the early afternoon.Provincial authorities expect two million pilgrims, including 200,000 from outside Iraq, will have visited Karbala in the 10 days leading up to Ashura, with all of the city's hotels fully booked.Shiites make up about 15 percent of Muslims worldwide. They are a majority in Iraq, Iran and Bahrain, and there are large Shiite communities in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen.Sunni militants linked to Al-Qaeda, who regard Shiites as apostates, often target them more during Ashura and Arbaeen, including by attacking pilgrims.Security measures have been boosted, with more than 35,000 soldiers and police deployed to Karbala and surrounding areas.Concentric security perimeters barred vehicles from entering the city, while helicopters flew overhead.The violence against Shiites is the latest in Iraq's deadliest unrest since 2008.It has prompted Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, to appeal to the United States for help in the form of intelligence sharing and new weapons systems.Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu offered Ankara's assistance during a recent visit to Baghdad.
| Armed Conflict | November 2013 | ['(Daily Star)'] |
Libyan fisherman discover the bodies of 28 migrants in a broken–down boat off the coast of Sabratha. | TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan fishermen found the bodies of 28 migrants who appeared to have died of thirst and hunger after their boat broke down off the coast of Sabratha city, a ministry of interior official said on Tuesday.
Since Libya fell into chaos after Muammar Gaddafi’s fall in 2011, the North African country has become the main departure point for migrants hoping to reach Europe by sea. More than 150,000 have made the crossing to Italy annually over the past three years.
The 28 migrants, including four women, were found after sunset by the fishermen, who towed the vessel to shore, Interior Ministry security unit commander Ahmaida Khalifa Amsalam told Reuters. The victims were buried together in a cemetery for illegal migrants, he said.
“Their boat stopped in the middle of the water because the engine was broken,” he said. He did not give details on any of the nationalities, but many illegal migrants are from sub-Saharan Africa.
Smugglers often pack migrants in flimsy inflatable dinghies, dispatching them to sea to get picked up by rescue ships and other vessels once they reach international waters. Some are intercepted and turned back by the Libyan coastguard.
U.N. Libya envoy Martin Kobler sharply criticized conditions in Libyan refugee camps in an interview with German broadcaster Bayerischen Rundfunk.
“The camps are in terrible condition. Women are being sexually abused, people are crowded together in small buildings and are being kept like animals. These are intolerable conditions that must be changed,” he said.
Kobler said it was important to improve conditions in the camps, but the biggest priority should be to address the underlying reasons for the migration flows.
The U.N. migration agency last week reported that growing numbers of African migrants passing through Libya are traded in what they call slave markets before being held for ransom, forced labour or sexual exploitation.
Libya is the main gateway for migrants attempting to reach Europe by sea, with more than 150,000 people making the crossing in each of the past three years.
So far this year, an estimated 26,886 migrants have crossed to Italy, over 7,000 more than during the same period in 2016. More than 600 are known to have died at sea, while an unknown number perish during their journey north through the desert.
The German foreign ministry concluded in January that African migrants face executions, torture and other systematic rights abuses in camps in Libya, according to media reports.
| Shipwreck | April 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga is sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, after Lubanga's conviction of recruiting and using child soldiers and other human rights violations during the Ituri conflict on March 14. | Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga has been sentenced to 14 years in jail for recruiting and using child soldiers in his rebel army in 2002 and 2003.
Taking into account time in custody, he will now serve a further eight years.
In March, he became the first person to be convicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it was set up 10 years ago.
The conflict between ethnic groups in Ituri, north-eastern DR Congo, is estimated to have killed 60,000 people.
Lubanga led the Union of Congolese Patriots, an ethnic Hema militia which was active in the war that started in the Ituri region and its main town of Bunia in 1999.
This was a local conflict within the wider DR Congo war, which left an estimated five million people dead - mostly from hunger and disease.
The Lubanga case is closely related to the current fighting in DR Congo, where forces loyal to Gen Bosco Ntaganda are threatening the main eastern city of Goma.
Gen Ntaganda is accused of the same crimes as his erstwhile ally Lubanga and his M23 group resumed its rebellion shortly after Lubanga was convicted, amid mounting calls for Gen Ntaganda to be arrested.
During the trial, the court heard how Lubanga would go to people's homes and ask them to donate something for the war effort. He would ask for cash, a cow, or for a child to fight for his rebel army.
The court also saw video footage of Lubanga at a training camp, galvanising children as young as 10. Another video showed young children working as bodyguards.
Lubanga was arrested in March 2005 by UN peacekeepers, along with other militiamen.
He showed no emotion as he was sentenced.
He cried as he was transferred to The Hague in March 2006.
Judge Adrian Fulford praised the former warlord for his conduct and co-operation throughout the trial, the BBC's Anna Holligan in The Hague says.
But he was highly critical of the former prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, she says, accusing him of making errors, failing to submit evidence to support his claims and allowing his staff to give misleading statements to the press. He was also critical of the way he had used witnesses.
During the trial, the court heard from former child soldiers, including one who had been sent into battle. When he came face to face with Lubanga in the dock, he crumbled and was unable to present his evidence.
In June, Mr Moreno-Ocampo said he was asking for a "severe sentence" of 30 years.
He said the prosecution was requesting a sentence "in the name of each child recruited, in the name of the Ituri region".
Speaking outside court, the victims' legal representative, Franck Mulenda, said he was satisfied with the sentence.
"There's a sort of public revenge, revenge of justice, because the victims couldn't have revenge on their own," he said.
But the question of compensation still needed to be resolved, he added.
Mike Davis, from the human rights organisation Global Witness, said that the sentencing of Lubanga was an "important development" but that it sounded like "a rather low sentence in relation to the crimes that he committed".
Congolese government spokesman Lambert Mende agreed that he should have been jailed for longer but said it was a "positive signal" for peace in the region.
"It's useful in teaching those who, after Lubanga, still play at being untouchable warlords," he said, reports the AFP news agency.
But Lubanga's sister, Angele Zasi, said he was innocent and did not deserve the 14-year sentence.
"Everything that has happened in the Ituri province hasn't been caused by Thomas Lubanga only," she told BBC Afrique. "On the contrary, he saved the people of Ituri. The international community knows the reality but they don't want to be fair." Both sides now have 30 days to appeal.
. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | July 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Belgian prosecutors admit that a 2-year-old child was killed by police during a high-speed chase with a van last week, after initially denying it. | Prosecutors confirm child found dead after police opened fire on van carrying refugees was killed by a gunshot wound
Last modified on Thu 15 Oct 2020 14.23 BST
The authorities in Belgium have admitted that a two-year-old girl who died after police opened fire on a van carrying migrants near Mons on Thursday was shot in the face.
Prosecutors had initially denied the account given to the Guardian by relatives of the girl, called Mawda, suggesting instead that she had been taken ill or died as a result of erratic driving. The child was killed after a police patrol followed and intercepted a van containing 26 adults and four children, including Mawda, on a highway near the city of Mons in the early hours of Thursday morning. She was travelling with her Kurdish-Iraqi parents and three-year-old brother. A source told the Guardian that police opened fire in an effort to stop the vehicle, which was being driven by alleged people smugglers to a lorry park on the coast. From there, the refugees were to be smuggled onboard lorries destined for the UK. However, a source had told the Guardian that police opened fire on the van in an effort to force it to stop. A bullet is alleged to have penetrated the vehicle and hit the girl in the cheek. Following the gunfire, it is understood that officers surrounded the vehicle in a 45-minute standoff as they assessed the situation. Upon opening the doors of the van, the child’s mother screamed for help. An ambulance was called and took the child to a Mons hospital, where she was pronounced dead. It is believed, however, that Mawda died at the scene. Frédéric Bariseau, a spokesman for the Tournai prosecutor’s office, confirmed on Friday afternoon that Mawda died as a result of a gunshot injury, but said he could not confirm the provenance of the bullet. “The autopsy determined that the cause of death was a bullet that entered the cheek,” said Bariseau. “I want to be careful about saying that the bullet could be of police origin. We have to assess the evidence.
“Police have opened an internal investigation to determine the circumstances of the girl’s death.”
In a statement released on Thursday, Bariseau had denied reports that the girl had been shot. “The little girl did not die as a result of police gunfire,” he said, suggesting several possible causes including illness, an accident inside the van caused by the driver’s behaviour, or a blow to the head.
Jan Jambon, Belgium’s interior minister, wrote on Twitter: “[a] tragic event with dramatic consequences. The investigation is ongoing.”
A source close to the family told the Guardian: “The family are worried that their daughter’s death will be covered up with no one being held to account. They have been told by the authorities that Mawda will be buried on Tuesday.
“Her family have been placed in accommodation in Belgium. However, they have been told that they have to decide whether they are seeking asylum in Belgium. They have until tomorrow to make up their minds, failing which they have to leave and might possibly be deported back to Germany, but this is unclear. “Either way, authorities have stated that once they have ‘legally settled in a country’ they can claim Mawda’s body and have it transferred.”
The source alleged that the family had previously been smuggled to the UK but was deported to Germany last year by UK authorities since Mawda was born there, and is therefore a German national.
Zakia Khattabi, co-leader of the Belgian Green party, Mawda’s death was the result of an “increasingly repressive” migration policy. “I want to extend our sympathy to the victim and the victim’s family,” she said. “But after emotion comes anger. We demand that the spotlight is put on this case and that political responsibilities are taken.”
Belgium’s federal government has been criticised for its increasingly tough stance on migrants. Theo Francken, the country’s immigration minister, said last year that Europe must turn back boats carrying would-be migrants across the Mediterranean. “Taking a ticket on a smuggler boat does not give you free entrance into the European continent,” said Francken, a member of the Flemish separatist N-VA, the largest party in the governing coalition. Earlier this year, Francken drew criticism for deporting Sudanese migrants, several of whom later said they were tortured after being returned home. | Famous Person - Death | May 2018 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Voters in Belize go to the polls with the United Democratic Party led by Dean Barrow hoping for a third consecutive term. | Last updated on: November 05, 2015 8:14 AM
Belizean Prime Minister Dean Barrow won a record third term in a snap general election in the tiny English-speaking Central American country on Wednesday, after his party gained a clear majority in parliament.
Barrow, a 64-year-old lawyer, called the vote in late September more than a year ahead of schedule amid signs his political opponents were regrouping and fears generous Venezuelan aid crucial to his budget may be at risk.
With official results announced from 29 of the country's 31 constituencies, Barrow's United Democratic Party (UDP) won 19 while the main opposition People's United Party (PUP) had taken 10, election official Jennevieve Gladden said.
"It is a magnificent victory," Barrow said as he addressed party supporters in Belize City, who roared their approval. "The magnitude of this victory still hasn't properly set in."
Many voters in the country of about 350,000 people, which faces a push by neighboring Guatemala to absorb a large area of its territory, voiced apathy, seeing little scope for change whichever of the two main parties wins.
Some hoped the upstart Belize Progressive Party, which also fielded candidates, would win some seats in the national assembly.
"I'm for change. We need better people ... Both of the two major parties are corrupt," said retired teacher Lorraine Gomez, her index finger stained with purple ink after voting. Belize's $1.6 billion economy is highly dependent on tourism, as well as agricultural exports like sugar and bananas.
It also relies heavily on PetroCaribe, a Venezuelan aid program that offers fuel at discounted prices.
Since 2012, Barrow has plowed the best part of 300 million Belize dollars ($151.52 million) in Venezuelan aid into infrastructure projects including 150 new paved roads in Belize City, the country's commercial hub.
Venezuela's economic woes and the prospect of the opposition winning parliamentary elections there in December are stirring concerns that the aid to Belize could end.
"There are looming crises facing the Belizean nation and people. The PetroCaribe monies are drying up, the banking system is in trouble," PUP leader Francis Fonseca, 48, a two-time former cabinet minister and Barrow's main rival for the top job, said before the vote.
A longstanding territorial dispute with neighboring Guatemala that Guatemalan President-elect Jimmy Morales revived during his successful campaign will also face Belize's next government.
Morales, a comedian who swept to power last month as an anti-corruption crusader, pledged to win back portions of Belize that a previous Guatemalan government argued it lawfully inherited from Spain's colonial holdings centuries ago.
"We will not be bullied and Mr. Morales needs to learn that right quick," said Barrow, whose UDP is hoping to add to the 19 seats it holds in the 31-member national assembly. | Government Job change - Election | November 2015 | ['(Voice of America)'] |
In football, Real Madrid defeats Juventus 4–1. The Spanish team becomes the first to win back-to-back titles since the competition became known as the Champions League, and to win their 12th title in the competition. | CARDIFF (Reuters) - Cristiano Ronaldo scored twice as Real Madrid beat Juventus 4-1 in a memorable Champions League final full of attacking verve and brilliant goals on Saturday as the Spaniards won the title for the third time in four years and 12th in all.
Real Madrid fans celebrate team's Champions League win
00:58
Portugal forward Ronaldo hit Real’s first and third goals to become only the second man to score in three European Cup finals and take his career goal tally to 600 for club and country.
Few of those will have matched Mario Mandzukic’s spectacular overhead equaliser for Juventus, which was eventually in vain for the Italian side who had the best of the first half before being swept aside in the second.
A long-range deflected effort by Casemiro and a neat finish by the irrepressible Ronaldo within four minutes effectively settled one of the most entertaining finals for years, with a late tap-in by substitute Marco Asensio adding the gloss.
The victory means Real are the first team to successfully defend the trophy in the Champions League era. AC Milan were the last team to retain Europe’s top prize when they triumphed in 1989 and 1990.
“It’s been a spectacular year, you couldn’t dream of anything better,” said Real coach Zinedine Zidane.
“We won the (Spanish) league on the very last day. It’s very difficult to reach the Champions League final two years running, but we did that.”
“The first half was difficult, but in the second we were quickly superior. We pressed a lot more and physically we won the game there too, so I’m very happy.”
It was heartbreak again for Juve, however, who were seeking a treble after winning the Italian league and cup. They came away as losers for the seventh time in nine European Cup finals having also lost to Barcelona in 2015.
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The Italians let in more goals on Saturday than the three they had conceded in the 12 games they played to reach the final as a much-vaunted Real attack versus Juve defense scenario went emphatically in Madrid’s favor.
Juventus looked the more adventurous side in the first 20 minutes but it was Real who struck first after the sort of trigonometric build-up that coaches write books about.
Ronaldo was at the heart of it, playing the ball into the path of Dani Carvajal who cut it straight back to allow the Portuguese forward to sweep the ball sweetly into the far corner.
That made Ronaldo the second man to score in three finals, after Alfredo Di Stefano, who netted in five in a row for Real in the 1950s.
Ronaldo’s effort was eclipsed seven minutes later by one of the all-time great final goals.
Juve center back Leonardo Bonucci drove a long diagonal ball which Alex Sandro reached and cushioned back across the box.
With another volley Gonzalo Higuain knocked it to Croatia striker Mandzukic, who took a touch on his chest and, with his back to goal, struck a stunning bicycle kick that looped over Real keeper Keylor Navas.
The ball did not touch the ground between leaving Bonucci’s boot and hitting the net.
The Juventus fans in the 72,000 crowd erupted, ramping up the atmosphere that was already crackling under the closed stadium roof.
It was a different story after the break, however, and though Juve’s drilled defense initially kept Real at arm’s length, they were undone by a two-goal salvo.
Casemiro made it 2-1 after 61 minutes when his deflected long-range wrong-footed veteran keeper Gianluigi Buffon - who has now lost in three finals - and Ronaldo swept in the third at the near post after a great run and cross by Luka Modric.
Juventus then wilted and finished with 10 men after Juan Cuadrado was sent off in the 84th minute – 18 minutes after coming on as a substitute – following a second booking for the mildest of pushes on defender Sergio Ramos, whose theatrics left a sour taste on an otherwise uplifting occasion.
Asensio tucked in the fourth goal after Marcelo had charged to the byline and Real’s dominance was complete.
“Again, I’ve had an amazing season,” said Ronaldo. “Me and my team mates have done the double. The numbers don’t lie. I’m very happy – an amazing season, we’ve won trophies.
“This is one of the best moments of my career – I have the chance to say this every year.”
After a positive start it turned into a hugely frustrating night for Juventus and their coach Max Allegri.
“My only criticism of my team is that after the second goal we should have found a solution to stay in the game,” he said.
“But Real Madrid have important players and when they have a player who wins the Ballon d’Or (Ronaldo) it’s a huge advantage.”
Editing by Ed Osmond and Ken Ferris
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Exclusive: Fed’s Neel Kashkari opposes rate hikes at least through 2023 as the central bank becomes more hawkish | Sports Competition | June 2017 | ['(FC Yahoo)', '(Reuters)'] |
A German couple is jailed for twelve years each for selling the woman's son to a Spanish pedophile on the dark web, who repeatedly abused him. The couple themselves previously abused the boy and a three-year-old girl, whom they are ordered to pay €42,500 in compensation. The Spaniard is sentenced to ten years. | A woman who sold her son to paedophiles on the dark net has been jailed for 12 years and six months by a court in southern Germany.
The Freiburg court also jailed her partner, the boy's stepfather, for 12 years. The boy was nine when the trial began in June.
The German nationals, 48 and 39 years old, had sexually abused the boy themselves for at least two years. The dark net is an internet area beyond the reach of mainstream search engines.
On Monday, the court jailed a Spanish man for 10 years for sexually abusing the boy repeatedly. Five other men have also been prosecuted in connection with the abuse.
The couple were found guilty of rape, aggravated sexual assault of children, forced prostitution and distribution of child pornography.
The boy is now living with foster parents.
The couple must now pay €42,500 (£38,000; $49,200) in damages to the boy and to a three-year-old girl, who was also abused by them.
What happened to the boy, who is now aged 10, shocked even experienced investigators, reports the BBC's Jenny Hill in Berlin.
Prosecutors say the boy was subjected to more than 60 serious sex attacks, many of which were filmed. The case has horrified Germany, not least because the authorities - who knew that the mother's partner was a convicted paedophile - missed opportunities to rescue the boy, our correspondent says.
On Tuesday the judge told the boy's mother that she had carried out one of the most brutal sexual attacks. The trial has also raised concerns that officials might sometimes wrongly presume that a woman is incapable of abusing her own child. German media report that child welfare authorities in Baden-Württemberg state have been heavily criticised for failing to stop the couple's abuse.
The boy had been removed from the couple temporarily by social workers, but was then handed back to them.
Spiegel news website reports that welfare officers had not exchanged information about the case that could have led them to the couple's crimes.
According to case psychiatrist Hartmut Pleines, quoted by Spiegel, the mother's claim that she was in thrall to her partner when she committed the abuse was false. She did not explain her actions, but her partner did speak a lot in court during the two-month trial, Spiegel reported.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | August 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
A fire was set in the stairway of a gay nightclub in Seattle on New Year's Eve which was quickly extinguished. An empty gasoline container was found at the top of the stairway. | A New Year’s Eve celebration at a crowded Seattle gay bar went terrifyingly awry after an unknown suspect allegedly set fire to the venue shortly after midnight. As King 5 News is reporting, a staircase at Neighbours in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood was doused in gasoline and set aflame, bringing a popular New Year’s Eve drag show to an immediate halt. The fire was extinguished after nearly 700 revelers were evacuated to a nearby alley and no injuries were reported in the blaze, but Neighbours patrons and staff were nonetheless left shaken by the incident. “It’s not just a bar or just a nightclub,” Social Outreach Seattle founder Shaun Knittel, who was at the club on Dec. 31, told KOMO News. “And whoever these jerks are there’s going to be a good number that makes sure they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Local drag performer Aleksa Manila posted the following image to her Instagram account following the incident:
A post shared by aLeKsA MaNiLa (@aleksamanila) on Jan 1, 2014 at 3:03am PST
“Nothing’s gonna stop us from celebrating diversity & providing a safe space for everyone,” Aleksa wrote. A security guard later found an empty gasoline can at the top of the stairway, The Seattle Times is reporting. Although the motive for the fire was no immediately clear, investigators and other officials say the possibility of the fire having been a hate crime has been raised. “This could potentially have been much worse,” Seattle Fire Department spokesman Kyle Moore told the Times. “You have an establishment full of patrons and an intentionally set fire. That’s a very dangerous situation.” | Fire | December 2013 | ['(Huffington Post)'] |
French police launch a terror investigation into a racist attack on Sunday, in which two Muslim women were repeatedly stabbed near the Eiffel Tower while the perpetrators, believed to be two other women, shouted racial slurs at the victims. The attack came as tensions mount over the murder of Samuel Paty. | Two Muslim women were left injured after being stabbed near Paris’ Eiffel Tower by two white female assailants, local media reported on Thursday.
The attack took place amid heightened tension after French President Emmanuel Macron said in an Oct. 2 speech that Islam was “in crisis,” a claim critics charged would fuel Islamophobia.
As reported by franceinfo and other outlets, the incident happened on Sunday under the iconic landmark as the Muslim women were out for a walk, when a dog ran up and frightened their children.
When the Muslim women asked the dog’s owners described as white women “of European appearance” to put it on a leash, they refused, and instead shouted insults such as “Dirty Arab!” and “Go home!”
They then pulled out a knife, slashing one of the Muslim women three separate times on the skull, on the rib, and on the upper arm, and delivering six stabs to the other woman.
The attack was halted by vendors working at the foot of the tower.
The victims of the attack identified as Kenza, 49, and Amel, her cousin, both of Algerian origin suffered a punctured lung and other wounds.
Police arrested one of the assailants immediately and the second on Tuesday. Paris prosecutors on Wednesday opened an investigation into attempted murder and assault with a weapon, according to the reports.
| Armed Conflict | October 2020 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(Euro Weekly News)', '(National Turk)'] |
Britain's Lewis Hamilton wins the 2014 Formula One world title after finishing first in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. | Last updated on 23 November 201423 November 2014.From the section Formula 1
Lewis Hamilton clinched his second drivers' World Championship with a comfortable victory in the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The 2008 champion became only the fourth Briton to win two world titles.
Hamilton, second in qualifying, took the lead at the start and controlled the race, as Mercedes team-mate and title rival Nico Rosberg suffered car trouble and finished 14th.
"This is the greatest day of my life," the 29 year-old said.
"2008 was a great year in my life. The feeling I have now is way, way past that. The greatest feeling ever."
Hamilton moves level with Britons Jim Clark and Graham Hill on two titles, and is one behind Sir Jackie Stewart.
He joins a number of other drivers on two titles, including his great contemporary rival Fernando Alonso. Michael Schumacher is the all-time record holder with seven, while the most successful current driver is Sebastian Vettel on four.
Rosberg, who started on pole, was left struggling by the failure of his hybrid system. With two laps to go, he was told to retire by his engineers at Mercedes but said: "I would like to go to the end."
As Hamilton crossed the line, Prince Harry, attending the race, took to the team radio to say: "Lewis, well done for not making the British public sweat. You are an absolute legend."
Hamilton stood on his car to celebrate after he returned to the pits and then went over to embrace girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger and his family, who had flown in for the race day to support him.
The Englishman's win was his 11th of the season, compared to Rosberg's five, and he finished 67 points clear at the top of the title standings. It was the 33rd win of Hamilton's career, moving him clear of his great rival Fernando Alonso into fifth in the all-time list.
Rosberg, who entered the race needing to win and hope Hamilton finished lower than second in order to win the title, was never in the position he needed to overhaul his rival.
While Hamilton made a perfect start to the day-night race under the setting sun at the impressive Yas Marina circuit, Rosberg's Mercedes bogged down and the Briton was into the lead well before braking for the first corner.
Hamilton completed the first lap 1.2 seconds in front, and inched clear until he was 2.7 seconds in front by the time he made his first pit stop on lap 10, always giving the impression of being in control.
The gap stayed at about that margin until lap 23, about half-distance, when Rosberg suffered a failure of the energy recovery system on his Mercedes.
From then on, it was a matter of damage limitation for Rosberg, who asked his team to tell him what he needed to do to finish in the top five - the result that would give him the title should Hamilton retire.
"How's it looking, to be in the position I need if Lewis has a problem?" Rosberg asked after about 34 laps.
"It's not looking good, Nico," his engineer Tony Ross told him.
"What the hell does that mean?" Rosberg replied plaintively. "What times do I need to do?"
"Just drive flat out," he was told.
But lacking 160bhp for 33 seconds of the lap, Rosberg was helpless as he slipped down the field, battling problems with his brakes, which were put under extra strain as a result of his problems.
When Rosberg hit trouble, Mercedes put Hamilton's car into conservative settings and the tension he was feeling as he neared his goal became apparent when he said: "Please don't turn up the car - I am comfortable. I can go faster if I need to."
Williams took a shot at beating Hamilton to the race win by putting second-placed Felipe Massa on to super-soft tyres for a short final stint at his final stop with 12 laps to go.
Massa closed to within nine seconds of Hamilton with eight laps to go and kept reducing the gap but Hamilton controlled his pace to ensure he had plenty of margin in hand to keep Massa at bay.
Williams took a double podium with Valtteri Bottas taking third, ahead of Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo, who drove brilliantly to take fourth after starting from the pit lane because both Red Bulls were found to be illegal after qualifying.
Jenson Button took fifth for McLaren in what could be the final race of an illustrious career - the team have yet to choose whether Button or team-mate Kevin Magnussen will partner Fernando Alonso, who is moving from Ferrari, in 2015.
The Force India team used an inverted tyre strategy to take a strong sixth and seventh with Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez.
Ricciardo's team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who also started from the pit lane, was eighth.
Alonso, in his last race for Ferrari took ninth, ahead of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen and Magnussen. | Sports Competition | November 2014 | ['(BBC Sport)'] |
Thailand's government lifts a state of emergency in 3 provinces; it remains in 16 others, including Bangkok. | Updated: Jul 21, 2010 00:41
BANGKOK: Thailand’s government said on Tuesday it was lifting a state of emergency in three provinces but it would remain in force in 16 others, including Bangkok, to help the authorities cope with the aftermath of recent unrest.
Ninety people were killed and almost 2,000 wounded in clashes in central Bangkok in April and May between protesters demanding an early election and security forces. “The lifting is because there’s no movement or any sign that could lead to unrest, and the government has adequate security forces to maintain a peaceful situation,” deputy government spokesman Supachai Jaisamut said after a Cabinet meeting.
“The government continues to impose the state of emergency in 16 provinces because there is some movement there,” he told reporters. The state of emergency bans political gatherings of more than five people and allows the government to censor the media. It also gives broad powers to the security forces, including the right to detain suspects without charge.
The government lifted it in five provinces on July 6 when the initial period came to an end, but extended it for another three months in other areas covering a quarter of the country, saying anti-government elements still posed a threat.
The protesters, mostly poorer Thais who back ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, were forced to quit their camp in the capital in a military crackdown on May 19, after which some rioted and committed arson.
That instability raised fears about the economy, but the damage was not as bad as expected.
Central Bank Governor Tarisa Watanagase said on Tuesday that even tourism, badly hit in April and May, had recovered quickly and was no longer such a big concern for the economy.
“Consumption and investment have now recovered and private sector investment, in particular, is back to the pre-crisis level,” she added.
Tuesday’s removal of the emergency covered one province in the north and two in the northeast of the country.
| Government Policy Changes | July 2010 | ['(Arab News)', '(Aljazeera)'] |
A roadside bomb in Kunduz Province kills 15 civilians and injures two others. | Officials say families were on their way to a wedding party when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
At least 15 Afghan civilians, including six women and eight children, were killed when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Afghanistan‘s northern Kunduz province.
Mahbubullah Sayedi, district chief of Imam Sahib, which was the scene of heavy fighting between government forces and Taliban fighters in recent months, said the incident occurred on a main road.
“The families were on their way to a wedding ceremony when, unfortunately, their vehicle hit a roadside bomb that killed them,” Sayedi said. The provincial governor, Abdul Jabar Naeemi, said the area where the incident happened is controlled by the Taliban, whom he blamed for the tragedy.
Elsewhere in the country, local media reported at least 13 civilians were wounded in a car bomb explosionin Sar-e-Pul province. Quoting Noor Agha Faizi, spokesman for the Sar-e-Pul police,TOLO Newssaid the explosion took place as the “Taliban were trying to move a car full of explosives to the centre of the province.”
As the conflict between the foreign-backed Afghan government forces and Taliban fighters has dragged on for more than 18 years, civilians continue to bear the brunt of war with record numbers of casualties.
At least 3,812 civilians were killed and wounded in the first half of this year in violent incidents across the country. In the same period, 144 women and 327 children were killed and more than 1,000 more wounded, the UN said.
Pro-government forces killed 717 Afghans and wounded 680 in the six months to June 30 a 31 percent increase from 2018.
| Armed Conflict | November 2019 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(VOA)'] |
Denny Hamlin wins the 2016 Daytona 500 by 0.011 seconds, the closest margin in the history of the race, and the 13th–closest in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series history. | DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Denny Hamlin made a daring late-race pass, moving from fourth to first in the final two turns to beat Martin Truex Jr. to the checkered flag by 0.010 seconds (or about a foot) to win the Daytona 500. It's the closest finish in the 58-year history of the historic race.
The four Joe Gibbs Racing cars, plus the affiliate car of Truex, were the class of the field throughout Sunday's race. Hamlin led the most laps, but had ceded the lead to teammate Matt Kenseth, who led the field for 40-straight laps. Kenseth seemingly had it won, as no one could muster up enough speed to make a pass in the outside lane. He paced the field down the backstretch on the final lap. That's when Hamlin made his move.
After sitting in line as the laps ticked off, Hamlin moved to the outside in front of Kevin Harvick. Hamlin passed teammate Kyle Busch for third as the field entered Turn 3.
As Kenseth went up to block, Hamlin darted to the middle. Kenseth's car started to slide but he saved it, leaving Hamlin and Truex to battle for the win. Truex looked to have the advantage as the two headed to the tri-oval but Hamlin inched ahead at the finish line.
"I felt like I had enough momentum to keep him behind me," Truex explained. "I did all the way up until that last couple feet. He just shot out that last couple inches on me right before the line.
"Wish I would have crowded him up the track a little bit more late down the frontstretch. Those are split‑second decisions. He came out on the right end of it today."
As video of the finish played on a screen next to him, Truex added, "Just going to have to watch that on the highlight reel for the rest of my life. So it hurts a little."
It's Toyota's first Daytona 500 win and it comes on the heels of the manufacturer's first Sprint Cup title. Busch won the 2015 championship. It's also the first Daytona 500 for Joe Gibbs Racing since Dale Jarrett won in 1993.
Before Hamlin's incredible final mile, drivers leading the race weren't especially vulnerable. His pass for the win was just the fourth pass for the lead that didn't happen under yellow or as a product of green flag pit stops.
Hamlin (95), Truex (2), Busch (19) and Kenseth (40) combined to lead 156 of the race's 200 laps. No other team or manufacturer could come close.
The prevailing thought entering the race was that Hendrick Motorsports would provided the best competition for the Toyota cars. They did, though two Hendrick cars found trouble exiting turn 4 in very similar circumstances.
Chase Elliott crashed first, as he lost the car exiting the corner on lap 20 and spun into the infield. Elliott didn't make contact with anything but the splitter of his car dug into the grass and ripped the front bumper off.
Then Dale Earnhardt Jr. spun in a similar position on lap 171. But unlike Elliott, he hit the wall and crushed the front end of his car. Junior led 15 laps before he crashed and finished 36th.
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Trailing by as many as 25, the Clippers got a boost from Staples Center's first capacity crowd of the year to rally and reach the West finals.
Only the low 60 players and ties earn weekend tee times at America's national championship.
Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman, stars of Saturday Night Live when the show was in its infancy, appeared on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen Thursday, where they spoke about the fight between Bill Murray and Chevy Chase in 1978. After leaving the show, Chase had returned to host. Murray and Chase exchanged some deeply hurtful words following dress rehearsal, which soon resulted in a physical altercation just minutes before Chase took the stage to deliver the monologue. “I think Jane and I, and Gilda both witnessed it,” Newman said. “But, ya know, it was very sad and painful and awful.” “It was that sad kind of tension that you would get in a family,” Curtin added, “and everybody goes to their corners because they don't want to have to deal with the tension, and it was uncomfortable. You could understand, you know, there were these two bull mooses (sic) going at each other, so the testosterone was surging and stuff happens.”
Dallas Mavericks hell week continues; coach Rick Carlisle quits 10 days after saying he wants to return
The Clippers rallied from 25 down to shock the Jazz in Game 6 and advance to the conference finals for the first time in franchise history.
In a clip from the series “Covid and the Vaccine: Truth, Lies and Misconceptions Revealed” making the rounds on social media Thursday, the former Utah Jazz guard brags about his supposed expertise on the coronavirus pandemic. Sometimes your hero’s crush your heart…..thank god this mofo meant nothing to me.
Complete tee times and pairings for Saturday's third round of the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.
Sam Presti wins again.
Montreal's Josh Anderson scored on Vegas goalie Marc-Andre Fleury's misplay, then gets the overtime winner as the Canadiens top the Golden Knights.
From Slovenia, Dallas Mavericks’ Luka Doncic addressed the departure of team president Donnie Nelson.
Jayson Tatum, Marcus Smart and Tristan Thompson gave special shout-outs to Kemba Walker on social media after the Celtics traded the popular point guard Friday.
Here's what fans and analysts are saying about Friday's big trade.
Shohei Ohtani celebrated his appointment to next month's All-Star Home Run Derby in fitting style, connecting twice during the Los Angeles Angels' 11-3 win over the Detroit Tigers on Friday night. Ohtani clubbed his 20th and 21st homers of the season hours after announcing he would take part in MLB’s annual home-run spectacle July 12 at Coors Field in Denver. The first blast from Ohtani was a line drive to right field that was part of the Angels’ three-homer fifth inning.
Mann, the 48th pick in the 2019 draft, had only 25 total points in the first five games of this series. In his 11th start of the season, he helped the Clippers make history.
Seth Curry was a man on a mission to begin the third quarter against the Hawks on Friday night.
A 25-point comeback for the Clippers.
After Suns completed the sweep, Phoenix star Devin Booker tweeted a screenshot of the viral video.
Days after being fired as Pelicans head coach, Stan Van Gundy reacted on Twitter by defending his former players.
When a heated scrum broke out between Islanders and Lightning players at the final horn of Game 2 and New York's Travis Zajac wrestled Tampa Bay's Anthony Cirelli to the ice, it did not feel like these teams didn't face off all season. “I think we are familiar with them from the last playoffs,” Lightning forward Ondrej Palat said. With a few new faces, the Islanders and Lightning picked up their rivalry right where they left off in the 2020 bubble playoffs.
As is normally the case when an All-Star is involved, some have started proposing Kemba Walker deals to the Los Angeles Lakers. | Sports Competition | February 2016 | ['(Yahoo! News)'] |
The UN accuses both the Syrian government and, to a lesser extent, the rebels of war crimes. Out of 9 massacres they investigated, 8 were attributed to the Syrian Army. The remaining massacre was attributed to insurgents. | GENEVA As the United States and Russia searched for a diplomatic solution to the crisis over Syria’s chemical weapons, a four-person United Nations rights panel presented detailed evidence on Wednesday of what it said were war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by pro-government forces and, to a lesser extent, rebels in the 30-month-old conflict.
Bolstered by weapons and money from regional and global powers waging a proxy war, Syria’s government and rebel forces have committed murder, torture, rape and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, without fear of future punishment, the panel, a Commission of Inquiry that was expanded last fall, said in its latest report, to be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council here in Geneva on Monday.
| Armed Conflict | September 2013 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
The Taiwanese foreign ministry unveils a new design to the country's passport cover after claiming that the current design has led foreign governments into mistakenly imposing COVID-19 pandemic-related travel restrictions intended for mainland Chinese citizens on Taiwanese citizens. | Taiwan's passport cover has a new look, as Taiwanese travelers have been mistakenly subjected to the same travel restrictions as citizens of mainland China. Taiwan's official name is the "Republic of China."
Taiwan on Wednesday introduced a redesigned passport cover to avoid confusion with passports from mainland China.
The old design featured Taiwan's official name, "Republic of China," largely written in English above the word "Taiwan."
Taiwan's Foreign Ministry said the passport's design has confused countries into imposing the same coronavirus-related travel restrictions on Taiwanese travelers as on Chinese citizens. Despite its proximity to mainland China, Taiwan has widely contained the virus and has a far lower number of infections.
The new passport design enlarges the word "Taiwan" and features "Republic of China" only in Mandarin characters. The new passports are expected to be issued starting in January.
What is in a name?
Taiwan's foreign minister, Joseph Wu, told reporters that since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Taiwanese have "kept hoping that we can give more prominence to Taiwan's visibility, avoiding people mistakenly thinking they are from China."
China's official name is the "People's Republic of China."
In July, Taiwanese lawmakers also demanded that Taiwan's flagship airline, "China Airlines," be renamed, or redesigned with Taiwanese symbols, to avoid being confused with a Chinese airline.
Beijing has always insisted that self-ruled, democratic Taiwan and mainland China are part of the same country, of which only the Communist Party of China is the sole legitimate ruler.
Although Beijing prevents Taiwan from being recognized diplomatically and participating in international organizations, Taiwanese passport holders enjoy visa-free access to 146 countries.
wmr/sms (Reuters, dpa)
The Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil made the controversial comments during a speech while visiting the self-governed island. The statement was welcomed by Taiwanese lawmakers but will likely anger China further.
More people in Hong Kong say they are ready to emigrate to Taiwan amid Beijing's new draconian security law. Taipei has laid out a welcome mat, but there is uncertainty over how many immigrants will be accepted. | Government Policy Changes | September 2020 | ['(DW)'] |
Former Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia and nationalist politician, Vojislav Šešelj, is acquitted of all nine charges of committing atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia during the early 1990s by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. | Former Serbian deputy PM was charged by ICTY with crimes against humanity and war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia in 1990s
Serb ultranationalist Vojislav Šešelj has been acquitted of all nine charges of committing atrocities by the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The former deputy prime minister of Serbia, 61, who is being treated for cancer, had been accused of recruiting and arming the Serb paramilitaries blamed for carrying out war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia during the early 1990s. The ruling comes less than a week after the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was sentenced to 40 years in prison after being found guilty of genocide over the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica. Šešelj, however, was found to have had no military “hierarchical responsibility” for the volunteers that he encouraged to join the Serb army.
Croatia on Thursday banned Šešelj from entering the country after prime minister Tihomir Orešković labelled the verdict “shameful” during a visit to Vukovar, scene of some of the alleged atrocities, where he laid wreaths in memory of war dead. Šešelj was not at the courtroom in The Hague to hear the verdict. He had repeatedly refused to cooperate with the tribunal, staging a hunger strike, refusing to enter a plea and declining to present a defence. He had been allowed to return to Serbia because of his deteriorating health.
Prosecutors had charged Šešelj, who founded the Serbian Radical party, with three counts of crimes against humanity and six counts of war crimes. The accusations included that he incited torture, murder, forcible deportations and persecution on religious and racial grounds.
Šešelj was alleged to have propagated an inflammatory policy of uniting “all Serbian lands” in a homogeneous Serbian state, which he referred to as greater Serbia.
But the ICTY judgment said the prosecution’s case had been full of “confusion” and that “a lot of the evidence shows that [his] collaboration was aimed at defending the Serbs and the traditionally Serb territories or at preserving Yugoslavia, not at committing the alleged crimes”. In the majority ruling, the ICTY’s presiding judge, Jean-Claude Antonetti, said: “One of the key findings of the [court] was to note that while Vojislav Šešelj may have had a certain amount of moral authority over his party’s volunteers, they were not his subordinates when they were engaged in military operations.“The totality of the evidence substantiates the fact that the purpose of sending volunteers was not to commit crimes, but to support the war effort. “The ... findings do not by any means presume to underestimate, and even less to conceal, the crimes committed in different localities in Croatia and [Bosnia], in which the volunteers deployed by Vojislav Šešelj or his party may have taken part or have been indirectly involved. “The majority [of the judges] simply notes that it is not satisfied that the recruitment and subsequent deployment of volunteers implies that Vojislav Šešelj knew of these crimes on the ground, or that he instructed or endorsed them.” Antonetti continued: “The [court] by a majority ... was unable to find beyond all reasonable doubt that, in calling upon the Serbs to “cleanse” Bosnia ... Vojislav Šešelj was calling for ethnic cleansing of Bosnia’s non-Serbs. “The majority [of judges], in fact, believes that the evidence supplied by the prosecution is not sufficient to exclude the possibility, in view of the context, that in making this appeal, Vojislav Šešelj was rather participating in the war effort by galvanising the Serb forces ... Following this verdict, Vojislav Šešelj is now a free man.”
Welcoming his acquittal, Šešelj praised the UN judges who dismissed the charges. “This time, after all the trials that accused innocent Serbs, who received draconian sentences, two judges appeared who are honourable and fair people,” he said at a press conference in Belgrade.
The judges had “shown that their professionalism and honour are above any political pressure” and brought “the only possible verdict” despite it being an “anti-Serb court”, Seselj said. “The moment I left for The Hague, I knew they could not prove I had committed a single crime.”
His acquittal was criticised by Croatian survivors of the 1991-95 conflict. “This acquittal leaves me speechless,” said Vesna Bosanac, the head of a hospital in Vukovar besieged by pro-Šešelj militia in 1991. “The only thing that awaits him is the judgment of God.”
The verdict is likely to boost the political prospects of Šešelj and his supporters ahead of Serbia’s parliamentary elections next month. The prosecution can appeal against the judgment. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | March 2016 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is taken to hospital with a bladder infection. | The Duke of Edinburgh has been taken to hospital with a bladder infection and will miss the rest of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
Buckingham Palace said Prince Philip, 90, had been taken to the King Edward VII Hospital in London from Windsor Castle as a "precautionary measure". The Queen joined 12,000 others at the Jubilee concert at the palace.
The prince will remain in hospital under observation for a few days.
He had appeared to be in good health when he accompanied the Queen on Sunday on the royal barge the Spirit of Chartwell, which formed part of the rain-drenched Jubilee river pageant.
He and the Queen stood for most of the 80-minute journey, as they were accompanied by 1,000 boats travelling seven miles down the river to Tower Bridge.
The prince, who had treatment for a blocked coronary artery in December and turns 91 on Sunday, missed Monday's concert and will not attend the national service of thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral on Tuesday.
The Queen, dressed in a black cloak, was helped to her seat by Prince Charles at 21:00 BST, when she joined concert-goers an hour-and-a-half into the celebration.
She ended the concert by pressing a diamond-shaped crystal, igniting a beacon in The Mall marking her 60 years on the throne.
Other beacons had earlier been lit across the UK and the Commonwealth.
Robbie Williams - who earlier opened the show with Let Me Entertain You following a firework display and an Armed Forces fanfare - was the first to perform for the Queen when he sang big band classic Mack the Knife.
Other performers included Jessie J, Annie Lennox, Sir Tom Jones, Madness, Stevie Wonder and Sir Cliff Richard - singing a medley of his songs from six different decades.
Comedians including Lee Mack, Rob Brydon, Jimmy Carr and Peter Kay - dressed as a Beefeater - also performed at the event which was broadcast by the BBC.
Performers from around the Commonwealth collaborated on Sing, a piece co-written for the occasion by Gary Barlow and Lord Lloyd Webber.
The concert was brought to a close by Sir Paul McCartney who played hits including Magical Mystery Tour, Let It Be and a spectacular rendition of Live and Let Die, complete with fireworks and explosions.
He was joined on stage at the end by all of the night's performers for The Beatles' Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.
The Queen and other members of the Royal Family also made their way onto the stage where Prince Charles paid tribute to his mother.
"Your majesty, mummy," he began before thanking "all the wonderful people that made tonight possible".
"And if I may say so, your majesty, thank God the weather turned out fine," he added.
"And the reason, of course, is because I didn't do the forecast," he said, referring to his recent foray into weather presenting, in a special BBC broadcast.
"The only sad thing about this evening is that my father couldn't be with us because, unfortunately, he was taken ill but if we shout loud enough he might hear us in hospital," he concluded.
Turning to his mother, he said: "As a nation, this is our opportunity to thank you and my father for always being there for us, inspiring us with your selfless duty and service and for making us proud to be British."
The Queen then lit the final one of 4,500 beacons across the world marking her 60-year reign.
She placed a crystal glass diamond into a special pod, triggering the lighting of the Jubilee beacon in The Mall with its 6m-high flame. In an enclosure at the front of the stage were many invited guests including Emily Lewis, from Barnado's in Cardiff, who brought four children with learning difficulties to see the show.
One of the youngsters, Jenny, said she was most excited about seeing boy band JLS.
"I feel really lucky, I'm enjoying it," she said.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry - who all sang along to songs including Elton John's Crocodile Rock - were in the audience as were politicians including Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
Thousands without tickets watched the concert on The Mall nearby.
Samuel Mellows, 20, from Poole, Dorset, was at the front of The Mall crowd all day - though he was less easy to spot since he took his union jack top hat off so others behind him could see.
"What a way to start the gig with Robbie Williams," he said.
"It was phenomenal. I got goose bumps and they haven't stopped - what a way to celebrate such a wonderful woman."
The St Paul's service was due to be followed by two receptions, a lunch at Westminster Hall and a carriage procession to Buckingham Palace, with a balcony appearance by the Queen and a fly-past.
A palace spokesman said the prince was "understandably, disappointed about missing this evening's Diamond Jubilee Concert and tomorrow's engagements".
Caroline Couzens, 54, a hospice worker from Dorchester in Dorset, was among those on The Mall who heard about the prince falling ill.
She said: "I think people will still enjoy the party but obviously it will put a dampener on things for the royals. It's very sad he won't be there."
Barry Cramner, from Bournemouth, was one of those taking part in a special picnic in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. He told the BBC: "It's a great shame for the Queen and not the way she would have wanted to finish the weekend. Our thoughts go out to her."
Take That star Gary Barlow, who helped organise much of the concert and sang a duet with Cheryl Cole, said the prince's illness was "sad, really sad".
Ahead of the the concert, Sir Paul said: "I hope he's okay."
"We all send our best wishes for a speedy recovery - I hear it's not too bad."
Beacons were lit in Commonwealth countries including Tonga and Australia.
They were ignited at 22:00 local time in the Commonwealth and British overseas territories - those in the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man were be set alight between 22:00 and 22:30 BST.
Beacons were placed on the battlements of the Tower of London, and at St James's Palace, Lambeth Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham, Balmoral and Holyrood House and on Hadrian's Wall.
Fires on the highest peaks of the UK's four nations - Ben Nevis, Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Slieve Donard - were lit up by teams from four charities.
A beacon was also lit at the hotel in Kenya where the Queen was told in 1952 of her father George VI's death.
Ticket-holders for the star-studded Diamond Jubilee concert also attended a picnic at Buckingham Palace.
They entered the palace gardens - where teams of helpers handed out picnic hampers created by celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal and royal chef Mark Flanagan - to the accompaniment of a steel band.
Some 10,000 winners of a public ballot and 2,000 VIPs are at the palace for the picnic and concert.
Thousands of people also watched the concert on big screens in St James's Park, Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. The Diamond Jubilee Concert was shown on BBC big screens in 22 towns and cities throughout the UK. | Famous Person - Sick | June 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
In South Africa, Johannesburg's Labour Court rules that the mining strike of the 30,000 employees of mining company Gold Fields is "unlawful and unprotected" and orders them to go back to work. The National Union of Mineworkers states that it expects its members to obey the ruling (BusinessWeek, SA) | Johannesburg's Labour Court ruled that the industrial action was "unlawful and unprotected," the company said. About 50,000 South African miners have walked out in a dispute over pay, including living allowances, and planned redundancies. The strike started on Wednesday and includes about 21,000 workers from mining rival Harmony Gold.
"This means that all employees participating in the strike at all South African operations are required immediately to discontinue their strike action and return to work," Gold Fields said in a statement. 'We will retreat'
Gold Fields and Harmony Gold account for about half of South Africa's total gold output, and argue that job losses are necessary, while pay increases are not possible. The firms have said that their profits are being squeezed by the high value of the rand.
Unions and workers argue that conditions need to be improved, and have complained that black workers are paid less than their white counterparts. Workers want their monthly living allowances raised to 1,200 rand ($190; £100) from the current 706 rand. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said that it expected its members to adhere to the court ruling. "We will retreat," said NUM spokesman Moferefere Lekorotsoane. "We must comply with the court order." | Strike | March 2005 | ['(Reuters SA)', '[permanent dead link]', '(SA)'] |
Iran's Islamic Consultative Assembly approves the deal on its nuclear program agreed with six world powers. | Iran's parliament has approved a deal on its nuclear programme agreed with six world powers, state media say.
The deal was passed with 161 votes in favour, 59 against and 13 abstentions, the official IRNA news agency said.
However, parliament insisted that international inspectors would have only limited access to military sites. The agreement, struck in July, authorises the lifting of sanctions in return for Iran curbing sensitive nuclear activities.
Iran insists that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.
The deal between Iran and the so-called P5+1 - the US, UK, France, China and Russia plus Germany - was reached after 20 months of negotiations.
But it has come in for criticism from hardliners in both the US and Iran.
In September, Republicans in the US Congress tried to sink the deal by voting on a motion of disapproval.
Democrats, however, gathered enough votes to block the motion and handed US President Barack Obama a political victory.
In Iran, conservative MPs criticised President Hassan Rouhani for suggesting they were deliberately trying to delay the deal.
Correspondents say Iran's parliament has seen angry clashes over the agreement.
The UN Security Council passed seven resolutions between 2006 and 2015 requiring Iran to stop producing enriched uranium - which can be used for civilian purposes, but also to build nuclear bombs.
Four of the resolutions imposed sanctions in an effort to persuade Iran to comply.
Uranium enrichment: Iran can operate 5,060 first generation centrifuges, configured to enrich uranium to 3.67%, a level well below that needed to make an atomic weapon. It can also operate up to 1,000 centrifuges at its mountain facility at Fordow - but these cannot be used to enrich uranium. Plutonium production: Iran has agreed to reconfigure its heavy water reactor at Arak, so that it will only produce a tiny amount of plutonium as a by-product of power generation, and will not build any move heavy water reactors for 15 years.
Inspections: International monitors will be able to carry out a comprehensive programme of inspection of Iran's nuclear facilities.
Possible military dimensions: Iran will allow foreign inspectors to investigate the so-called "possible military dimensions" to its programme by December. This should determine whether the country ever harboured military ambitions for its nuclear programme - a claim it has always strenuously denied.
Sanctions: All EU and US energy, economic and financial sanctions, and most UN sanctions, will be lifted on the day Iran shows it has complied with the main parts of the deal.
. | Government Policy Changes | October 2015 | ['(BBC)'] |
Tens of thousands of people rally in several cities in Indonesia demanding the government do more to tackle political corruption. | Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- Thousands of protesters gathered in several cities in Indonesia on Wednesday to push the government to deal with rampant allegations of corruption.
Demonstrators massed in Jakarta, Makassar, South Sulawesi, Bandung and West Java.
Organizers planned the protests for International Anti-Corruption Day, which the United Nations had declared to raise awareness about efforts to combat graft.
The protests come amid a growing public dissatisfaction over investigations into a bailout of Indonesia's Century Bank.
The controversy began when critics accused President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and some of his political allies of benefiting from the bailout money. The $710 million government bailout occurred in November 2008.
In the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar, where protests are typically more violent, hundreds of demonstrators called for the resignation of Indonesian Vice President and former Central Bank Governor Boediono and Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Sri Mulyani.
Both were blamed for key roles in the bailout.
In Jakarta, protesters chanted: "Down with corruptors" and other slogans. One group burned a picture of Boediono.
"We know that corruption is the source of stupidity, poverty and social imbalance," protester Fadjroel Rachman said. "We are expecting the world to bring down all the corruptors as well as Indonesia. Whoever the corruptor is, we have to take them down. If you're not a corruptor, there is no reason for you to be afraid." Earlier this week, Yudhoyono said the planned protests were aimed at discrediting his government. On Tuesday, he seemed to soften his stance. In a televised speech, he said, "I will lead the jihad against corruption," and called on everyone to join the rallies in an orderly and peaceful manner.
Reacting to Yudhoyono's speech, student Zulkairnan who attended the protests told CNN, "We are here to push the government to solve the Century Bank case. After watching his speech last night, I became an optimist. I believe he can eradicate corruption. He just needs a more powerful team."
Atin, another student protester said: "I'm sure [the president] can handle corruption. Many corruptors have been arrested in his era. He did that then, he can also do it now. He needs to take a more firm step." | Protest_Online Condemnation | December 2009 | ['(CNN)', '(Xinhua)', '(Jakarta Post)'] |
Russian jets attack military targets in the Georgian city of Gori, outside South Ossetia, killing 60 people; two are shot down. | Aftermath of the air strikes in Gori
Russian jets have bombed a Georgian town amid a deepening crisis over the breakaway South Ossetia region.
Georgia says 60 people died in Gori when the bombs hit residential buildings as well as military targets.
Russian officials say hundreds of civilians have been killed in South Ossetia. Georgia denies the figure, which cannot be independently verified.
Reports say Russian PM Vladimir Putin has stopped in Russia's North Ossetia region on his return from the Olympics.
He arrived in the capital Vladikavkaz to discuss the influx of refugees from the conflict in South Ossetia, Russian media said.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said earlier that his country was seeking "to force the Georgian side to peace".
Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, said there could be no "consultations" with Georgia until Georgian forces returned to their positions and re-established "the status quo".
Accounts differ over who controls South Ossetia's capital, with Moscow saying it has "liberated" Tskhinvali.
In another development, separatists in Abkhazia - Georgia's other breakaway region - said they had launched air and artillery strikes on Georgian forces in the Kodori Gorge.
The crisis began spiralling when Georgian forces launched a surprise attack on Thursday night to regain control of South Ossetia, which has had de facto independence since the end of a civil war in 1992.
The move followed days of exchanges of heavy fire with the Russian-backed separatists.
In response to the Georgian crackdown, Moscow sent armoured units across the border into South Ossetia.
The Georgian parliament has approved a presidential decree declaring a state of war for 15 days.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has denounced Russian reports of a high civilian death toll from his forces as an "egregious lie".
Mr Saakashvili said he had decided to declare that Georgia was in a state of war because it was "under a state of total [Russian] military aggression".
Georgia is withdrawing its entire contingent of 2,000 troops from Iraq to help deal with the crisis.
US President George W Bush said the Russian attacks outside South Ossetia marked a "dangerous escalation in the crisis" and said Georgia's territorial integrity had to be respected.
"The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia," he said while attending the Olympics.
"The violence is endangering regional peace."
Tskhinvali 'destroyed'
Fighting continued around Tskhinvali overnight and into Saturday morning, although not at the same intensity as on Friday, Russian media reported.
Later, the Russian Army's Ground Forces commander, Gen Vladimir Boldyrev, said his troops had "fully liberated" the city and were pushing Georgian forces back.
But the secretary of the Georgian National Security Council, Khakha Lomaia, insisted that the city remained "under the complete control of our troops".
Russian commanders, who said reinforcements were being sent to the region, confirmed that two Russian jets had been shot down over Georgia.
Speaking to Russian news agency Interfax, Russia's ambassador to Georgia, Vyacheslav Kovalenko, said on Saturday that 2,000 civilians and 13 Russian peacekeepers had been killed in Tskhinvali.
"The city of Tskhinvali no longer exists," he said. "It is gone. The Georgian military has destroyed it."
The International Red Cross (ICRC) said it had received reports that hospitals in the city were "overflowing" with casualties.
In Gori, Russian aircraft bombed mostly military targets, where Georgian troops had been massing to support their forces engaged in South Ossetia.
The BBC's Richard Galpin in Gori heard loud explosions and saw large plumes of smoke rising into the sky; soldiers and civilians were seen running through the streets.
Injured civilians were being pulled from the buildings, which were on fire.
The Georgian foreign ministry said the Black Sea port of Poti, the site of a major oil shipment facility, had been "devastated" by a Russian air raid.
Meanwhile Georgian TV reported that the Georgian-controlled section of the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia was under fire, blaming the bombardment on Russian forces.
The foreign minister in Abkhazia's self-declared government, Sergei Shamba, said Abkhaz forces had launched an attack aimed at driving Georgian forces out of the gorge.
It was not clear whether planes used in the attack on the gorge belonged to Russia or to the Abkhaz separatists.
Russia has a peacekeeping force in Abkhazia under an agreement made following civil wars in the 1990s, when the region declared independence and formed links with Moscow.
Territorial claims
President Medvedev said Russia's military aim in South Ossetia was to force the Georgians to stop fighting.
Russian minister defends action
"Our peacekeepers and the units attached to them are currently carrying out an operation to force the Georgian side to [agree to] peace," he said.
"They also bear the responsibility for protecting the population."
Speaking to the BBC, the Russian foreign minister insisted his country did not want all-out war with Georgia, but was prepared to do whatever was necessary to restore the situation in South Ossetia and to defend its civilian population, most of whom have been given Russian citizenship.
"Mr Saakashvili keeps saying that we want to chop off a part of Georgian territory," Mr Lavrov said.
"He's also saying that this is not just about Georgia, this is about the future of Europe because he says Russia is also making territorial claims to other [countries], including the Baltic states, which is rubbish."
Mr Lavrov said Georgia had violated a peace deal under which Georgia had agreed not to use force in the South Ossetian dispute.
The BBC's James Rodgers in Moscow says diplomatic initiatives to end the fighting have so far proved fruitless.
On Friday evening, the UN Security Council failed to agree on the wording of a statement calling for a ceasefire.
The UK, the US and France, are pinpointing what they say is Russia's aggression as the key factor in the slide towards war, while Moscow insists Georgia is to blame. | Armed Conflict | August 2008 | ['(BBC News)', '(BBC News)'] |
China's State Council announces that Liu Shiyu, who had been chairman of the Agricultural Bank of China Limited, will replace Xiao Gang as head of the China's Securities Regulatory Commission. | Liu Shiyu speaks at a press conference of the first session of 12th National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing, China, March 13 2013. [Photo/IC]
BEIJING - Liu Shiyu was appointed as Party leader and chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), according to decisions made by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council on Saturday.
Xiao Gang, former head of the CSRC, was removed from his post as the chairman as well as the Party leader of the commission.
Related story:
Circuit breaker man says watchdog officials on wrong track by Agencies
The man responsible for stock circuit breakers said Chinese officials must revise their safety net to avoid creating panic, joining critics who argue the trading halts are triggered too easily for such a volatile market.
"They're just on the wrong track," said Nicholas Brady, 85, the former United States Treasury secretary who ran a committee that recommended the curbs on equity trading after the 1987 crash. "They need a set of circuit breakers that appropriately reflects their market."
Brady spoke after Chinese regulators suspended their newly introduced program that ends stock trading for the entire day after a 7 percent plunge. The halt was set off twice in its first week of operation, bolstering speculation China set its threshold too low.
"The right thing to do is to widen their band," Brady said.
The US confronted a similar problem in the 1990s. The curb that the Brady commission helped implement shut the market for the first time on Oct 27, 1997, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 554 points. That was only a 7.2 percent decline, almost identical to the Thursday plunge in China's CSI 300 Index.
The trouble was that a decade-long surge in US stock prices had diminished the value of each point in the Dow. The 1987 508-point slump had amounted to a 23 percent tumble, three times greater than the decline that froze trading 10 years later.
Regulators and exchanges pushed through a revision: If the Dow fell 10 percent, there would be an hour pause. At 20 percent, trading would halt for two hours, and at 30 percent, the day would end early.
In recent years, the benchmark that triggers the halts switched to the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the levels changed.
Now it takes 7 percent and 13 percent drops to prompt a brief pause, and a 20 percent decline to close markets early for the day.
Whereas 7 percent losses are rare in the US－they were only common during the 2008 financial crisis, October 1987 and the Great Depression－Chinese shares have dropped about that much seven times in the past year.
"I don't think this is an exact science," said Sang Lee, an analyst at financial markets researcher Aite Group. With circuit breakers, "if you set these too low, instead of easing volatility, they may increase volatility". | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | February 2016 | ['(Reuters)', '(China Daily)'] |
Voters in Costa Rica go to the polls for a general election. Luis Guillermo Solís is the only presidential candidate left in the race following the withdrawal of Johnny Araya. | Luis Guillermo Solis of the centre-left Citizen Action Party (PAC) has won the presidential election in Costa Rica.
With almost all the votes counted, Mr Solis had 78%.
He had been expected to win after his rival - governing party candidate Johnny Araya - had stopped campaigning after opinion polls suggested Mr Solis had an unassailable lead.
Mr Solis's win breaks with the traditional two-party system which has dominated in Costa Rica for decades.
Mr Araya, whose name remained on the ballot even after he pulled out, got 22%.
Forty-three percent of the electorate abstained, the highest rate in the past 60 years.
Nevertheless, Mr Solis - who had appealed for a solid voter turnout - surpassed by more than 300,000 votes his own goal of getting more than a million people to cast their ballot for him.
Mr Solis, a 55-year-old historian and former diplomat, had started campaigning in October to raise his profile, which was rather low at the time.
His PAC party, which was founded in 2000, has never before been in power. The PAC's narrow victory in the first round on 2 February against the well-established governing National Liberation Party came as a surprise.
Analysts say Mr Solis's campaign promise to tackle corruption and poverty in the Central American nation won over many undecided voters.
On 5 March, an opinion poll suggested Mr Solis had the support of 64% of voters with his rival lagging behind with 21%.
This prompted Mr Araya to give up his presidential bid. He said proceeding would be a waste of money.
"It is only prudent not to spend millions on publicity, meetings and other events. We will respect the constitutional provisions, but I will refrain from any electoral activity," he told reporters at the time.
Mr Araya congratulated Mr Solis on his win saying he received these results "with serenity, with maturity, and I will start by recognising them with humility and respect".
Outgoing President Laura Chinchilla wished Mr Solis success in his new post.
Speaking to a crowd of flag-waving supporters, the winning candidate said that the polls showed "there is a unquestionable demand for change, for things not to carry on as they have, and I aim, with the help of God and the support of all of you, to bring you those changes that you're clamouring for".
He also effusively thanked his supporters via Twitter.
Mr Solis will be sworn in on 8 May. | Government Job change - Election | April 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Church of Scientology in France is convicted of organised fraud. | A Paris court on Tuesday convicted the two principal institutions of the Church of Scientology in France of “organised fraud”, but stopped short of banning the group’s activities in France.
The court also levied fines totalling 600,000 euros and handed suspended prison sentences to four French Scientology officials. Scientology’s leader in France, Alain Rosenberg, received a two-year suspended sentence and a fine of 30,000 euros.
It did not, however, ban the organisation’s activities.
The two key Scientology institutions – known in France as The Celebrity Centre and the Spiritual Association of the Church of Scientology - were ordered to pay the fines for financially preying on Scientology’s vulnerable followers in the 1990s.
Reacting to the news shortly after the verdicts were announced, George Fenech, president of Milivudes, a French anti-cult group, told FRANCE 24 that the fines and prison sentences were appropriate, and that he hoped Scientology’s activities would eventually be stopped in France.
Fenech predicted that “in the future, if Scientology commits more illegal activities, it could be dissolved by a court.”
The case was launched by two plaintiffs, who claimed that they were defrauded of over 20,000 euros and 49,500 euros each for costly materials they claim they were coerced into buying.
An intricacy of French law prohibiting courts from dissolving organisations convicted of fraud meant that Scientology could not be totally banned in France, though the law has since changed.
Scientology is officially considered a “sect” in France, but claims it is a legitimate religion and denies any charges of embezzlement. A lawyer for the Church of Scientology has said it plans to appeal the verdict.
The Church of Scientology was founded in 1954 by American science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. It is officially recognised as a religion in the United States, and counts among its members a number of popular culture celebrities, such as Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Lisa Marie Presley. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | October 2009 | ['(France 24)', '(The Times)', '(Al Jazeera)'] |
Voters in Rwanda go to the polls for the presidential election. | Votes are being counted in the Rwandan presidential election, with incumbent Paul Kagame widely predicted to win a landslide victory.
Mr Kagame's supporters say he has brought both stability and steady economic growth since the country's genocide in 1994.
His critics accuse him of suppressing opposition and undermining democracy.
This is only the second presidential election since 1994, and five million Rwandans are registered to vote.
Mr Kagame won the 2003 election with 95% of the vote.
On Monday, voting began promptly at 0600 local time (0400 GMT) and the polls closed at 1500 (1300 GMT).
It is a sign of the level of efficiency in Rwanda that polls were able to close by mid-afternoon as scheduled, the BBC's Will Ross reports from Kigali.
People had queued from before dawn and the electoral commission said turnout was high. Governing party officials said preliminary results could be released on Monday evening. Mr Kagame faced three rivals in the election, all with links to the president's all-powerful, Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
This has led some opponents to denounce the election as a charade.
But casting his vote in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, Mr Kagame said he saw no problem with the way the vote had been conducted.
"The turnout has been huge in the last three weeks," he said. "When I have seen how they have expressed themselves, the people of Rwanda, and all that has been done and said by the people of Rwanda, it has given the impression to me that the process has been very democratic."
One of the other candidates in the vote, Prosper Higiro, said his party was prepared to accept the result of the vote.
"If we deem that the process was fair, we are going to accept the results," he said. During the campaign Mr Kagame held massive election rallies attended by tens of thousands of supporters.
His supporters say he has strengthened agricultural output, rebuilt the country's institutions, tackled corruption effectively and promoted women's rights and an environmentally friendly agenda.
As he finished campaigning, the president told critics among rights groups and the international community they should "not tell us how to shape our country".
He said of his RPF: "It is strong, it is organised, it has planned over a long time, historically it has been with the people to resolve challenging issues and therefore that results in a kind of overwhelming support. I have no regrets about it, I make no apologies."
His rivals have only managed much smaller rallies.
Jean Damascene Ntawukuriryayo, of the PSD, told supporters at one: "We see our policies as a continuation of those of the RPF." Some more vocal opponents of Mr Kagame were prevented from fielding candidates and have complained of intimidation.
But Electoral Commission spokesman Pacifique Nduwimana said that "everything went smoothly" during the campaign, with no incidents of violence.
Frank Habineza, founder of the unregistered opposition Democratic Green Party, said Mr Kagame's expected victory would have been more credible if he had "competed with the real opposition".
Speaking from Germany, he told the BBC's Focus on Africa that if his party had been able to stand in elections it would have campaigned on a platform of participatory democracy, social justice and non-violence - all of which he said were lacking in contemporary Rwanda.
"We don't have freedom of the press, we don't have freedom of association, we don't have freedom of expression," he said.
But he also said his party would not contest the result because it wanted to avoid any post-election violence.
The Green Party's vice-president was brutally murdered last month, and the killing spread fear among opposition parties. The Electoral Commission accredited 1,394 observers, 214 of them from abroad, including from the African Union and Commonwealth.
BBC News website readers have been sharing their experiences of polling day and their hopes for the country. Here is a selection of their comments.
I hope to see the incumbent president re-elected so that he keeps implementing his vision of economic transformation for Rwanda. Democracy is not just about freedom of speech, it is about civil, social and economic rights, like the right to free education and free healthcare. No single nation has achieved radical transformation, without enforcing values of discipline and hard work within the society. John R, Kigali
Rwandans are an inspiration to other Africans in the region. I was amazed by the easy, calm and orderly atmosphere at the polling station. Josh, Kigali
I expect that Paul Kagame will win the elections because he did a lot for this country. He almost rebuilt Rwanda from scratch. He is really beloved by all Rwandans. Ruhina Sabiti, Nyanza
These have been very peaceful, smooth and transparent elections. I am so pleased to decide for myself who will rule this country. Both candidates have nice plans, but we have to decide who can really achieve them. If you are a human resources recruiter for a very challenging job, you must first look at the curriculum vitae of the applicants and at their past experience. It's the same in Rwanda - we are trying to choose the strongest candidate for this difficult job. We know what we want for our future, nobody else can define it for us. Mark, Mutuye, Kigali
I was amazed at how calm it was at the polling station. I did not even spend five minutes there. My privacy was respected and I felt good to have voted for the second time in presidential elections. Rwanda shows that it is a small but mighty nation. Olivier Sempiga, Kigali
Democratic Green Party
| Government Job change - Election | August 2010 | ['(Aljazeera)', '(BBC)', '(Voice of America)'] |
The Prime Minister of Abkhazia Gennadi Gagulia dies in a car accident in Abkhazia after returning from a trip to Syria. | The prime minister of the Russia-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has died in an automobile accident, the separatist government says.
The region's press office on September 8 said 70-year-old Gennady Gagulia died on the road between Psou in the south of Russia and Sukhumi in the breakaway region. Differing reports make it unclear whether his driver and any security guards were injured.
Russian state-run TASS news agency said Gagulia had been traveling with a delegation returning from Syria.
Syria in May agreed to recognize Abkhazia and a second breakaway Georgian region, South Ossetia, as independent countries.
The regions' claims of independence from Georgia came following separatist wars in the early 1990s. After a brief war with Tbilisi in 2008, Russia recognized Abkhazia as independent and has since stepped up its military presence there.
The vast majority of countries rejects the regions' independence claims and considers them part of Georgia.
Abkhazia is ruled by President Raul Khajimba, who in 2014 won the region's presidential election, which the central government in Georgia called illegal.
TASS reported that Khajimba expressed his condolences to Gagulia's family. Khajimba said he was in the same motorcade but was not injured.
According to local reports, Gagulia assumed the post in April and had previously been the prime minister from 1995-97 and 2002-03.
In June, the European Parliament passed a resolution demanding that Russia reverse its "decision to recognize the so-called independence of the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia."
The declaration also called on Russia to "cease its occupation" of the two breakaway regions and "fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia, as well as the inviolability of its internationally recognized borders, and that it stop the de facto integration of both regions into the Russian administration."
| Famous Person - Death | September 2018 | ['(RFE/RL)', '(TASS)'] |
The Thai consulate in Istanbul is attacked by Turkish protestors after about a hundred Uighurs were deported by Thailand back to China despite concerns over persecution. | It comes after protesters attacked the Thai consulate in Istanbul following the deportation from Thailand of about 100 Uighurs to China.
Rights groups have criticised such deportations, saying Uighurs face persecution in China.
Turkey has seen growing anger at Chinese discrimination against Uighurs, who are ethnically Turkic Muslims.
But China has said it respects the freedom of Muslim beliefs.
On Thursday, close to 100 people were dispersed by pepper spray outside the Chinese embassy in the Turkish capital after a barricade was knocked down.
Thai officials said protesters stormed their compound in Istanbul late on Wednesday night. No injuries were reported.
The Royal Thai Embassy in Turkey advised Thais in Turkey to not to show the national symbol or flag in public, to avoid protest venues and to "refrain from mentioning or arguing with the Turkish" on the issue of Uighurs.
On Thursday, the Thai government confirmed that about 100 Uighurs had been sent back to China the day before.
Government spokesman Weerachon Sukondhapatipak said Thailand had verified that the Uighurs were Chinese nationals before returning them, but it is unclear how their nationality was confirmed.
Thailand's Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said: "If we don't do it this way, then how would we do it?
"Or do you want us to keep them for ages until they have children for three generations?"
Human Rights Watch's Asia deputy director Phil Robertson said the Uighurs sent to China "will likely face torture". Rights groups have criticised Cambodia and Thailand for deporting Uighurs to China, saying they face persecution, abuse and human rights violations.
Turkey has seen increased protests and isolated attacks on tourists thought to be Chinese over China's treatment of Uighurs.
The latest spike of anti-Chinese sentiment began over allegations that Uighurs in China had been banned from fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. But China has denied such reports.
In previous years, students have told the BBC they have been prohibited from taking part in Ramadan fasts, and government departments have restricted civil servants.
Many of China's Uighurs are based in the far western province of Xinjiang, which has seen increased tensions and conflict between Uighurs and authorities in recent years.
Who are the Uighurs?
Xinjiang profile
Why is there tension between China and the Uighurs?
Q&A: East Turkestan Islamic Movement
The colourful propaganda of Xinjiang
China-Turkey relationship strained
Chinese tourists to Turkey warned
Uighurs to remain in Thai detention
. | Armed Conflict | July 2015 | ['(BBC)'] |
Forty–seven people are injured in a collision between two Muni Metro light rail cars at the West Portal Station in San Francisco, United States. | SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- It was a chaotic scene at a Muni station after two light-rail cars collided Saturday afternoon in what was described as a major accident at San Francisco's busy West Portal station.
The accident happened just before 3 p.m. By Saturday evening, most patients seemed to be okay and some had even gone home. As 16-year-old Jonathan Wei limped out of the hospital Saturday night he described to ABC7 the chaotic scene on board San Francisco's L train as it crashed. "People were screaming in Chinese, "It hurt so much. It hurt so much." And, people were hella shocked, like what happened?" he said. Their L-Taraval train slammed into a K-Ingleside train at the West Portal station just before 3 p.m. Passengers say the L was moving pretty fast. The K was standing still. "I saw people flying and stuff. I hit my head on the transfer thing right there," said Wei. 48 people were hurt, four of them severely. "None of the injuries in today's collision were described as life-threatening by the fire department at the scene. That could change, but the initial indication was no-life threatening injuries," explained Muni spokesman Judson True. There were so many victims to tend to that some ambulances carried more than one person. A Muni bus even had to drop off some of the walking wounded at the hospital where concerned loved ones packed into the waiting room trying to get some information. Many of them had talked to the victims on the phone, but had only received part of the story. "She said three people almost died! Died?" said Son Li, one passenger's nephew. No one died in the crash, but passengers said listening to the screaming on board and seeing the blood was pretty scary. "Some of them were acting kind of crazy. Others were calm," Wei said. Witnesses say the L train did not look like it was slowing down at all as it approached the platform and the driver appeared slumped over. "I saw this barreling in, not slowing down. The driver's head was down. He looked like he was asleep or passed out. I couldn't tell. But he was not looking at me," witness Nancy Martin told ABC7. Investigators say they do not know how fast the train was going or what, if anything, happened to the driver before the crash. He was one of the four seriously injured. "We take this accident incredibly seriously. We'll do everything we can to investigate what caused it as expeditiously and thoroughly as possible because we know it's unacceptable, and we want to do everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen again," said True. Jonathan Wei has a separated shoulder, a banged-up knee, and a knot on his head. But, he is not complaining. "I feel okay right now. I think I'm kind of lucky because other people got really injured," he said. Investigators said Saturday it should not take that long to figure out how fast that train was going. | Train collisions | July 2009 | ['(San Francisco Chronicle)', '(KGO–TV)'] |
Iran says it is to invalidate banknotes which have been pasted with slogans in the name of the Opposition by 8 January 2010. | Iran's central bank has said defaced banknotes are to be made invalid, after the appearance of opposition slogans on money, local media report.
They quote bank official Ebrahim Darvishi as saying that people possessing defaced banknotes should exchange them by 8 January. It was difficult to distinguish genuine defaced notes from fakes, he added. Messages in support of the opposition have been appearing on banknotes since June's disputed presidential election. Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected in the poll - a move that triggered mass street protests by the opposition who claimed the election was rigged. 'Death to dictator'
"Banknotes on which there are writings or are stamped or have any additional signs will be invalid," Iran's Jam-e Jam newspaper quoted Mr Darvishi as saying on Thursday. The bank official also called on the public and shop owners not accept such notes from 8 January. Since June's election, slogans such as "Death to the dictator" have appeared on many Iranian banknotes. Opposition supporters have also sprayed anti-government graffiti on walls in the capital Tehran and other cities. Many transactions are carried out in cash in Iran, which is under international banking sanctions and where major credit cards cannot be used. | Government Policy Changes | December 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
Faisal Mekdad is appointed as Foreign Minister of Syria, succeeding Walid Muallem, who died last Monday. | AMMAN - Syria named veteran diplomat Faisal Mekdad as foreign minister on Sunday to replace Walid Moalem, who died last week, state media reported.
Mekdad, 66, had been deputy foreign minister since 2006. He has also held a string of diplomatic posts, including envoy to the United Nations.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also appointed Bashar al-Jaafari, currently ambassador to the United Nations, as deputy foreign minister.
Moalem was a staunch defender of Assad's bloody crackdown on peaceful protesters in 2011, which sparked a conflict that has now lasted almost a decade. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | November 2020 | ['(VoA)'] |
The Chicago Teachers Union's strike enters its sixth school day as it is unable to reach an agreement with Chicago Public Schools. | The CTU strike will stretch into a sixth day as negotiations continue. NBC 5’s Kate Chappell has all the latest details.
Chicago Public Schools classes have been canceled for Thursday, the sixth day without school, as teachers remain on strike."As of 4 p.m., CTU has not scheduled a House of Delegates vote, which would be necessary to end their strike," CPS said in a statement. "As a result, it will not be possible to hold classes tomorrow, Thursday, October 24. After school programming will not be available at CPS schools."Chicago teachers and school employees marched downtown Wednesday in a show of force amid the ongoing teachers strike, converging on a rally outside Mayor Lori Lightfoot's first city budget address.
Thousands of people, carrying signs and chanting, marched from multiple locations into the Loop, causing rolling street closures during the morning rush hour. Commuters were advised to take public transportation if they planned to be in the area on Wednesday.
Groups from four meet-up spots on the edge of downtown all marched to City Hall, as Lightfoot was about address the City Council.
The Chicago Teachers Union said in a statement Tuesday night that the event was picket lines shifting away from more than 500 schools, into the Loop in a joint effort with members of Service Employees International Union Local 73, whose school support staff are also on strike, as well as allied organizations.
“The city is not done hearing us yet,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said Tuesday night. “Together, we’re going to win.”
Meanwhile, Lightfoot delivered her budget address on Wednesday, unveiling her long-awaited proposals to help fill an $838 million budget gap. The speech is expected to include details on not only how the city is planning to close that gap, but also details on potential tax increases that city residents could face.
The march and rally shifted to a sit-in on city streets as Lightfoot's address began.
With that as the backdrop, negotiations are still ongoing between the two sides in the teachers strike, which caused its fifth day of canceled classes on Wednesday.
“There has to be a commitment and a will and a sense of urgency on all sides. That’s what’s going to make a difference,” Lightfoot said.
The city says its latest proposals add up to an additional $500 million more in spending for teachers and their classrooms over the next five years.
Union officials say there was a “good conversation” between the sides on Tuesday, but say they have not landed on “just terms” in those negotiations.
“We understand that we’re not going to solve all problems, but we need to see a substantial down payment and then a plan to address class sizes and other issues,” CTU Chief of Staff Jennifer Johnson said. | Strike | October 2019 | ['(WMAQ–TV)'] |
A fire kills dozens of animals at a zoo in Karlsruhe, Germany. | German police say a fire at a zoo in the western city of Karlsruhe has killed 26 animals.
The blaze on Friday night destroyed the petting zoo - a number of wooden buildings housing Shetland ponies, sheep, goats and a llama.
Around 100 firefighters fought strong winds to put the fire out and stop it spreading to neighbouring buildings.
Staff managed to evacuate all the wild animals safely, although one elephant suffered slight burns.
The zoo's director, Gisela von Hegel, said that when she was called out, she could see that the petting zoo buildings were engulfed in flames. "There was no possibility to rescue the animals from there because the roof had already collapsed, so it would have been too dangerous."
She said she then worked on plans to free the elephants, flamingos and hippos who were in nearby enclosures.
An investigation is under way into the cause of the fire. Authorities said that, apart from the petting enclosure, the zoo would be open for business as usual on Sunday.
| Fire | November 2010 | ['(Deutsche Welle)', '(BBC)'] |
2013 Calcutta market fire: At least 20 people are killed when a fire breaks out at an illegal market in Calcutta, India. | At least 19 poor market labourers were killed and many more seriously injured when a fire swept through a multi-storey car-park in Calcutta.
The Indian car-park has been the home of an illegal market for the past 40 years and includes paper shops and warehouses storing chemicals. Police said the fire may have been sparked by an electrical short-circuit.
The death toll is expected to rise higher and has already provoked calls for an inquiry into the third major fire incident in the city in the last three years. Just over a year ago, in December 2011, more than 90 people were killed when a fire broke out in a hospital. Many of those who died included patients too sick to escape the flames. In March 2010 more than 40 people were killed in a fire in a smart shopping street in the city centre, some of whom jumped to their deaths after finding a fire escape locked.
Police said 18 of the dead were men and were among 38 people, mainly market porters, who had been sleeping on the car park’s floor when the fire broke out. The area was filled with black, poisonous smoke from plastics and foam warehouses in the building.
"We found dozens of people lying unconscious with severe burn injuries on the floors of shops and some died of suffocation in their sleep, Gopal Bhattacharya", West Bengal’s fire services director, told the news agency AFP. The fire had been brought under control, he added.
West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Bannerjee blamed the state’s former Communist rulers for failing to force property owners to acquire government licenses and pledged to ensure full compliance and inspections, but made similar promises after the 2011 fire. The families of the dead would receive around £2,500 in compensation, she said, while urging market workers not to light fires near inflammable materials.
She said there were almost 800,000 illegal constructions in the city which had not been inspected by officials for safety. | Fire | February 2013 | ['(BBC)', '(CNN)', '(The Telegraph)'] |
A car bomb in Turkish-controlled Suluk, Tell Abyad District, Raqqa Governorate, kills five people and wounds others. Turkey's defense ministry says the attack killed eight civilians and was by the PKK/YPG group. | A vehicle rigged with explosives blew up in a market in a northern Syrian village of Suluk on Monday, killing eight people and wounding others, Turkey's defence ministry said.
"Eight civilians were slaughtered in Tal Abyad by PKK/ YPG terror group and many others were injured in a bomb attack. The attack was carried out with a vehicle loaded with bombs," the ministry said.
Syrian regime news agency SANA, however, said the blast occurred in the village near the Turkish border, putting the death toll at five people and reporting several more were wounded.
A similar death toll was also given by the Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor. The observatory, which has a network of activists in Syria, said 20 others were also wounded.
Suluk is controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters and is near the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad in Raqqa province.
Turkish troops and Turkey-backed fighters captured Tal Abyad and Suluk from PKK-YPG terrorists in October. That was during Turkey's intervention of northeastern Syria, in which it pushed back the terrorists from some border areas.
In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and EU has been responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants. The YPG is the PKK's Syrian offshoot.
Turkey-Russia meet on Syria
Also on Monday, a Turkish team was in Russia for talks on the conflicts in Syria and Libya, following reports that tens of thousands more Syrians were heading to Turkey, which already hosts the world's biggest refugee population.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday more than 80,000 civilians in Syria's northwest Idlib province were migrating towards Turkey after Russian and Syrian regime forces intensified their air strikes in the area in recent days.
Turkey-based Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) said on Monday 120,000 Syrians in south Idlib were fleeing towards the border.
Turkey already hosts about 3.7 million Syrians, the largest refugee population in the world. It worries about a new influx.
"We are putting up every effort with Russia for the attacks to stop, and we will continue to do so," Erdogan said in his comments on Sunday.
Syrian regime leader Bashar al Assad has vowed to recapture the Idlib region, the last significant area of Syria still under militant and rebel control, after more than eight years of civil war that has killed some 400,000 people and displaced millions.
| Armed Conflict | December 2019 | ['(TRTWorld)'] |
NASA launches Interstellar Boundary Explorer satellite that will study the edge of solar system. | The U.S. space agency launches today a space probe that will keep an eye on the violence and turbulence at the very edge of the solar system.NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is due to begin its mission at Kwajalein Atoll, the largest coral atoll on the planet, where it will be launched aboard a Pegasus rocket that will be dropped from a jet.According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, IBEX will orbit high above the Earth to photograph the interstellar boundaries that separate our heliosphere from the local interstellar medium of our Galaxy. The region is an enormous stretch of turbulent gas and twisting magnetic fields. This mission of taking pictures and recording those baffling boundaries will last two years. The Spaceship’s two sensors will gather data about the solar wind's mass and energy from all directions, and capture high-speed atoms traveling toward Earth (7830 miles in diameter) from beyond the orbit of Pluto, the solar system’s most remote planet. By analyzing the images provided by NASA’s explorer, scientists will be able to map the frontier between the solar system, located billions of kilometers from Earth, and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy. This way, experts will finally get to the bottom of the secrets of “this important interaction between the sun and the galaxy," said David McComas, senior executive director of the Space Science and Engineering Division at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "The interstellar boundary regions are critical because they shield us
from the vast majority of dangerous galactic cosmic rays, which
otherwise would penetrate into earth's orbit and make human spaceflight
much more dangerous," he added.The only data scientists have regarding this remote region from the universe is offered by the twin spacecrafts Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, launched by NASA in the summer of 1977 and currently still in service.The Voyager 1 space probe is the first man-made object that left our star system and the farthest one from Earth. It is currently about 16 billion km from the Sun and has penetrated the heliosheath, the region of the heliosphere beyond the termination shock, where wind is compressed. Voyager 2, which visited four planets and their moons, found that the 'bubble' formed around the Solar System by supersonic solar wind is irregular and dynamic.Ibex may confirm that the sun's heliosphere or the protective bubble surrounding the solar system, is shrinking and weakening.Last month, data from the joint National Aeronautics and Space Administration and European Space Agency Ulysses solar mission revealed that the solar wind is at a 50-year low, potentially opening up the solar system to more dangerous rays from outer space. The Interstellar Boundary Explorer “is really a mission of discovery," stated Nathan Schwadron, an associate professor of astronomy at Boston University and co-investigator for the flight. "And what that means for us is we really have never seen the structures that surround and protect the entire solar system."Researchers were not surprised that the solar wind has decreased. In
fact, the amount of radiation sent off by the sun operates in an
11-year cycle, but this dip was lower than those recently observed.
Still, it may be in line with centuries-long patterns, said Nancy
Crooker, a research professor at Boston University.
"This is not a good time to be travelling in space," Crooker said,
but noted that astronauts travelling to the International Space Station
are in no additional danger because the ISS is close enough to Earth to
be protected by its magnetic shield.
IBEX weighs 462 kilos and measures 52 centimeters (23 inches) high and 97 centimeters (38 inches) across. It is shaped like an octagon and has been equipped with two big aperture single pixel cameras designed to measure energetic neural atoms. The two-year mission is worth $169 million, NASA said. IBEX was launched aboard a Pegasus rocket, NASA's smallest orbital | New achievements in aerospace | October 2008 | ['(eFlux)'] |
A suicide bomber kills at least 50 people and injures around 90 in a mosque near Darra Adam Khel region, 30 kilometers from Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. | Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Authorities in Pakistan are reporting a second deadly mosque attack Friday in the country's volatile northwestern region, a strike that killed four people and injured 18 others.
This follows a fatal blast that killed at least 67 people and wounded more than 80 others in a suicide attack that targeted anti-Taliban members at another mosque in the northwest, said government official Khalid Umarzai.
Both incidents occurred in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, with the latest taking place during Friday prayers at Salman Khel village on the outskirts of Peshawar.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, provincial information minister, said four hand grenades were hurled into the mosque there.
The earlier incident occurred in Darra Adam Khel, about 40 kilometers south of Peshawar, during Friday prayers, a strike claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, which was targeting a local anti-Taliban group.
Police said the group, known as a peace committee, had formed in the area and the Taliban had targeted some of the members.
Tariq Afridi, a local Taliban chief of Darra Adam Khel, said in a telephone call that the Taliban warned members of local peace committees many times through letters and calls not to support the Pakistani military.
He said they asked them to dismantle all the peace committees and when they didn't, they faced the result.
"Whoever supports the military will see its results," Afridi said. Speaking of the suicide attack, Hussain said "the attackers are wild, not human; anything can be expected from them."
"Militants can't be eliminated until the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan share information."
The Darra Adam Khel area is an ungoverned region plagued by militancy, just east of the country's volatile tribal region near Afghanistan.
The impact of the blast brought the mosque roof down. The injured were being treated in Peshawar. | Armed Conflict | November 2010 | ['(CNN)', '(Xinhua)', '(Dawn)'] |
A siege is underway at the Houses of Parliament ahead of the vote. | Thousands of students march through the streets of central London to the Houses of Parliament in a protest against increase in tuition fees on Thursday.
A deeply divided Government on Thursday narrowly survived a revolt by backbench Liberal Democrat MPs to win a crucial parliamentary vote on its plans to raise university tuition fee.
A large number of Lib Dem MPs either abstained or defied the party line to vote with the Opposition Labour Party. Some Tory backbenchers also voted against the measure.
The Lib Dems had campaigned against any fee increase during the elections. Its leader Nick Clegg, now Deputy Prime Minister in a coalition with the Tories, was accused of ``betraying’’ his voters for the sake of power .
The vote came as student protesters clashed with police outside Parliament. Protests were also held in many other cities.
U.K. protests intensify
In dramatic scenes, university students on Thursday lay siege to the Houses of Parliament ahead of a crucial vote on the Government’s controversial plans to increase tuition fee amid reports that a number of Liberal Democrat MPs were likely to break with the official line and vote with the Opposition.
At one stage, there were fears of students breaking through the police barrier and storming the Parliament building. The mood often turned ugly with protesters setting fire to banners and throwing smoke bombs and other missiles as riot police struggled to keep them behind metal barriers around Parliament Square.
The central lobby of the Commons and the visitors’ galleries were reported to be “jam-packed’’ with students as MPs debated the issue. Three protesters were removed for shouting slogans.
Tens of thousands of students across Britain took out marches and staged “sit-ins’’ in the fourth wave of nationwide protests in as many weeks. The biggest protest, thought to be 40,000-strong, was in London and though it remained largely peaceful there were reports of sporadic clashes.
Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, appealed to the MPs to "do the honourable thing and vote down these damaging proposals".
“Students are now descending on Westminster to ensure that promises to voters are kept and they are not sold down the river,” he said. Liberal Democrats were under intense pressure to honour their election pledge to vote against any fee increase. Lib Dem leader and deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the circumstances had changed.
“In the circumstances where the country as a whole, we don't have much money... it's not unreasonable to ask those graduates who've been lucky enough to go to university to make a contribution towards the costs," he said as a number of his backbench MPs planned to either abstain or vote against the measure. | Protest_Online Condemnation | December 2010 | ['(The Hindu)', '(BBC)'] |
United Nations withdraws its foreign personnel from west of Darfur after threats from progovernment militias. | UN envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk told the BBC the threats arose because authorities in West Darfur were trying to disarm the Janjaweed militia.
The Janjaweed are accused of killing and raping villagers and driving two million from their homes.
Khartoum denies links to the Janjaweed, but admits arming some militia.
Some 30 foreign staff have been withdrawn to West Darfur state capital El Geneina.
The UN decision comes only a few weeks after aid charity Oxfam warned that the international community was not doing enough to improve security in Darfur. 'Taken action'
"There are threats by the Janjaweed militia against international staff, against foreigners and people in the service of non-governmental organisations," Mr Pronk told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.
Hunger set to continue
He said a couple of dozen staff were affected by the move and humanitarian convoys had already been targeted and looted.
"The government of West Darfur has finally started some action and said these militia should return the weapons to the government which they had been given quite some time ago.
"Now they don't want to do that," he said.
The UN is in discussion with the authorities in West Darfur to try and resolve the situation and is also trying to contact the militia.
Mr Pronk said while the overall situation was improving in Darfur as a whole, some spots were so bad humanitarian activities had to be suspended to the detriment of those who needed help.
Most of Darfur's 2m displaced live in refugee camps.
In the last 18 months, the UN estimates at least 180,000 people have died in Darfur of illness and malnutrition.
An unknown number of people have been killed in violent incidents in the two-year conflict.
A UN report earlier this year concluded that while the killings in Darfur did not amount to genocide, killings, torture, enforced disappearances and sexual violence were carried out on a widespread and systematic basis and could amount to crimes against humanity. | Armed Conflict | March 2005 | ['(AllAfrica)', '(Reuters)', '(BBC)'] |
The Australian Football League Grand Final between Collingwood and St Kilda ends in a draw, resulting in a rematch to be played next weekend. | Collingwood and St Kilda will go through it all again in a replay after remarkably battling it out for just the third draw in AFL/VFL grand final history at the MCG.
Norm Smith Medallist Lenny Hayes ensured the combatants would return next Saturday when his kick bounced through for a behind in the dying moments, leaving both sets of players bewildered at the final siren in front of 100,016 fans.
The Magpies kicked 9.14 (68) to the Saints' 10.8 (68), meaning both teams will have to wait another week to arrest premiership droughts.
"It's probably going to take this for the AFL to change the rules because it's an absolute joke," Pies skipper Nick Maxwell said.
"There's no way it should be decided after another game.
"Guys come here for a win or loss and that's what we should be leaving with."
St Kilda midfielder Brendon Goddard, edged out by Hayes for best afield, added: "It's just wrecked my holiday plans. It's weird, really strange. It's not too often you come back and fight another war a week later. We're up for it."
The AFL has announced that the replay will take place at 2:30pm (AEST) next Saturday, with tickets to go on sale to members of the competing clubs at 9:00am on Monday.
AFL members will be able to purchase tickets from 9:00am on Tuesday, with any remaining tickets to go on sale to the general public from 9:00am on Wednesday.
In the event of the replay finishing in a draw, five minutes of extra time from each end will be played.
The Saints' only success came in 1966 when they edged the Magpies by a point, and that result eerily presented itself as a real possibility again late in this afternoon's encounter after St Kilda fought back from four goals down at half-time.
The Magpies' 24-point long-change buffer should have been greater but for some more wastefulness in front of the goal, probably the only thing which has blighted an otherwise wonderful season.
Notorious shanker Travis Cloke kicked two goals for the Pies but also missed with four other opportunities, with two of them not even registering a behind, while Dale Thomas spurned a chance he should have taken and rookie Jarryd Blair struck the post.
The Colliwobbles were threatening to rear their ugly head as the Saints took full advantage, ramming home six goals to two in the second half as they drew on the misery of last year's 12-point heartbreak at the hands of Geelong.
Their fight-back was all the more remarkable considering sole ruckman Michael Gardiner was lost to injury in the first half, a selection gamble which appeared to have backfired disastrously for Saints coach Ross Lyon.
Thrilling climax
After the Saints managed three goals to zip in the third quarter to pull within eight points at the last change, the stage was set for a thrilling climax and both sides delivered.
The much-maligned Leon Davis snapped on the run eight minutes in to put Collingwood clear by 14 points, with youngster Robert Eddy then hitting the post for the Saints in reply.
Hayes however asserted his authority when he marked from outside 50 and pumped it through, with Stephen Milne then marking and slotting home 90 seconds later as St Kilda pulled to within a behind.
A dribbled effort a long way out from Nick Riewoldt was desperately touched on the line by the Pies, only for Goddard to give the Saints the lead for the first time a minute later after taking a flying mark in the goalsquare.
Collingwood had been in front for one hour and 52 minutes and when play shifted to the other end and Cloke again missed, it appeared their race might have been run.
Cloke however atoned when he found himself in space seconds later and slotted home to once again put the Pies in front, only for Hayes to dramatically ensure the replay.
The Magpies had entered the match as the hottest of favourites to win their first flag since 1990, having cruised to the minor premiership before humbling the reigning Cats in last weekend's preliminary final.
Pies ruckman Darren Jolly's goal after just 24 seconds was ominous for St Kilda and after they had kicked seven goals to four by half-time, it was looking like Collingwood fans would be all smiles at the final siren.
Hayes amassed 32 disposals, 12 tackles and a goal while Goddard had 31 touches, five tackles and two majors.
Thomas was Collingwood's best, picking up 26 touches to go with eight marks, eight tackles and a goal.
Hayes finished with 13 Norm Smith votes, ahead of Goddard (seven), Thomas (six), Saints defender Sam Fisher (two) and Maxwell (two).
The last grand final draw was in 1977, between the Pies and North Melbourne, with the Kangaroos going on to prevail easily the following week.
Melbourne beat Essendon in their replay after their initial 1948 encounter ended all square.
Collingwood: 9.14 (68) - T Cloke 2, A Didak, B Macaffer, D Jolly, D Thomas, H O'Brien, J Blair, L Davis
St Kilda: 10.8 (68) - B Goddard 2, N Riewoldt 2, S Milne 2, A Schneider, J Koschitzke, L Hayes, S Gilbert
We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
This service may include material from Agence France-Presse (AFP), APTN, Reuters, AAP, CNN and the BBC World Service which is copyright and cannot be reproduced.
AEST = Australian Eastern Standard Time which is 10 hours ahead of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) | Sports Competition | September 2010 | ['(ABC Online)', '(Herald–Sun)'] |
Genral Raheel Sharif took over the command of army chief of Pakistan Army. | ISLAMABAD: Outgoing military chief General Ashfaq Kayani on Friday handed over the command of the army to Chief of Army Staff Gen Raheel Sharif.
He passed the baton of command to Gen Sharif at a ceremony held in the Army Hockey Stadium, close to the General Headquarters (GHQ).
The entire area around the venue of the ceremony was blocked off with military and police personnel deployed in the area. Except for the invitees, no one was allowed to move into the area.
The change of command ceremony was attended by federal ministers, services chiefs, diplomats and senior serving and retired officers.
Speaking at the ceremony prior to handing over the baton of command to Gen Sharif, Kayani said leading Pakistan army was an honour for him. He said during his time as army chief he had experienced a wide array of challenges on which the military focused its full attention as a national institution. The military worked with honesty and dedication, Kayani said, adding that it was only through the sacrifices rendered by the soldiers and the officers that peace could be established in some of the most challenging parts of the country.
He said the army had never disappointed the nation, the support of which was imperative for the military to continue its work with dedication. He paid his respects to those killed during the “difficult time” that the country was going through, including the women and children whose lives were lost. On Wednesday, the government had announced career infantry officer Raheel Sharif to succeed Kayani. Gen Rashad Mehmood was named the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee the same day.
Just prior to his appointment, Gen Sharif was serving as Inspector General Training and Evaluation with the rank of a Lt General.
Gen Sharif also holds the Hilal-i-Imtiaz military award, and is the younger brother of late Major Shabbir Sharif, who received the Nishan-i-Haider for his services in the 1971 war.
Gen Sharif's selection as army chief selection implies that frontrunner and the senior most military officer Lt Gen Haroon Aslam was ignored for the elevation. Lt Gen Aslam retired soon after the latest key military appointments. The post of army chief is arguably the most powerful in Pakistan and anxiety had prevailed in Pakistan on who will replace the taciturn, chain-smoking Kayani.
Kayani’s retirement from the post comes after rules were relaxed to grant him an extension in July 2010 by the PPP-led coalition government in what then prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said was in the interest of continuity at a time when the war on terror was successfully continuing against elements who wanted to impose a system of their choice on the country. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | November 2013 | ['(New Army Chief - Dawn News)'] |
Apple Inc. must pay the $450 million July 2014 settlement in a price fixing case since the U.S. Supreme Court will not hear its appeal of the June 2015 Court of Appeals ruling that it played a "central role" in a conspiracy with publishers to eliminate retail price competition and raise e–book prices. | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear Apple Inc’s challenge to an appellate court decision that it conspired with five publishers to increase e-book prices, meaning it will have to pay $450 million as part of a settlement.
The court's decision not to hear the case leaves in place a June 2015 ruling by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found Apple AAPL.O liable for engaging in a conspiracy that violated federal antitrust laws.
Bangladesh central bank says U.S. account hacked
Apple, in asking the high court to hear the case, said the June appeals court decision that the company had conspired with the publishers contradicted Supreme Court precedent and would “chill innovation and risk-taking.”
The 2nd Circuit’s ruling followed a 2013 decision by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote that Apple played a “central role” in a conspiracy with publishers to raise e-book prices.
The Justice Department said the scheme caused some e-book prices to rise to $12.99 or $14.99 from the $9.99 price previously charged by market leader Amazon.com Inc.AMZN.O
“Apple’s liability for knowingly conspiring with book publishers to raise the prices of e-books is settled once and for all,” said Bill Baer, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division.
Publishers that the Justice Department said conspired with Apple include Lagardere SCA's LAGA.PA Hachette Book Group Inc, News Corp's NWSA.O HarperCollins Publishers LLC, Penguin Group Inc, CBS Corp's CBS.N Simon & Schuster Inc and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH's Macmillan.
RECOMMENDED: A hacker's ransom for Apple customers
On Feb. 17, the appeals court in New York upheld the proposed settlement, which had been challenged by an e-books purchaser.
The publishers were concerned about the price of e-books being pushed down by Amazon while Apple was looking for a way to make its new iPad product a hit and was seeking to break up Amazon’s low-cost dominance in the digital book market.
Apple and the publishers agreed on an arrangement in which Apple would get a 30 percent commission and publishers were allowed to set the prices for their books, a tactic known as “agency pricing” that prevents discounting.
The publishers also agreed they would charge all outlets the same amount, meaning Amazon was forced to raise its prices. E-books that had cost $9.99 suddenly cost $12.99 or $14.99.
Amazon said in a statement it was “ready to distribute the court-mandated settlement funds to Kindle customers as soon as we’re instructed to move forward.”
Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
The case is Apple v. United States, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 15-565.
| Organization Fine | March 2016 | ['(Reuters)', '(Bloomberg)', '(AppleInsider)'] |
A 1,500–year–old pyramid called the Hill of the Star has been found in Mexico City. | Archaeologists have discovered a previously unknown pyramid standing 22 metres high inside a hill on the outskirts of Mexico city, it emerged today.
The earth pyramid, believed to have been built by the pre-Columbian Teotihuacán culture in around AD500, measures 150 metres on each side and sits underneath another historical site, on which Mexicans have re-enacted the crucifixion of Christ for nearly 200 years.
Archaeologist Jesus Sanchez said that the people of Iztapalapa were proud of the discovery. "When they first saw us digging there, the local people just couldn't believe there was a pyramid there," he said.
"It was only when the slopes and shapes of the pyramid, the floors with altars, were found that they finally believed us."
The pyramid fell into disuse around AD800 with the collapse of the Teotihuacán culture, so the people of Iztapalapa would have been unaware of the significance of the eroded hill in 1823, when they started re-enacting the Biblical Passion on the site to give thanks after a cholera epidemic spared them.
The Passion ceremony, at the climax of which an actor portraying Christ is tied to a cross, attracts up to 1 million visitors every year. Sanchez said that this year, excavation pits would be filled in to avoid damage to the older site during the ritual, which is due to begin next week.
"Both the pre-Hispanic structure and the Holy Week rituals are part of our cultural legacy, so we have to look for a way to protect both cultural values," he told the Associated Press.
Many of Mexico's prime archaeological sites are dotted around Mexico City, and the city itself was built on top of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán.
The builders of the Iztapalapa pyramid also constructed the temple complex of Teotihuacán, just north of Mexico city.
The two pyramids at Teotihuacán are the country's most popular tourist attraction. One of them, the pyramid of the sun, is thought to be the largest such structure in the world, after the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren in Egypt. Teotihuacán reached its peak between AD150 and AD450, when the city covered more than 10 square miles and was home to up to 200,000 people.
It is not the only example in Mexico of a Christian religious site being built upon the ruins of a former culture: the Spanish conquistadors are thought to have deliberately placed churches on Aztec religious sites in order to displace the pre-Columbian religion.
Mexico City's cathedral is built on the site of an Aztec temple, and Mexico's patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe, is believed to have first appeared shortly after the Spanish conquest on a hillside where the Aztecs worshipped their mother goddess.
The pyramid in Cholula, which according to some estimates is even larger than the Giza pyramids in Egypt, also has a church on top of it. | New archeological discoveries | April 2006 | ['(Guardian Unlimited)', '(BBC)'] |
Senator Bernie Sanders is booed by his own supporters during his keynote speech after telling them, "We must elect Hillary Clinton." | — -- Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders booed and jeered when as the Vermont lawmaker and former presidential contender told them, "We must elect Hillary Clinton."
Appearing for the first time this week in Philadelphia, where the Democratic National Convention kicked off this afternoon, Sanders tried to control the room and his fans.
"Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in," he said. “[Donald] Trump is a bully and a demagogue. Trump, Trump has made bigotry and hatred the cornerstone of his campaign.”
But the crowd, in the last sign of the party struggling for any sense of unity, chanted, “We want Bernie!”
Sanders focused most of his remarks on his accomplishments during the primary battle, including how well he performed with young voters and used the event as a call to action, urging his delegates to stay involved and work to elect progressive candidates moving forward.
The meeting was celeb-filled too and featured many of Sanders standard surrogates such as actress Rosario Dawson and rapper Killer Mike, who helped energize the room.
“The support we have received from every state in this country has been extraordinary, and the grass roots activism is unprecedented in modern American history,” he boomed. “Make no mistake about it, we have made history.”
After Sanders finished speaking, a whispered exchange between the Vermont senator and his wife was picked up by a hot microphone. According to ABC News producers at the venue, it sounded like Jane Sanders told her husband, "They don't know your name isn't being put in nomination." But there are some reports that she said "is" instead of "isn't."
Campaign spokesman Michael Briggs ABC News that Jane Sanders meant there will be a roll call vote tomorrow when Sanders’ delegates will be able to formally vote for him on the convention floor.
Emotions ran high throughout the event, and it was clear that the recent controversy regarding leaked emails from top staffers with the Democratic Party have only enflamed tensions. During the senator’s speech, some people cried, others pumped their fists in the air.
Within the Hawaii delegation, for example, one gentleman told ABC News he planned to vote for Clinton, but others emphatically said they would vote for third party candidates.
“I am hoping to feel better over the next few days to feel better about Hillary Clinton,” Dylan Hooser from Kaui, Hawaii said, but added that the last few days have only felt the group feel less unified with the larger party. | Famous Person - Give a speech | July 2016 | ['(ABC News)'] |
Egyptian authorities announce the discovery of a granite head from a statue of Tutankhamun's grandfather Amenhotep III, which was unearthed at a temple in Luxor. | CAIRO (Reuters) - A colossal 3000-year-old red granite head of Amenhotep III, the grandfather of Tutankhamun, has been discovered in Luxor, Egypt’s Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said Sunday.
Smoothly polished, and showing “youthful sculpted features,” the 2.5 meter high head belonged to a statue of Amenhotep III in a standing position wearing the Upper Egyptian white crown and clutching the royal insignia.
Scientists conducting DNA tests and CT scans on a number of mummies have identified Amenhotep III as the grandfather of Tutakhamun, the teenage-king who was born of an incestuous marriage between Akhenaten and his sister, both the offspring of Amenhotep III.
Hourig Sourouzian, who headed the conservation mission, said the Amenhotep’s head was one of 84 artifacts unearthed at his funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor.
“We have gathered a large quantity of red granite statue pieces which once stood in the southern part of the great court of the funerary temple of Amenhotep III,” Sourouzian said, adding that parts of the statue are being restored.
Writing by Marwa Awad; | New archeological discoveries | February 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(France24)', '(Herald Sun)', '(Reuters)', '(The Scotsman)', '(The Washington Post)', '(Xinhua)'] |
Florida, Arizona, Illinois, and Ohio will proceed having Democratic Party primaries despite the coronavirus outbreak. Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper said that the Ohio primaries will go on as planned. | Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said Friday that primary elections will go ahead as planned on Tuesday, despite the spread of the coronavirus.
Pepper said the state is doing all it can to make the voting process as safe as possible.
"Everything you can do to encourage social distancing, even in the voting process, you should do," Pepper told Hill.TV.
"One thing that we're really pushing hard is that people can still vote early, they can still send it by mail, if it's postmarked by [March 16], it still counts," he added.
Pepper also said the party was doing everything it can to prevent voting problems that happened on Super Tuesday, such as hours-long lines. Ohio, along with Florida, Illinois and Arizona, are all expected to vote on Tuesday.
His remarks came a day after Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton, speaking at a press conference alongside Gov. Mike DeWine (R), estimated that more than 100,000 people in the state have coronavirus.
The United States has at least 1,700 confirmed cases and 31 deaths.
Louisiana is postponing its April 4 primary due to concerns over the novel coronavirus, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin (R) announced Friday.
| Government Job change - Election | March 2020 | ['(Straits Times)', '(The Hill)'] |
Two tropical storms, one in the Atlantic Ocean and the other in the Pacific , are expected to become hurricanes Thursday. Gonzalo, with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph, is east of Barbados in the Windward Islands, moving toward the west near 12 mph , leading Barbados to issue a Hurricane watch. Douglas's maximum sustained winds have increased to near 100 mph , and landfall on Hawaii is expected Sunday. | Tropical Storm Gonzalo formed Wednesday morning in the Atlantic Ocean, the National Hurricane Center said. It's the earliest "G" storm in any Atlantic hurricane season on record.
The storm is expected to become a hurricane Thursday, with winds of at least 75 mph.
The hurricane center said Gonzalo was far from land: As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, it was about 1,110 miles east of the Southern Windward Islands of the Caribbean. The system had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph and was moving to the west at 14 mph.
"Gonzalo is expected to move near or over the southern Windward Islands this weekend and could bring direct impacts from winds and heavy rainfall," the hurricane center said.
It is forecast to weaken back to tropical storm strength as it nears the islands.
When Gonzalo became a named storm Wednesday morning, it broke a record set by Tropical Storm Gert, which formed July 24, 2005, during a notorious season.
According to AccuWeather, many storms this year have beat out storms from the 2005 season, known as the most active on record, for the title of earliest to form in the basin. The 2020 season pales in comparison with 2005 in terms of overall intensity.
By this point in 2005, the Atlantic basin had spawned three hurricanes and two major hurricanes – Category 3 or higher – according to Phil Klotzbach, a tropical meteorologist at Colorado State University.
Hurricane season 2020:From Arthur to Wilfred, here's the list of hurricane names this season
In addition to Gonzalo, forecasters monitored a system in the Gulf of Mexico, which could spin up into a tropical depression or storm in the next couple of days, the hurricane center said.
"Regardless of development, increasing winds and seas across the upper Texas coastal waters should begin on Thursday, and the threat of heavy rainfall spreads into Southeast Texas Friday through Saturday," the National Weather Service in Houston said.
In the Pacific Ocean, Tropical Storm Douglas strengthened into a hurricane Wednesday morning. As of 5 p.m. EDT, Hurricane Douglas had winds of 80 mph and was 1,690 miles from Hilo, Hawaii.
It could impact Hawaii on Sunday, probably after weakening back to a tropical storm, the hurricane center said.
| Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | July 2020 | ['(Gonzalo)', '(Douglas)', '(19 km/h)', '(155 km/h)', '(USA Today)', '(The Washington Post)'] |
A Cairo court orders the retrial of Hisham Talaat Moustafa and Muhsin Sukkari who were sentenced to death for killing Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim in Dubai in 2008. | Egypt's highest court has ordered the retrial of a tycoon and an ex-policeman who were sentenced to death for killing a popular Lebanese singer.
The tycoon, Hisham Talaat Moustafa, was found guilty last year of paying Muhsin Sukkari $2m (£1.3m) to kill Suzanne Tamim in Dubai in July 2008. The court overturned their murder convictions on procedural grounds. The case has received much attention, as it involves a member of an elite often seen as being above the law. Thursday's ruling prompted cheers and clapping from the billionaire tycoon's relatives in the Cairo courtroom. Tapes questioned
Mr Moustafa, 50, was a hugely powerful business tycoon, a high-profile member of the ruling party and a friend of the son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The Court of Cassation has not yet detailed the reasons behind its decision. The case will now return to a criminal court later in the year. In the meantime questions will undoubtedly be asked whether Mr Moustafa has escaped the gallows because of his position in society.
He is close to the president's son, Gamal Mubarak, and a former member of the ruling National Democratic Party's policy-making committee.
When Egypt denied Dubai's extradition request during the investigation, the Dubai police sought assurances from Egypt that it would pursue the case; and given the huge media attention the Egyptians had little option but to comply. There will certainly be suspicions in some quarters that pressure has been put on the courts or the judges.
In the past, corporate cases of manslaughter or corruption have been cut short because those facing the charges were associated with the ruling class.
He had a relationship with Ms Tamim, who had found fame as the winner of an Arabic television talent show. Prosecutors at the murder trial last May said that when Ms Tamim spurned Mr Moustafa's offer of marriage, he plotted to kill her. Mr Sukkari, a security guard at a hotel owned by Mr Moustafa, was said to have travelled to Dubai, where he stabbed Ms Tamim to death at her flat. Defence lawyers had handed a 422-page document to judges outlining 41 arguments for a retrial. During the original trial the prosecution played tapes of phone calls between the two suspects. In the transcript the two talk about where and how to commit the murder. But defence lawyers have said they are fake. They also argue that at a crucial early stage of the case, Mr Sukkari did not have a lawyer. Appeal lawyers also claimed the Dubai police investigation into the murder was flawed. Dubai police gave the Egyptian authorities DNA evidence linking Mr Sukkari to the scene of the murder. They said he was also caught on CCTV leaving Ms Tamim's apartment block. A Dubai shoe shop also identified Mr Sukkari as the man who bought a shoe which left a bloodstained print in the flat where Ms Tamim's body - her throat slit - was discovered. In Mr Sukkari's Egyptian apartment, police found the money they said Mr Moustafa had given him. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | March 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The Daily Telegraph)', '(The Guardian)', '(The Los Angeles Times)', '(Houston Chronicle)'] |
Protests by Tibetan students against a new language policy making Chinese the official teaching language spread in China, with a demonstration taking place at the Minzu University of China in Beijing. | Middle and high school students in several Tibetan regions in Qinghai Province took to the streets on Tuesday and Wednesday to protest a plan to make Chinese the standard teaching language in classrooms.
The protesters fear that the change would result in Tibetan no longer being the main language, while experts said the students may not understand the educational policy on language.
Such disputes over educational language seldom occur in China, a country with 56 ethnic groups. Putonghua, the official language spoken by most people in the country, also enjoys great popularity in ethnic schools, as students and their parents in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the Tibet Autonomous Region have told the Global Times they understand that it will help them better integrate into mainstream society.
A Tongren county spokesman surnamed Ji told the Global Times Thursday that students held a peaceful protest Tuesday morning, but Ji couldn't say how many students were involved and the reason for their action.
"No protesting happened again (in Tongren) in the following two days, and we are still probing the issue," She said, adding that no violence happened during the march.
Singapore-based Lianhe Zaobao reported that between 5,000 and 9,000 students participated in the protest.
The report said the protest mainly targeted a plan issued by the provincial education department in September, which said that Putonghua, the standard spoken Chinese, and the standard written characters would become the main teaching medium, while students should learn ethnic languages.
The plan says bilingual lessons will be adopted in primary schools by 2015, meaning standard Chinese language will be the main medium, and ethnic language a supplement.
The Associated Press reported, quoting an unidentified teacher, that police did not intervene in the march and school administrators were not expected to punish participants.
High school students in other regions of Qinghai also took to the streets after the protest in Tongren.
Shao Lei, the manager of Bai Jia Hotel in Gonghe county, told the Global Times Thursday that a group of students marched on Wednesday morning. | Protest_Online Condemnation | October 2010 | ['(Los Angeles Times)', '(BBC)', '(Global Times)'] |
The number of people in southern Mexico displaced by the 2007 Tabasco flood nears a million , with 300,000 more still trapped in their homes, waiting to be rescued. | The centre of the state capital, Villahermosa, is under between 2m (6 feet) and 6m of water with only rooftops visible from the air.
Some 300,000 are still trapped in their homes in Tabasco, waiting to be rescued by boat or helicopter.
Overall, the floods have claimed at least five lives in southern Mexico.
Officially, one person has died in Tabasco due to the floods, and four people were killed in the neighbouring state of Chiapas, where several thousand homes have been affected. President Felipe Calderon has ordered the entire air force to help bring supplies into the region and move people out.
'Everything gone'
Villahermosa is completely overwhelmed by murky, filthy water, the BBC's Andy Gallacher reports from the city.
In pictures: Mexico floods
Soldiers, first-aid workers and volunteers are scouring the streets in small boats, handing out fresh food and water, both of which are now in short supply. The Mexican government has admitted that the scale of this disaster has taken them by surprise and for those still trapped in the remote areas of Tabasco aid is still a long way off. As the massive operation continues, there are now fears that disease could spread and forecasters say more heavy rain is on the way.
Many people left in Villahermosa seem resigned to spending another night on their rooftops while tens of thousands are crammed into emergency shelters struggling to provide enough hot meals and dry beds.
One group spotted by a Reuters reporter on a roof held a banner reading: "There are children, pregnant women, sick women. Send the police." A woman rescued by helicopter from the roof of a school said those left behind included "pregnant women and children".
"They didn't want to leave their homes but there's now no other option - we've lost everything," she told Reuters.
Special powers
President Calderon has given special powers to soldiers and police to maintain order and prevent looting and called on private airlines to help with the relief efforts as most roads in and out of the state have been cut off by the floodwaters.
After flying over the state, Mr Calderon described the flooding as "not just the worst natural catastrophe in the state's history but, I would venture to say, one of the worst in the country's recent history".
Tabasco state governor Andres Granier said the floods were a "monster" and urged anyone who owned a boat to help out.
People are frantic, families are split up everyone is searching for someone. Mark Pius CharltonVillahermosa
Your flood accounts
The floods were triggered by storms that crippled Mexico's oil industry.
Twenty-one people died last week when storms forced an oil platform into another rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
Flooding has also affected the southern state of Chiapas, where several thousand people have been moved to safety.
The storms have forced the closure of three of Mexico's main oil ports, preventing almost all exports and halting a fifth of the country's oil production. | Floods | November 2007 | ['(VOA)', '(BBC)'] |
In tennis, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut meet again following last year's record–breaking epic at Wimbledon. | We'll live-blog Day 2 of the tennis from Wimbledon. (Broadcast on ESPN2.) FOLLOW: Wimbledon men's scoreboard
FOLLOW: Wimbledon women's scoreboard
3:32: The John Isner-Nicolas Mahut showdown just wasn't close this time around. It also was more than 9 hours quicker, lasting only 2 hours and 3 minutes. Mahut hurt himself with 6 doubel faults and 16 unforced errors. Isner had 41 winners to 31 for Mahut. Neither fired up the killer serve, as they had 8 aces apiece. Isner did have a few more boomers, however, with a top speed of 134 mph, compared to Mahut's best of 112. 3:30: Mahut goes long with a forehand and Isner wins the tie-breaker, 8-6, to take the match in straight sets. 3:29: Isner sets up match point with a service return right on the line. But on his first serve he gives the point back by netting a backhand volley. 6-6 in the tie-break. 3:26: Isner digs down for an ace and goes up 5-4 in the tie-breaker. They have eight aces apiece. 3:25: Isner goes long with a volley and Mahut holds his serves for a 4-3 lead. 3:23: Isner takes care of business on his serve, and leads 3-2. 3:22: Mahut takes a 2-1 lead in the tie-breaker. The next two serves belong to Isner. 3:20: Isner is up 6-5 in the third set, with Mahut serving. Isner takes his third and final challenge, and loses again, for 30-30. Mahut closes out the game, and we're into a second tie-breaker. Isner is up 2-0 on sets. 3:17: Sharapova rattles off four straight games and claims the second to win the match, 6-2, 6-1. So much for those hiccups with her serve, which caused three double faults. She put that aside in easy fashion. 3:14: Mahut holds serve with an ace to put their third set at 5-5. Isner had two challenges during that game and lost both. 3:09: Isner holds serve and leads the third set 5-4. 3:07: Isner gets the break back, thanks to a Mahut double fault that opened the door. The third set is now 4-4, with Isner serving. 3:03: Sharapova breaks back and goes up 2-1 in the second set. The third game ends on a sour note, as Chakvetadze asks for a challenge, but the chair umpire says the request came too late. 3:00: Mahut up 4-2 in the third set. 2:55: What did we tell you about the wind wreaking havoc with Sharapova's tossup for her serve? She's had three double faults, including one that just cost her a break. She's at 1-1 in the second set. 2:50: Mahut comes alive and is moving much better now. He gets three quick points against Isner's serve, and then nails the break on his first opportunity to go up 2-1 in the third set. 2:49: Sharapova coasts through the first set, 6-2, and is up 1-0 in the second quickly. 2:44: The first two sets in the Isner-Mahut match have gone quickly, in 1 hour and 13 minutes. Then again, their marathon match last year got through the first two sets in 1:01, and then the battle began. 2:40: Mahut holds off two break points but can't handle the third one, and goes long with a forehand. Isner wins the second set without going to the tie-breaker, 6-2. So far, Mahut just doesn't look like the imposing player he was last year. His serve hasn't been at all fearsome. 2:36: Sharapova has maintained her break advantage and leads Chakvetadze 4-2 in the first set. 2:34: Mahut and Isner hold serve and Isner's lead is at 5-2 in the second. Crunch time could be arriving sooner than anyone imagined in the rematch. 2:29: Isner holds serve and goes up 4-1 in the second set. This match is about 9 hours ahead of pace from their last one. 2:27: Mahut's double-fault presents Isner with a break-point opportunity. Then Mahut goes long. Isner goes up 3-1 in the second set and is in command. 2:24: Sharapova gets the early break and goes up 2-1 in the first set. 2:22: One thing to watch in the Sharapova match is that the wind has been gusting. That was a factor in her semifinal loss at the French Open. Her serve can be undone by the wind, because she goes for such a high toss. 2:18: Maria Sharapova is in the other headline match that's under way, on Court 1, against fellow Russian Anna Chakvetadze. Chakvetadze has been ranked as high as No. 5 in the world, but her match record this year is only 3-7. That's in part because she has been suffering dizzy spells. Another factor may be that she's still dealing with the aftermath of being a victim in a home invasion. 2:15: Mahut goes long with a backhand and Isner claims the first-set tie-breaker, 7-4. That took about 47 minutes. Anyone think this will last another 10 hours or so, like last time? 2:13: Isner gets to 6-1 with a drop volley. But Mahut saves two set points with his serves. Isner barely got a racket on the last two. 2:10: Isner grabs a 4-1 lead in the tie-breaker. Mahut went long with a backhand and then netted a smash. 2:06: Isner and Mahut are into their first tie-breaker. But only three aces apiece so far. 1:58: Still on serve in the first set of Mahut-Isner. Mahut is leading 5-4. For the record, this is the third time they've played, and they've split so far. 1:43: Here's a surprise. Isner and Mahut have both held serve so far, and the first set is at 2-2. Get ready for some tie-breakers. 1:24: The one marquee player left to go on court is Maria Sharapova. She'll face another Russian, Anna Chakvetakze, on Court 1, but it might be awhile. Robin Soderlin and Philipp Petzschner are in their second set there. 1:17: Ferrer completes his victory against Paire. That clears Court 3 for the Isner-Mahut sequel. They'll start warmups in a couple of minutes and then get going. 1:14: Blake's comeback hopes are dashed. Down 5-4 in the fifth set he has his serve broken by Baghdatis and is out of the tournament. Still have to give Blake credit for forcing five sets after losing the first two. 1:05: If you're waiting on the John Isner-Nicolas Mahut rematch, it's next up on Court 3. David Ferrer is close to closing out a victory there against Benoit Paire. 1:00: Oops. Blake has his comeback stalled as he gets his serve broken. That puts him at 3-3 in the fifth set. 12:57: James Blake has a great comeback in progress. He dropped the first two sets against Marcos Baghdatis but claimed the next two and is up 3-2 in the fifth. 12:45: Djokovic finally gives up a couple of points on serve, but still closes out the first set 6-4, against Jeremy Chardy. 12:43: Top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki no doubt will be pestered throughout the tournament about how she can be ranked No. 1 in the world despite never winning a grand slam event. That sentiment gained some steam today when Jelena Jankovic was dumped in the first round by Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez. Jankovic is a former No. 1 who never lived up to the billing in the slams. Her only trip to a final ended with a loss at the 2008 U.S. Open. She was never better than a semifinalist at the French and Australian Opens and the furthest she has gone at Wimbledon is the fourth round. 12:30: Novak Djokovic hasn't loss a point on serve yet while going 4-4 against Jeremy Chardy in the first set. He's been a bazooka out there so far. 12:08: The forecast says there's still a 60% chance of rain in London today, but right now the skies look pretty clear. So maybe Wimbledon will get through Day 2 without suffering another rain delay. 11:52: After working hard to claim the first two sets Federer breezes through the third against Kukushkin, 6-2, and moves on to the second round. 11:47: Wozniacki completes her demolition of the Spaniard and moves on to the second round with a 6-2, 6-1 victory. She's guaranteed to retain her No. 1 world ranking into August, but that status will be questioned until she wins her first major. 11:39: No. 1-seeded Caroline Wozniacki is minutes away from defeating Spain's Arantxa Parra Santonja. She won the first set 6-2 and leads in the second, 5-0. The star from Denmark had been enjoying wearing a jersey of Liverpool soccer player Steven Gerrard when she warms up. But Wimbledon has strict white-only rules on apparel, so she's out of luck in London. 11:27: Federer takes the second set, 6-4. He finished off the set with a 40-0 game. Looks like the wind is kicking up a bit. 11:11: Federer goes up a break in the second set, then holds off two break points and goes up 4-2. 10:52: Here's the link to Serena Williams' tearful interview with BBC, on You Tube. | Sports Competition | June 2011 | ['(ESPN)', '(The New York Times)', '(USA Today)'] |
U.S. Budget Approval — More than 100 religious activists were arrested on Wednesday after they staged a peaceful sit–in at the Cannon House Office Building, near the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. They were protesting the proposed cuts to health care and other social welfare programs in the Federal Budget. The protest was organized by Jim Wallis, editor of the liberal Christian journal Sojourners Magazine Washington Post SJMN | WASHINGTON - Christian activist the Rev. Jim Wallis told hundreds of religious protesters gathered near the Capitol Wednesday that there was a scandal this December, but it wasn't the conservative-stoked controversy about retailers and others using "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."
"The Christmas scandal is the budget out of this House of Representatives, a budget which is an assault on low-income people, on poor families," said Wallis, who was arrested by Capitol Hill police along with 113 other protesters - as they knew they would - for blocking the building's entrance.
Budget legislation under consideration by House members and senators has angered many religious people, who see caring for the poor as central to their faith, because of nearly $50 billion in spending cuts to programs such as food stamps and child care subsidies.
That anger has only been heightened by nearly $60 billion in tax cuts that are under consideration and critics say would largely benefit the wealthy.
So Wallis invoked the Christmas story of Mary who, upon being told she would give birth to Jesus, thanked God for, among other things, humbling the mighty and exalting the lowly. Wallis, leader of Sojourners, a Christian social justice group, did so to claim that Congress' budget violated a central message of that first Christmas.
"They are reversing Mary's priorities," Wallis said. "This budget and the tax cuts fill the rich with good things and sends the poor away hungry. That's why we're here."
For Wallis, a best-selling author who has argued that progressives have been passive and allowed conservatives to exploit faith as a highly potent political issue, the event was another chance to gain momentum in reclaiming the religious high ground in national policy debates. Wallis is the author of "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It."
In recent years, the moral ground has seemed to be held mainly by the religious right, whose members have placed issues of personal morality like abortion and gay marriage in the spotlight and helped determine elections as a result.
But Wallis and other progressive religious leaders who believe the poor have received short shrift hope that, by emphasizing the religious obligation to help the poor, they can reframe the debate.
At the same time, that might help lift the fortunes of Democrats who voters say are more concerned with poverty than Republicans are, but who have suffered political defeats because their party is perceived as being less hospitable to people of faith. In the last two presidential elections, Democrats lost - by significant margins - voters who considered themselves deeply religious, and this has been an issue many in the party said must be addressed if Democrats are to return to power in Congress or the White House.
"Arousing the nation's conscience is not an easy thing to do, but to the extent it does work I think it will help the Democrats because many of the people who would be influenced by that are likely to vote Democratic," said John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
"Some of them may have voted Republican in the last election because of the particular mix of issues, terrorism whatever," he said. "But if these questions of poverty and justice are couched in religious language, they may very well respond," though some voters concerned about poverty might still vote Republican but demand that programs that help the poor not be cut.
"The more you're able to inject your rhetoric, your agenda and your approach with the language of `it's immoral to have people living in poverty in this great country of ours,' the more you're going to be able to fight the slippage that the Democratic Party's been having since the Clinton era in terms of reaching out to middle America," said Laura Olsen, a political science professor at Clemson University in South Carolina.
She cited as a potential model former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who made poverty a central theme of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 before being named John Kerry's running mate. Now considering another presidential run, Edwards heads the Center of Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina Law School.
The appetite for such appeals seems to be growing. A Gallup poll conducted shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck found 75 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with the federal government's anti-poverty efforts. And that dissatisfaction has held fairly steady. Four years earlier, 71 percent of those polled felt similarly.
Wednesday's "vigil" in Washington was one of more than 70 held around the country to try to force the Republican-led Congress to back off the spending and tax cuts, according to Sojourners.
At times, Capitol Hill had the feel of a revival meeting in the frigid outdoors as the protesters gathered on the steps of the Cannon House Office Building. "Don't tell us about being faith-based, don't tell us about compassionate conservativism," said Frederick Haynes, pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church, a 10,000-member megachurch in Dallas.
"When our government stands before God Almighty, Jesus will say I was hungry but you cut food stamps," Haynes said. "I was thirsty but you cut Pell grants. When I needed surgery I was not part of your social class so I was denied access."
Along with the Catholic nuns and mainline Protestant ministers, the protesters arrested Wednesday included Christian evangelicals such as Wallis and Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, and Mary Nelson, a founder and former president of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community group based in Chicago.
Evangelicals, long known for being insular and focused on issues of personal morality rather than social justice, have recently been broadening their list of concerns to include poverty. The National Association of Evangelicals, for instance, earlier this year adopted a document that cited as among God's concerns "justice for the poor."
"I know that the God who demands of me that to live out my faith means to stand up for justice and to care for the poor and to walk with and to stand with those who are oppressed, I know that same God is demanding the same thing of our congresspersons ...," Nelson said at a press conference outside the House office building.
"I would issue a challenge to the congresspersons in this building and across the way to say come walk with me in my neighborhood," Nelson said. "Come talk to the folks in my neighborhood and they will tell you that they're working two jobs and falling farther behind. That they have kids who are sick and don't have health insurance. ... Then see if you can with good conscience vote for this budget and these tax cuts that are going to make it even worse." | Protest_Online Condemnation | December 2005 | [] |
An 11–year–old student opens fire at his school in Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico, killing a teacher and wounding six others before committing suicide. | At least two people have been killed and six injured after an 11-year-old boy entered a school in northern Mexico with two handguns and opened fire.
The shooting took place on Friday morning in the city of Torreón, in Coahuila state.
One of the dead was reportedly a female teacher, with some reports suggesting she had been the shooter’s target. The other was the shooter, who police said had killed himself.
A graphic photograph published by Mexican news outlets showed what appeared to be the body of a young boy splayed out in a pool of blood, with a handgun lying on the ground.
Police chief Maurilio Ochoa told reporters six people had been wounded – five schoolchildren and a teacher – with two in a “delicate” condition in hospital.
Ochoa said the shooter was believed to have entered his school with two weapons: a small-calibre handgun and a high-calibre weapon. The boy’s parents and grandmother, with whom he lived, had said they had no idea how he acquired the guns.
“This is really regrettable,” Ochoa said, as anxious parents gathered outside the school’s entrance. He suggested backpack searches might be needed to prevent future tragedies.
Torreón’s mayor, Jorge Zermeño, told reporters the causes of the attack were still unclear.
“They tell me he was a boy who had very good grades, who lives – lived – with his grandmother and who certainly suffered some kind of family problem.” He added: “It is very serious, so, so sad, and lamentable to see a primary school student do something like this.”
In an interview with the Mexican news channel Milenio TV, Zermeño called the shooting an “atypical situation” that did not speak to the “peaceful society” that was Torreón. “This is a city that likes to work and likes to live in peace,” he said.
Coahuila state’s governor, Miguel Ángel Riquelme, told reporters there were suspicions the shooter had been influenced by a video game called Natural Selection.
Before carrying out the shooting the boy – who has not been identified – reputedly told classmates: “Today is the day.”
Despite suffering some of the world’s highest murder rates, school shootings of the kind that blight the US remain relatively rare in Latin America.
In March last year eight students were gunned down in the city of Suzano in Brazil’s São Paulo state.
In 2011 a similar attack at a school in Rio de Janeiro claimed 12 lives.
One of the worst such attacks to take place in Mexico came in 2017 when a 15-year-old student killed himself after shooting four people at a school in the state of Nuevo León.
Mexico’s leftist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is battling a major drug-fuelled security crisis which saw more than 31,000 people murdered last year alone.
This year looks like being no less bloody: 41 people were murdered in the city of Tijuana in the first eight days of 2020 and more than 100 have died in Guanajuato state, according to local media reports. | Riot | January 2020 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Incumbent president of the Ivory Coast Alassane Ouattara is declared the victor of the latest presidential election which has been boycotted by the political opposition as a third term for Ouattara was deemed unconstitutional. The election was overshadowed by deadly clashes with at least 30 casualities. | Ivory Coast's electoral commission says President Alassane Ouattara has overwhelmingly won another term in office. His two main rivals had boycotted the vote and urged opposition supporters to stay home on election day. Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara has been reelected to a third term after securing 94.27% of the vote, the electoral commission announced Tuesday.
The president's victory in the October 31 election had been widely expected after two leading opposition figures called on their supporters to boycott the vote.
The commission said the final voter turnout was 53.90%, but the opposition claimed that only 10% of Ivorians took part.
The elections results must still be validated by the country's constitutional council.
Clashes surrounding the vote have claimed at least 30 lives in the West African country. There are also fears of a repeat of the election-related unrest that killed more than 3,000 people in 2010-2011, when then-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede defeat to Ouattara.
The European Union on Tuesday expressed "deep concern" over post-election tensions in Ivory Coast.
Chief EU diplomat Josep Borrell said: "The violence that resulted in several deaths and injuries must be independently investigated to ensure that justice is done without delay," in remarks carried by the news agency AFP.
The EU expected "all stakeholders" to promote reconciliation and resume dialogue, Borell said.
The two opposition candidates who boycotted the vote — former President Henri Konan Bedie and ex-Prime Minister Pascal Affi N'Guessan — have said they will not recognize Ouattara's victory.
They also vowed to create a rival "transitional government" that will work to hold "a fair, transparent and inclusive presidential election."
Ouattara, who has been in power for nearly a decade, initially announced he would not seek a third term in order to make way for a new generation. But he reversed that decision after his party's candidate died in July.
The opposition called the 78-year-old's reelection bid an illegal attempt to stay in power, given that the Ivorian constitution limits presidents to two terms. However, Ouattara maintains the two-term cap doesn't apply to him because of a constitutional amendment passed in 2016 that allowed him to restart his mandate.
An African Union observer mission said on Monday that the election was "generally satisfactory."
Meanwhile, a mission from the US watchdog Carter Center said the political and security situation made it difficult to organize a credible vote.
"The electoral process excluded a large number of Ivorian political forces and was boycotted by part of the population in a volatile security environment," it said in a statement. | Government Job change - Election | November 2020 | ['(DW)'] |
Doctors in Moscow are encouraged to use "less frightening" causes of death as the mortality rate from heatstroke soars with fires burning across Russia. | Doctors in Moscow are being told not to diagnose heatstroke as a cause of death after a jump in the mortality rate during the heatwave, Russia media say.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one doctor said the unofficial instruction being passed down was to use diagnoses that "sound less frightening".
A photo shows a note pinned up in a casualty area which reads "Attention! Do not diagnose heatstroke".
While wildfires continue to burn, temperatures are starting to drop.
The emergencies ministry reported that as of Thursday morning 66 major fires continued to burn across Russia, 40 of them in peat bogs, which are notoriously difficult to extinguish.
While wildfires continued to burn up to 100km (60 miles) away from the site of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine, experts said there was little danger of serious radioactive contamination.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the fires had destroyed a quarter of the agricultural land where cereals are grown.
Speaking in southern Russia at a meeting on stabilising the grain market, he said rises in the price of foodstuffs must be avoided. Russia has already suspended exports of wheat.
The number of people said to have been killed by the fires directly stands at 54 after two security personnel died fighting flames near the Sarov nuclear research centre in Nizhny Novgorod.
But little has been revealed officially about the number of people who succumbed to temperatures approaching 40C (104F) and choking smog from the fires.
National mortality figures for the summer have not been reported and when the city of Moscow revealed on Monday that its daily death rate had more than doubled, the federal government swiftly challenged the figures.
A nationwide opinion poll published on Thursday suggested that 75% of Russians believed the main effect of the heatwave had been to exacerbate health problems and push up the mortality rate.
"We have indeed been instructed to stop diagnosing heatstroke," a doctor told Interfax news agency.
"We were told that the figures for heatstroke in Moscow had gone off the scale."
Another doctor explained to the agency that there had been no formal ban: "Everything is done by word of mouth.
"Even though the heatwave is now abating, the informal instruction is in force until 1 September."
Moscow's healthcare department was not available for comment, Interfax added.
Russia's LifeNews website, which published the photo of the note, was similarly unable to get a response.
Upper temperatures in Moscow are forecast to fall just below 30C at the weekend, though this is still well above the August average of 22C.
The sky above the city was clear of smog on Thursday thanks to favourable winds and some success in fighting the wildfires.
"I can finally open the balcony door to let my cat warm in the sun," said economics student Yevgenia Lavrova, 21, told the Associated Press news agency. | Fire | August 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
Matthew Hedges, a British academic student studying at Durham University, is sentenced to life imprisonment in the United Arab Emirates after being convicted of spying. | A British academic who was accused of spying for the UK government in the United Arab Emirates after travelling to Dubai to conduct research has been sentenced to life in jail.
Matthew Hedges, 31, has been in a UAE prison for more than six months. The University of Durham PhD candidate went to the country to research his thesis and was sentenced at an Abu Dhabi court on Wednesday in a hearing that lasted less than five minutes, with no lawyer present.
His wife, Daniela Tejada, 27, who was present in the courtroom, said Hedges began shaking when the verdict was read out.
“I am in complete shock and I don’t know what to do,” she said. “Matthew is innocent. The Foreign Office know this and have made it clear to the UAE authorities that Matthew is not a spy for them.”
She said the case had been handled “appallingly” with no one taking it seriously.
“The British government must take a stand now for Matthew, one of their citizens,” she said. “They say that the UAE is an ally, but the overwhelmingly arbitrary handling of Matt’s case indicates a scarily different reality, for which Matt and I are being made to pay a devastatingly high price.”
Hedges was detained on 5 May at Dubai airport as he was leaving the country.
He was arrested after an Emirati man apparently reported him to the authorities for “asking sensitive questions about some sensitive departments” and “seeking to gather classified information on the UAE”.
Hedges’ family said he had all the correct documentation in order to enter the UAE and was researching aspects of the UAE’s foreign and domestic security strategy, including the war in Yemen.
However, the UAE’s attorney general, Hamad al-Shamsi, said in a statement to the official news agency WAM that Hedges had confessed to the charges against him. There is no independent confirmation of this claim. Hedges was taken to court in Abu Dhabi twice in October, with the case being adjourned both times.
It was only after his third court appearance that he was allowed any legal representation. Shamsi said Hedges was accused of “spying for a foreign country, jeopardising the military, political and economic security of the state”.
He added that the ruling “was not final” as Hedges has the right to appeal against the verdict before the federal supreme court.
Hedges has denied the charges, and maintains he was in the country to research the impact of the Arab spring on the UAE’s foreign policy.
Tejada boarded a plane to the UK on Wednesday where she was due to meet with the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on Thursday to discuss the case.
Hunt tweeted on Wednesday:
News on Matthew Hedges extremely worrying. We have seen no evidence to back up charges against him. FCO will do ALL we can to get him home & I will meet his wife Daniela tmrw. UAE claim to be friend & ally of the UK so there will be serious diplomatic consequences. Unacceptable.
At prime minister’s questions in the Commons on Wednesday, Theresa May said she was “deeply disappointed and concerned” about the case and would be raising it with the Emirati authorities.
“The Foreign Office will remain in close contact with Matthew, his family and his lawyer,” she told MPs. “We will continue to do all we can to support them as they consider the next steps and we will continue to press this matter at the highest level with the Emiratis.”
The angry British reaction to the sentence places Hunt, a relatively inexperienced foreign secretary, at odds on human rights issues with three of the most powerful countries in the Middle East – Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Hunt placed the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe at the heart of his visit to Iran this week. He is also privately appalled by Donald Trump’s decision to give a free pass to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, endorsed or covered up by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Few in the Foreign Office expected Hedges – at worst naïve, and at best innocent – to be given a life sentence for trying to carry out academic research into the UAE’s security politics.
The UAE for its part insists that when being cross-examined Hedges had pleaded guilty to all the charges laid against him. But there have been questions over the value of any confession given after many months in detention, largely in isolation.
Diplomatic relations between the UK and UAE are generally warm, and Hunt raised the Hedges case when he was in Dubai last week. The UAE’s foreign minister, Anwar Gargash, is a frequent and eloquent exponent of his country’s position during frequent visits to London, and he is widely respected.
But he has been one of the most staunch defenders of the UAE judiciary in this case, claiming that as a result of their investigations “unusual and embarrassing revelations about friends and allies had come to light”.
The UK will hope that the courts would relent on appeal, but for Hunt this is likely to be a test case if he is not released. He knows he is taking a risk by highlighting human rights cases, but feels determined to put ethics alongside commerce.
Hedges, who is originally from Exeter, had been in the country for two weeks when he was arrested.
His family have said he spent more than five and a half months in solitary confinement after his arrest, with no indication of the reason for his detention.
Tejada said that during the first six weeks he was interrogated without a lawyer or consular access, and held in “inhuman” conditions under which his mental health deteriorated. During this time he was allegedly made to sign a document in Arabic which it has now been disclosed was a confession statement. Hedges does not speak or read Arabic.
Prof John Williams, the head of the University of Durham’s school of government and international affairs where Hedges has been studying for his PhD, told the BBC: “We’re desperately worried about Matt’s welfare. He’s an innocent man – he’s been subjected to a terrible period of detention. The process of the trial has lacked any legitimacy or credibility, and his health is not good … We all hope, above everything else, that he will be home very soon.”Hedges’ friend and fellow academic Cinzia Bianco told the Guardian he had chosen to study the UAE because he had spent part of his childhood in the country and his father still lived there.
She said: “Matthew considered the UAE even safer and closer to him because he has personal connections out there, so this has been incredibly shocking.
“We are even more outraged because this could happen to any of us. It could happen to me next month when I am conducting my own field work.”
She explained that Hedges would have had an initial contact in the UAE and would have made more connections during his work.
“You never know who you are going to speak to when you go out,” she said. “It is more of a connection on the ground and it leads to other people so you can’t get approval for every person that you are going to meet.” | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | November 2018 | ['(BBC)', '(The Guardian)'] |
69–year–old Spanish tenor opera star Plácido Domingo returns to the stage at Milan's Teatro alla Scala weeks after colorectal cancer surgery. | Opera star Placido Domingo has returned to the stage just weeks after surgery to treat colon cancer. The 69-year-old tenor is appearing in six performances of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra at the famous Milan's Teatro alla Scala Anna Holligan reports. What are these? | Famous Person - Recovered | April 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
4.1–magnitude earthquake jolts northern Chinese city of Tangshan. | BEIJING, April 9 (Xinhua) -- A 4.1-magnitude earthquake jolted the northern Chinese city of Tangshan in Hebei Province late Friday afternoon,the China Earthquake Administration said. No casualties or property damage was reported. The quake struck the city's Fengnan District at 6:51 p.m. with a depth of about 13 km. The epicenter is calculated to be 39.5 degrees north and 118.2 east, the China Earthquake Administration said. A local resident told Xinhua he felt the floor under his feet suddenly began to shake when the quake hit. The tremor was also felt in parts of the neighboring port city of Tianjin, as many residents rushed out of their homes into the street. "The sound of the ground shaking was like the rumbling of heavy trucks, which reminded me of the Tangshang earthquake more than 30 years ago," resident Ren Lihua, in her 40s, told Xinhua. A 7.8-magnitude quake struck Tangshan in 1976, taking more than 240,000 lives. "The tables and chairs shook violently," said Ren, who was eating dinner with friends at a small restaurant in northeast Tianjin's Ninghe County. Two quakes, measuring 3.1 and 4.2 on the Richter scale, jolted Tangshan's Luanxian County on March 6 this year, and experts said they were aftershocks from the 1976 quake. | Earthquakes | April 2010 | ['(Sina)'] |
Two Saudi soldiers are killed and five wounded killed in fighting with Houthi rebels in northern Yemen. Archived 20110707 at the Wayback Machine | Jizan, Asharq Al-Awsat- An authoritative Saudi military source has asserted to Asharq al-Awsat that Saudi forces discovered during their ongoing mopping up operations in the border strip, hideouts and hidden weapons caches for the infiltrators.
According to the source, one of the Saudi military positions in the border strip discovered that its communications were being jammed and this prompted its soldiers to carry out combing operations in the area, which resulted in the seizure of a group of infiltrators who had in their possession maps of the Saudi positions, listening and decoding devices, a laptop, in addition to various kinds of weapons.
The Saudi Air Force continued its raids on positions used by the infiltrators in the Razih, Al-Qalah, and Shada mountains in the border strip while army units continued their deployment in the area to monitor the infiltrators' movements who usually hide during the day and attempt their infiltrations again at night and this is the period when Saudi soldiers succeed in capturing them. The Saudi Air force is concentrating its air raids on the border strip villages after the Saudi forces monitored several small groups distributed among several villages and their attempt to use their empty buildings for sniping operations against Saudi soldiers during the night.
In the same context, the armed forces' commands issued orders to the remaining population in Al-Rahah, Al-Awmah, Umm al-Daraq, Salah, Al-Qusaybat, Umm al-Qubur, and several other villages near the borders with Yemen to evacuate them completely to protect their lives and because the area was already declared a military zone. A small number of these villages' inhabitants refused to leave and stayed in their houses but the recent orders forced them to leave and coordinate with their relatives, acquaintances, and official quarters to obtain residential apartments close to their villages. In a related note, authoritative medical sources disclosed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the general hospital in Samitah in Jazan area received at dawn yesterday the bodies of two soldiers in addition to five casualties, one of which was in a critical condition and transferred to the King Fahd Central Hospital. The sources said the two dead soldiers are Ahmad Bin-Said al-Umari and Abdullah Kalandar al-Abdali. Military sources said these casualties and deaths were the result of an attack late on Friday night by elements which infiltrated the Jabal Dokhan area where the Saudi forces were carrying out constant combing operations of the border strip to prevent the infiltrators from entering Saudi territories from the Yemeni side. | Armed Conflict | November 2009 | ['(Press TV)', '(AlSharq alAwsat)', '(AFP)'] |
Former millionaire Chisako Kakehi (also known as Japan's "Black Widow") is sentenced to death for the murder of 3 men which included a husband. , | A 70-year-old Japanese woman has been sentenced to death for the murder of three men, one of whom was her husband, and the attempted murder of another.
Chisako Kakehi is accused of using cyanide to kill her lovers and make millions from insurance payouts. Her lawyers plan to appeal the sentence.
Prosecutors said she targeted wealthy men who were mostly elderly or sick. She became known in Japanese media as the Black Widow, after the female spider which kills its mates after sex.
Kyoto District Court ruled that Chisako Kakehi used cyanide "with a murderous intention" in the four cases, and that she should be held responsible for the crimes even though she had been diagnosed with dementia.
"The cases were well prepared in advance. They were cunning and malicious. I have no choice but to impose the ultimate penalty," Judge Ayako Nakagawa said.
Kakehi, who was wearing a hearing aid and asked the judge to speak loudly during the proceedings, showed no emotion when the sentence was handed down.
Ms Kakehi was accused of murdering her fourth husband, 75-year-old Isao Kakehi, on 28 December 2013, a month after they got married. She was also accused of killing two other boyfriends, aged between 70 and 80, and the attempted murder and robbery of another boyfriend - who later died of cancer - between 2007 and 2013.
The trial heard that she had joined matchmaking services in which she had specifically requested to meet men who were rich and childless.
She reportedly inherited around one billion yen ($8.8 million) in all, although she later lost some of it through the stock market. During the 135 day trial Kakehi appeared to admit killing Isao Kakehi, saying he had not treated her well financially, but later retracted it.
Her lawyers said at the time that her testimony could not be trusted because of her dementia. They have appealed against the death sentence to a higher court, arguing that her dementia means she cannot be held criminally liable. The high profile case saw over 560 people queue to get into the Kyoto courtroom to witness the outcome of the marathon trial.
It is the second-longest court case involving a jury since 2009, when Japan introduced a joint judge-jury system.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | November 2017 | ['(AFP via MSN)', '(BBC)'] |
Jean Castex is appointed Prime Minister of France by President Emmanuel Macron following the resignation of Édouard Philippe and amid speculation of a possible cabinet reshuffle. | French President Emmanuel Macron has named a new prime minister ahead of a major cabinet reshuffle.
Jean Castex was appointed to the job Friday, after former prime minister Edouard Philippe handed in his resignation earlier in the day.
Castex, a center-right politician like Philippe, had already been involved with the government after he was enlisted in April to help with its de-confinement plans.
In a statement Friday, Macron’s office said Philippe had handed in the resignation of the government, but that the current cabinet would remain in charge of governmental affairs until a new team was put in place.
In France, the president — the main political figure — selects the prime minister, who then forms the government. As such, the resignation paves the way for a cabinet reshuffle.
It comes after speculation that Macron was preparing a reshuffle to focus on the economic recovery post-coronavirus. Macron needed to decide whether or not Philippe should go, given that the prime minister had become more popular among the electorate in the aftermath of the pandemic than the president himself.
Macron will face a new presidential election in 2022 and the remainder of his mandate is likely to be heavily impacted by the ongoing health and economic crises.
Speaking earlier this month, Macron said: “With this epidemic, the global economy has come to a virtual standstill. Our first priority will be to rebuild an economy that is strong, ecological, sovereign and united.”
“The room for policy manouver is limited,” Tomasz Michalski, associate professor at the H.E.C. Business school in Paris, said via email.
“The economic measures introduced during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. worker furloughing schemes) adjourned the economic problems that are going to be felt strongly in the Fall with massive layoffs that are being prepared, bankruptcies and an ever more indebted French state.”
The French central bank said in June that it expects the country’s economy to contract by 10.3% this year, before returning to growth in 2021 and 2022.
“President Macron may need to extend social security programs even further to avoid mass protests. He might also need to raise taxes. In this context, as a counterpart, he wishes to complete the pension reform started over a year ago: to be able to claim that he fulfilled some of his campaign promises and repaired the French state for many years to come,” Michalski added.
Macron was elected in 2017 on a pro-European platform and reformist agenda, promising to make France’s labor market less rigid. He created his own centrist party, La Republique En Marche!, as an alternative to the conservative Les Republicains and left-wing Socialist Party — the two mainstream groups that had dominated French politics until then. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | July 2020 | ['(CNBC)', '(Politico)'] |
The first case of COVID-19 is confirmed in Ireland, Qatar and Luxembourg. | A case of the coronavirus has been confirmed in the east of Ireland, according to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre.
The patient, a man?in the eastern part of the country, is?receiving appropriate medical care,?according to the?HPSC.
It?said the patient was identified and tested in line with established protocols for the investigation of suspect cases of Covid-19.
The case is associated with travel from an affected area in northern Italy, rather than contact with another confirmed case.
The Director of the HPSC said efforts are under way to identify and locate people who came into close contact with the?man.
Dr John Cuddihy said the "contact tracing process has commenced" but he said it is "too early to know the detail" of how many people came into close contact with the man.
He said the work will involve identifying "all stages of the journey" made by the man and "it might include a variety of different settings."
Dr Cuddihy said "it is a process and we are being very thorough, so it will take some time, but the people who need to be notified will be notified" and given the necessary advice.
The Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health said "the procedures that are now kicking into place take some time, which is not to say that they don't happen with any degree of urgency".
Dr Tony Holohan said "significant numbers of public health doctors are now mobilised in relation to this case" as part of the effort to identify and locate people.
Dr Holohan would not be drawn on whether the man had been on the same flight as a woman who was diagnosed with Covid-19 in Northern Ireland earlier this week.
However, he said the case is associated with travel from an affected area of northern Italy, as opposed to contact with another confirmed case.
He also said they "won't be confirming" if the man used public transport but he said if it was used, it will form part of the contact tracing by the public health authorities and if people need to be followed-up, that will happen.
Dr Holohan said the reason that certain details are not being released is in order to protect the confidentiality of the patient.
"We have nothing to hide, but we have something to protect," he added.
He said "we have been preparing for this eventuality for months" adding that?shows the policies and procedures in place here have worked.
More cases expected
Deputy Chief Medical Officer?Dr Ronan Glynn?said the man being treated is "in the care of health service staff" and is not at home self-isolating.
He said "all the receiving hospitals have isolation rooms in place and are in a position to assess and treat a case as necessary.
Dr Glynn said?a case in the Republic of Ireland "is not a surprise and is not unexpected."
He said "it changes nothing in terms of our approach", adding that the country remains in a containment phase.
Dr Holohan said?he expects "there will be further cases" and that "we have a high likelihood of containing the cases" with the infection prevention control measures that are in place.
However, he said, based on advice from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, planning is also under way to deal with any spread of the coronavirus here.
He said the ECDC has categorised the likelihood of a widespread community transmission, similar to what happened in Italy, as moderate to high elsewhere in Europe.
Dr?Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer with the Department of Health, speaks at a press briefing tonight after the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the Republic | Read more: https://t.co/och2EC7QGS pic.twitter.com/VnDFHbj2dS
Earlier, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Mr Harris?held a conference call with their counterparts in Northern Ireland regarding the coronavirus.
They?joined Ireland's Deputy Chief Medical Officer to speak to Northern Ireland's First Minister Arlene Foster, Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill, Health Minister Robin Swann, and the Northern Ireland Chief Medical Officer.
They discussed the situation regarding the virus on the island of Ireland, and also internationally, and noted the good cooperation in place between authorities North and South.
All agreed to continue with their close cooperation and to remain in close contact in the period ahead.
Govt urged to focus on national planning over virus
Meanwhile, a?healthcare expert from the Royal College of Surgeons said the urgency of Covid-19 merits the cessation of government formation talks and for political leaders to instead focus on national planning to deal with an outbreak of the virus here.
Professor Sam McConkey, Associate Professor of International Health/Tropical Medicine at RCSI, said he believes a higher level of planning, including the re-allocation of staff and funds to negotiate what is happening with coronavirus, is required.
Prof McConkey said?the Government needs to make the public health concerns a top priority and liaise with all government departments about measures needed to limit the spread of the virus.?
He said civil servants in the Department of Agriculture need to consider quarantine measures in the event of a widespread outbreak in Ireland.
Prof McConkey?also said that an '"open, transparent national discussion" should take place to decide upon "acceptable levels of social control and social distancing" as Irish people are not used to being told what they can and cannot do.
He said the spread of the virus onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship and across northern Italy showed that efforts to contain the spread had failed.
He said?the "draconian measures" of mass quarantine and social distancing in China?seem to have reduced the spread of the virus so Ireland needs to consider how best to approach an outbreak here.?
The chief executive of the Irish Tourism Industry Federation has called for a "prudent but proportionate" response to Covid-19 as he expressed hope it would not affect the St Patrick's Day festival.
Eoghan O'Mara Walsh said the festival is "fundamentally important at shining a favourable spotlight on Ireland Inc" for trade and culture.?
He said that public health must come first but he has his "fingers crossed" that the festival will go?ahead.
Meanwhile, three more patients from England have tested positive for coronavirus, bringing?the total number of UK cases to 23. | Disease Outbreaks | February 2020 | ['(RTE.ie)', '(Reuters)', '(Al Jazeera)'] |
Protests have erupted in the Kenosha, Wisconsin after police shot a black man, Jacob Blake, many times while responding to what they claimed was a domestic incident. An online video shows Blake being shot in the back in broad daylight as he tries to get into a car. Authorities declared an emergency overnight curfew after unrest broke out following the shooting. Vehicles were set on fire and protesters shouted "We won't back down". | Protests have erupted in the US state of Wisconsin after police shot a black man many times while responding to what they said was a domestic incident.
The man, identified as Jacob Blake, was taken to hospital for surgery and is now in intensive care, his family said. Video posted online appears to show Mr Blake being shot in the back as he tries to get into a car in Kenosha.
Authorities in the city declared an emergency overnight curfew after unrest broke out following the shooting. Hundreds of people marched on police headquarters on Sunday night. Vehicles were set on fire and protesters shouted "We won't back down". In a public safety alert, police urged 24-hour businesses to consider closing because of "numerous" calls about armed robberies and shots being fired. On Twitter, President Donald Trump's son Donald Trump Jr decried the protests as "anarchy", and reposted a series of videos depicting burning buildings and cars, purportedly filmed in Kenosha. Officers used tear gas to try to disperse hundreds of protesters who defied the county-wide curfew, which is in place until 07:00 on Monday (12:00 GMT).
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers condemned the shooting of Mr Blake, who was reportedly unarmed.
"While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country," he said in a statement. "I have said all along that although we must offer our empathy, equally important is our action. In the coming days, we will demand just that of elected officials in our state who have failed to recognise the racism in our state and our country for far too long."
This is 29-year-old Jacob Blake who was shot by Kenosha police. His fiancé shared this picture with us.
Jacob Blake's name was trending on social media and thousands signed a petition calling for the officers involved to be charged. He is now out of surgery and in stable condition, according to family and friends on social media. The shooting comes amid heightened tensions in the US over racism and police brutality following the death of African-American man George Floyd earlier this year.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Monday released a statement calling for a "full and transparent investigation" of the shooting. "This morning, the nation wakes up yet again with grief and outrage that yet another Black American is a victim of excessive force," Mr Biden said. "The officers must be held accountable."
Kenosha Police Department said the "officer involved shooting" happened shortly after 17:00 on Sunday. It added that officers had provided "immediate aid" to Mr Blake, who was taken to a hospital in Milwaukee in serious condition. It said police had been responding to a "domestic incident" but gave no details about what led to the shooting. It is so far unclear who called police and what happened before the video recording began. The Wisconsin Department of Justice is investigating the incident. It said the officers involved had been placed on administrative leave. As of Monday morning local time, more than 18,000 people had signed a petition on change.org calling for the officers involved to be charged. In video footage shared on social media, three officers can be seen pointing their weapons at a man identified as Mr Blake as he walks around a parked SUV. As he opens the door and leans into the car, one officer can be seen grabbing his shirt and opening fire. Seven shots can be heard in the video, as witnesses shout and scream. The officers involved have not been officially named. Prominent civil rights lawyer Ben Crump told CNN that Mr Blake's family had reached out to him for assistance.
In a tweet, he said Mr Blake's three sons were in the car he was getting into when he was shot.
"They saw a cop shoot their father. They will be traumatized forever. We cannot let officers violate their duty to PROTECT us," he wrote. He said the shooting happened after Mr Blake tried to break up a fight between two women.
Witnesses also told local news site Kenosha News that Mr Blake had tried to break up a fight between two women and that police had attempted to use a Taser on him prior to the shooting. Clyde McLemore, a spokesman with a nearby chapter of Black Lives Matter, told reporters "the frustration is boiling to the top and we're sick and tired".
Black Lives Matter protests were held across the US and around the world after African-American man George Floyd was killed in police custody in Wisconsin's neighbouring state of Minnesota in May. A white police officer knelt on Mr Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes before he died. The officer, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with murder.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | August 2020 | ['(BBC)'] |
2013 Tiananmen Square incident: Police in China name two suspects from Xinjiang linked to an apparent suicide attack car crash outside the Forbidden City on Tiananmen Square in the capital Beijing. | Police in China have named two suspects linked to a "major incident" in Beijing, after a deadly car crash in Tiananmen Square, state media report.
The vehicle crashed into a crowd and burst into flames, killing five people. Police subsequently issued a notice to hotels in Beijing seeking information about two people from Xinjiang province, Chinese media said.
The note also described a vehicle and four number plates from Xinjiang, the scene of sporadic violent incidents.
State-run Xinhua news agency said that of the five people who died on Monday, three people died inside the car.
A tourist from the Philippines and a tourist from Guangdong province were also killed. Another 38 people were injured, including three tourists from the Philippines and one from Japan, police said. "We thought the jeep was heading for us, and my mother and I had no way to run from it. So we didn't move," said eyewitness Wang Dake, who was sent to hospital with shock and a knee injury.
"I thought that if the car was going to hit us, then we would die right there. But it hit the marble railing and didn't hit us," he added.
An unnamed tourist from Zhejiang province told China's state-controlled Global Times: "The vehicle ran very fast. I could hear people screaming all the way while the vehicle ploughed through the crowds."
Police cars were chasing the car before it crashed, she added.
Police shut down the scene of the incident - at the north end of the square at an entrance to the Forbidden City - shortly after it occurred, temporarily closing a subway station and a road. A BBC crew attempting to record footage at the location were briefly detained, while on Chinese social media some pictures of the scene appeared to be quickly deleted and comments were heavily censored. There has been no official statement on the cause of the incident. "A major incident has taken place on Monday," the police notice said, without specifying what. It named two residents from Xinjiang's Pishan and Shanshan counties as suspects. The notice, unconfirmed images of which have been widely circulated on Chinese social media, also asked hotels to look out for "suspicious guests" and vehicles.
Global Times said it had confirmation from the Beijing police that the notice was genuine, although police did not comment on the "major incident" itself.
Zhao Fuzhou, a security official at Beijing's Xinjiang Dasha hotel, said that police had circulated a notice to hotels searching for information about two suspects with Uighur names, AP news agency reported. Xinjiang is home to the minority Muslim Uighur group, some of whom complain of cultural and religious repression under Beijing's rule. There have been sporadic outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang, including in both Pishan and Shanshan counties. China says it grants the Uighurs wide-ranging freedoms.
In June, riots in Xingjian's Turpan prefecture, which is in Shanshan county, killed 27 people. State media said police opened fire after a mob armed with knives attacked police stations and a local government building. In April another incident in the city of Kashgar left 21 people dead. The government said the violence was linked to terrorist activity, but local people told the BBC it involved a local family who had a longstanding dispute with officials over religious freedom.
One unconfirmed report said that the authorities suspected that Monday's incident was a suicide attack. Reuters news agency reported that an unnamed source with ties to the leadership had said that the crash looked "like a premeditated suicide attack".
On Tuesday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman declined to say whether the incident was a suicide attack. "The relevant Chinese departments and authorities are carrying out an investigation into the incident," she said.
"At the same time, we admit that there are cases of violence and terror in some specific areas of Xinjiang," she said, adding that the government was resolutely opposed to acts of violence and terror.
If evidence of a Uighur link to the car blaze is confirmed, it would be the first time that such groups have carried out an attack in Beijing, correspondents say.
The BBC's Damian Grammaticas in Beijing says this would have serious repercussions for Xinjiang and the Chinese state, and would add to a sense that there really are serious troubles beneath the surface there.
Tiananmen Square is a highly sensitive site due to its link to China's 1989 pro-democracy protests, which were ended by a military crackdown.
The square is generally kept under very tight security both because of its proximity to key political institutions and so that is does not serve as a hub for protesters and petitioners, although incidents have nonetheless occurred there before. | Road Crash | October 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
U.S. President Donald Trump says that the United States will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a 1987 nuclear arms treaty with Russia. |
Donald Trump has confirmed the US will leave an arms control treaty with Russia dating from the cold war that has kept nuclear missiles out of Europe for three decades.
“We’ll have to develop those weapons,” the president told reporters in Nevada after a rally. “We’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out.”
Trump was referring to the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF), which banned ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500km to 5,500km. Signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, it led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being eliminated, and an end to a dangerous standoff between US Pershing and cruise missiles and Soviet SS-20 missiles in Europe.
The Guardian reported on Friday that Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, a longstanding opponent of arms control treaties, was pushing for US withdrawal. The US says Russia has been violating the INF agreement with the development and deployment of a new cruise missile. Under the terms of the treaty, it would take six months for US withdrawal to take effect.
US hawks have also argued that the INF treaty ties the country’s hands in its strategic rivalry with China in the Pacific, with no response to Chinese medium-range missiles that could threaten US bases, allies and shipping.
Bolton and the top arms control adviser in the National Security Council (NSC), Tim Morrison, are also opposed to the extension of another major pillar of arms control, the 2010 New Start agreement with Russia, which limited the number of deployed strategic warheads on either side to 1,550. That agreement, signed by Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, then president of Russia, is due to expire in 2021.
“This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s,” said Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute. “If the INF treaty collapses, and with the New Start treaty on strategic arms due to expire in 2021, the world could be left without any limits on the nuclear arsenals of nuclear states for the first time since 1972.”
Speaking to reporters in Nevada, Trump said: “Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years and I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out.
“We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and do weapons and we’re not allowed to. We’re the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honoured the agreement but Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement, we’re going to pull out.”
Asked to clarify, the president said: “Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and they say, ‘Let’s all of us get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons,’ but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable. So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with with our military.”
Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said: “This is a colossal mistake. Russia gets to violate the treaty and Trump takes the blame.
“I doubt very much that the US will deploy much that would have been prohibited by the treaty. Russia, though, will go gangbusters.”
Russian state news agencies on Saturday cited a foreign ministry source as saying Washington’s move to pull out of the treaty is motivated by a dream of a single global superpower.
“The main motive is a dream of a unipolar world. Will it come true? No,” a foreign ministry source told Ria Novosti state news agency.
The official said that Russia has “many times publicly denounced the US policy course towards dismantling the nuclear deal”.
Washington “has approached this step over the course of many years by deliberately and step-by-step destroying the basis for the agreement,” the official said, quoted by Russia’s three main news agencies.
“This decision is part of the US policy course to withdraw from those international legal agreements that place equal responsibilities on it and its partners and make vulnerable its concept of its own ‘exceptionalism’.”
Russian senator Alexei Pushkov wrote on Twitter that the move was “the second powerful blow against the whole system of strategic stability in the world, with the first being Washington’s 2001 withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty”.
“And again the initiator of the dissolution of the agreement is the US,” Pushkov wrote.
The Pentagon has been generally supportive of the INF treaty but defense secretary James Mattis warned other Nato ministers earlier this month it would no longer be tenable if Russia did not withdraw its Novator ground-based missile, which the US has argued for nearly four years violates the INF range restrictions.
Nato ministers issued a joint statement saying the INF agreement “has been crucial to Euro-Atlantic security and we remain fully committed to the preservation of this landmark arms control treaty”. But they urged Russia to come clean about the capabilities of its new missile.
The Chinese arsenal has also been a source of concern for the US Pacific Command. Its former commander, Adm Harry Harris, told the Senate in March: “We have no ground-based capability that can threaten China because of, among other things, our rigid adherence, and rightfully so, to the treaty that we sign on to, the INF treaty.”
Lewis disagreed that the INF leaves the US at a significant disadvantage in the Pacific.
“The China stuff is nonsense,” he said. “INF does not prohibit sea- and air-based systems, not does it prohibit South Korea and Japan from developing long-range missiles. If China were a real problem, the US and its allies could have acted long ago.”
Alexandra Bell, a former senior state department official and now senior policy director at the Centre for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, said: “When problems arise in arms control, you work and fix them.
“What shocks me is that this president who is constantly telling us he is deal-maker has failed utterly to save Reagan’s nuclear legacy. He did nothing with his relationship with Putin. There were trades to be made to fix this treaty and he couldn’t pull it off.”
She added: “Why would the North Koreans have any reason to believe in any deal made with this president, with Bolton whispering in his ear.” | Sign Agreement | October 2018 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
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