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A humanitarian ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh breaks down shortly after coming into effect, with both Armenia and Azerbaijan blaming each other for violating the truce. | Third attempt at halting fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict collapsed, both sides trading accusations of violating truce.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have accused each other of violating a new “humanitarian ceasefire” in the conflict over the mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh shortly after it had been due to take effect on Monday.
On Sunday, a joint statement from the US Department of State and the two governments said the truce would take effect at 8am (04:00 GMT) on Monday, adding that US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun had met the foreign ministers of the two countries on Saturday.
On Monday, Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said Armenian forces shelled villages in the Terter and Lachin regions in “gross violation” of the truce.
Hikmet Hajiyev, aide to Azerbaijan’s president, said Armenian forces began their artillery attacks minutes after the truce began.
PM of Armenia is lying over again. Since 08.04 armed forces of Armenia started shelling Tartar region and its villages in violation of humanitarian ceasefire. As reported by MOD Azerbaijan armed forces of Armenia with artillery and mine launchers attacking our forces since 08.05 pic.twitter.com/PJifjN0G4N
— Hikmet Hajiyev (@HikmetHajiyev) October 26, 2020
Nagorno-Karabakh’s defence ministry said Hajiyev’s claim was “misinformation” and that Azeri forces had launched a missile attack on Armenian military positions on the northeastern side of the line of contact.
Armenia’s defence ministry said Azerbaijani forces “grossly violated” the agreement with artillery fire on combat positions in various parts of the front line, 45 minutes after the truce came into effect.
An earlier truce brought a brief lull on Saturday before each side accused the other of violating it.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a bitter conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a part of Azerbaijan populated and controlled by ethnic Armenians, for decades.
Ethnic Armenians in the region declared independence as the Soviet Union was collapsing in 1991, kicking off a war that killed some 30,000 people from 1991 to 1994 and left Nagorno-Karabakh outside Baku’s control.
Armenians regard the enclave as part of their historic homeland; Azeris consider it illegally occupied land that must be returned to their control.
A fragile ceasefire has existed since then but heavy fighting flared up again on September 27.
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More than 1,000 people have been reported dead in the fighting, mainly Armenian fighters but also dozens of civilians. Azerbaijan has not released any figures on its military casualties.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that close to 5,000 people had been killed in the conflict.
Russia, France and the US are leaders of the Minsk Group, formed to mediate the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which has failed since the 1990s to bring about a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
This year’s fighting is the heaviest since the 1994 ceasefire, raising fears that Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey and Russia, which has a military alliance with Armenia, could be further drawn into the conflict.
The latest truce will take effect on Monday morning, according to a joint statement by the US, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Rivals use official social media accounts to ramp up rhetoric and deny claims of attacks, but can either be believed?
The Take explores the depths of conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
| Tear Up Agreement | October 2020 | ['(Al Jazeera)'] |
During protests, Hong Kong groups organize to put pressure on the United Kingdom, asking for help to uphold the city-state's legal rights. The Joint Agreement of 1997 signed by the UK and China outlines that Hong Kong will have legislative and judiciary independence, based on systems implemented there under British rule. | Group is using social media to target British politicians to remind them of responsibilities to former colony
Chris, one of thousands who have been protesting in Hong Kong over the past seven weeks, is on what he calls the “keyboard frontline”. The twentysomething Hongkonger, who uses an alias for security reasons, is fielding phone calls on the final version of an advert he and other protesters are placing in a paper the next day. He looks over the final cut of a video, going out in 20 minutes. He has two phones, one for his daily use and another that he takes to the protests in case it gets damaged in the chaos.
Chris is part of a group that calls itself StandwithHK, which has launched a media blitz aimed at the UK, calling on British residents to defend their country’s former colony, Hong Kong. Full-page adverts appeared in major British newspapers, including the Guardian, while videos were launched on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. A flashmob was held in Trafalgar Square. An online petition automatically sends a letter to one’s MP, based on the postcode given. On Sunday, protesters plan to hold rallies around the UK.
StandwithHK is a loose group of protesters who describe themselves as “concerned Hongkongers from around the world”. Chris sums up their goal: “The question that we would like to ask UK politicians is: ‘Why haven’t you been doing more? Why?’”
The group’s slickly produced ads and videos focus on a historical document signed by Margaret Thatcher and the former Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang in 1984, called the Joint Declaration. The goal is to remind the UK of its legal and moral responsibilities to Hong Kong, a British colony for 156 years before it was returned to Chinese control in 1997.
The Joint Declaration promised Hong Kong could keep the legal and political system inherited from the British. Under the agreement, Hong Kong would maintain a “high degree of autonomy” through an independent judiciary, a free press and an open market economy, a framework known as: “One country two systems.”
But, over the years, Chinese influence over Hong Kong has grown, with its government and legislature tilted in favour of Beijing. Education, publishing and the media have all come under pressure.
After a bill was put forward to allow extradition to China, a change that critics say would undermine Hong Kong’s judicial system and leave anyone up for grabs by the Chinese state, relatively moderate Hongkongers, a group Chris once counted himself among, came out to the streets.
“I would face 100 charges here rather than face a single charge in China,” he said. “I basically have no confidence in the Chinese legal system. They could do anything to me.”
Earlier this month, someone floated the idea of targeting the UK and its role as a signatory to the Joint Declaration. In less than a day, they raised approximately £320,000 from 9,519 donors and, within a few weeks, the campaign was launched. The group has writers, designers, social media managers, animators, accountants and lawyers to advise on Hong Kong and UK law.”
Why are people protesting?
The protests were triggered by a controversial bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, where the Communist party controls the courts, but have since evolved into a broader pro-democracy movement.
Public anger – fuelled by the aggressive tactics used by the police against demonstrators – has collided with years of frustration over worsening inequality and the cost of living in one of the world's most expensive, densely populated cities.
The protest movement was given fresh impetus on 21 July when gangs of men attacked protesters and commuters at a mass transit station – while authorities seemingly did little to intervene.
Underlying the movement is a push for full democracy in the city, whose leader is chosen by a committee dominated by a pro-Beijing establishment rather than by direct elections.
Protesters have vowed to keep their movement going until their core demands are met, such as the resignation of the city’s leader, Carrie Lam, an independent inquiry into police tactics, an amnesty for those arrested and a permanent withdrawal of the bill.
Lam announced on 4 September that she was withdrawing the bill.
Why were people so angry about the extradition bill?
Beijing’s influence over Hong Kong has grown in recent years, as activists have been jailed and pro-democracy lawmakers disqualified from running or holding office. Independent booksellers have disappeared from the city, before reappearing in mainland China facing charges.
Under the terms of the agreement by which the former British colony was returned to Chinese control in 1997, the semi-autonomous region was meant to maintain a “high degree of autonomy” through an independent judiciary, a free press and an open market economy, a framework known as “one country, two systems”.
The extradition bill was seen as an attempt to undermine this and to give Beijing the ability to try pro-democracy activists under the judicial system of the mainland.
How have the authorities responded?
Beijing has issued increasingly shrill condemnations but has left it to the city's semi-autonomous government to deal with the situation. Meanwhile police have violently clashed directly with protesters, repeatedly firing teargas and rubber bullets.
Beijing has ramped up its accusations that foreign countries are “fanning the fire” of unrest in the city. China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi has ordered the US to “immediately stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs in any form”.
Lily Kuo and Verna Yu in Hong Kong
StandwithHK echoes the broader protest movement. It is not a formal group with any organisational structure – just people who volunteer to take charge of different tasks. Ideas are floated on online forums and Telegram groups, judged by the discussion they inspire or the amount of up-votes they get. Decisions are made quickly. If mistakes are made they move on. The ethos follows that of the movement, and the words of Bruce Lee: “Be water”.
More specifically, according to Chris, it operates like a neural network, “where every cell is independent and autonomous but as a whole there’s a collective intelligence that emerges from it,” Chris said.
Six thousand miles away, Hongkongers studying and working in Europe are also playing a role in the campaign. They work across three time zones, the UK and Europe, the US and Hong Kong. “We have people everywhere,” Chris said.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Sam, another organiser, has been organised from the UK. In the corner of a busy cafe in central London, she explained how she and others were part of a very 21st century movement active across the world. Communication is maintained using social media apps with a high degree of anonymity. They speak mostly over Telegram, an encrypted platform. “It’s very horizontal. There are no clear leaders and we don’t necessarily know each other. We all use Telegram and communicate with each other to organise rosters for example or discuss what we do next,” Sam said.
While activists in Hong Kong have felt the sharp end of police tactics, those who are active in Britain and other countries are also wary. “It’s quite scary, even here. We know also that the Metropolitan police detained a Tiananmen Square dissident in London after pressure from China,” she said. Members of the group, whether in the UK or in Hong Kong, are always on high alert.
The group is not naive. “We’re under no illusions but Boris Johnson did say that he would back the people of Hong Kong every inch of the way, so we’ll be closely monitoring what he does,” she said. “We are focusing on Britain’s historical responsibility and unique, legal right to hold China to its promises under the Joint Declaration. We want the country to stand with us in our fight to protect our freedoms,” she said.
Neither does Chris expect the UK to sanction China or Hong Kong uphold the Joint Declaration. Instead, Chris says, their work is from bottom up and hopefully more lasting.
“This kind of large-scale leaderless movement and the sheer efficiency of it has captured the imagination of audiences everywhere,” he said. “So if we have left this little spark in people’s minds … then that’s our historical mark.”
In Hong Kong, Chris is preparing for a weekend of protests that have been declared illegal by the police, raising the chances of arrest and clashes. He spends his days scouting locations, ferrying supplies to drop-off locations, and scanning messages from dozens of groups on Telegram to see what needs doing.
Sometimes he thinks about his life from the perspective of his sister, who lives in Hong Kong but is not as much of an activist as he is. Like many Hongkongers, she has gone on with normal life, going to work in an office. “She once said it’s like a parallel world. The protesters are fellow Hongkongers, but they live seemingly in a parallel dimension.” He quotes his sister: “‘How can they be protesting all the time? Their whole lives are full of these values, schemes … meanwhile, I’m thinking about lunch I should have.’”
Chris agrees, because his life was once similar. Now, he spends more time on the protests than on his real job, which he says is the case for many of his fellow demonstrators. “The past seems so distant,” he says. | Protest_Online Condemnation | July 2019 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
A court in China sentences a citizen journalist to four years in prison for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" while reporting during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year in Wuhan. The journalist's lawyer says that they will probably appeal the verdict. , | Zhang Zhan was found guilty of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble", a frequent charge against activists. The 37-year-old former lawyer was detained in May, and has been on hunger strike for several months. Her lawyers say she is in poor health.
Ms Zhang is one of several citizen journalists who have run into trouble for reporting on Wuhan. There is no free media in China and authorities are known to clamp down on activists or whistleblowers seen as undermining the government's response to the outbreak. Ren Quanniu, one of Zhang Zhan's lawyers, expressed serious concern for her physical and mental wellbeing, saying she was very weak and on hunger strike. Mr Ren said his client "looked devastated" when her sentence was announced and her mother sobbed loudly.
In a video interview with an independent filmmaker before her arrest, Ms Zhang said she decided to travel to Wuhan in February after reading an online post by a resident about life in the city during the outbreak. Once there, she began documenting what she saw on the streets and hospitals in livestreams and essays, despite threats by authorities, and her reports were widely shared on social media.
The rights group Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders said her reports also covered the detention of other independent journalists and the harassment of families of victims who were seeking accountability.
"Maybe I have a rebellious soul... I'm just documenting the truth. Why can't I show the truth?" she said in a clip of the interview obtained by the BBC.
"I won't stop what I'm doing because this country can't go backwards."
Ms Zhang went missing on 14 May according to the CHRD. One day later, it was revealed she had been detained by police in Shanghai, more than 400 miles (640km) away. She was formally charged in early November. The indictment sheet alleges she sent "false information through text, video and other media through [platforms like] WeChat, Twitter and YouTube". She is also accused of accepting interviews with foreign media outlets and "maliciously spreading" information about the virus in Wuhan. A sentence of four to five years was recommended. In protest against her arrest, Ms Zhang has gone on a hunger strike and is said to be in very poor health.
Zhang Keke, who is also a lawyer for Ms Zhang, said in a statement that when he visited her in early December she had told him she was being force-fed via a feeding tube. He also said she was suffering from headaches, dizziness and stomach pain.
"Restrained 24 hours a day, she needs assistance going to the bathroom, and she tosses and turns in her sleep," the lawyer said. "She feels psychologically exhausted, like every day is a torment."
The lawyer had applied for a postponement of the trial given the state of Ms Zhang's health. Ms Zhang had previously been detained in 2019 for voicing support for activists in Hong Kong.
Leo Lan, a research and advocacy consultant at the CHRD, said Ms Zhang's latest sentencing was "alarming".
"[Her] sentence is so heavy. The Chinese government is very determined to silence her and intimidate other citizens who tried to expose what happened in Wuhan," he told the BBC.
"I'm concerned about the fate of other detained citizens who also reported news about the pandemic." Several other citizen journalists who reported from Wuhan - Li Zehua, Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin - went missing earlier this year. Li eventually resurfaced, saying he was forcibly quarantined, while Chen is reported to be staying with family but under government supervision. The whereabouts of Fang Bin are still unknown.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | December 2020 | ['(Reuters)', '(BBC)'] |
Flooding in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, destroys animal enclosures at a zoo resulting in the release of potentially dangerous animals and the death of three zookeepers and six other people. , , (Reuters, DPA via WA Today) | At least 12 people have died after flooding destroyed enclosures at the zoo in Georgia's capital of Tbilisi, leaving animals including lions and tigers roaming the city, officials said Sunday.
Some of the animals that escaped, which also include bears and wolves, were captured or killed, and the search for those still on the loose continued Sunday, the news agency Civil.ge. reported.
Heavy rainfall started late Saturday and turned the Vere, normally a small stream, into a "raging river," the news agency said.
Tbilisi residents were warned to stay indoors.
"Not all the animals who ran away from the zoo have been captured. Therefore, I want to ask the populace to refrain from moving about the city without" an urgent need to, Mayor David Narmania said.
Three zoo workers were among the dead, the Associated Press reported. There were no immediate reports that any of the fatalities were due to animal attacks.
An escaped hippopotamus was cornered in one of the city's main squares and subdued with a tranquilizer gun.
Irakli Garibashvili, prime minister of the former Soviet republic, said the damage caused by the flooding is substantial and called for people to remain at home as search for the animals continued, Civil.ge. reported. | Floods | June 2015 | ['(AP)', '(USA Today)'] |
The Glasgow School of Art in Scotland suffers "extensive damage" after it catches on fire. No casualties are reported. | Glasgow's world-renowned School of Art has been gutted by another huge blaze, four years after part of the building was destroyed by fire.
Flames ripped through the celebrated Mackintosh building after it caught fire at about 23:20 on Friday.
The blaze spread to nearby buildings, including the Campus nightclub and O2 ABC music venue, which suffered "extensive damage".
The renovated Mackintosh library had been due to reopen next year.
It was destroyed in the blaze that ripped through the building in May 2014. It was being restored in a project estimated to cost up to £35m.
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service's Deputy Assistant Chief Officer Peter Heath said the fire damage was "exceptionally significant".
He said it was likely that all the restoration work carried out since the last fire had been destroyed.
About 50 firefighters were still tackling Friday's blaze with nine fire engines and four-high reach appliances at the scene.
A spokesman said the blaze had now been largely contained, however, a few pockets of fire remained.
Unlike four years ago, art students were not using the now fire-ravaged building for their degree work.
An exhibition by graduating students took place at the nearby McLellan Galleries and the school of art's Reid Building.
A statement from the school of art described the fire as "devastating".
It added: "The Glasgow School of Art's immediate focus is on our students, and on the continuing operation of the GSA to ensure minimum disruption to students and staff. "The GSA and all of its buildings will remain closed for the next week, and we will provide updates as and when information is available."
Fire crews are concentrating efforts on all four sides of the buildings, from Dalhousie Street to Sauchiehall Street and into Renfrew Street.
Nearby homes have been evacuated as a precaution. There are not thought to have been any injuries.
At its height, a total of 120 firefighters and 20 fire engines were at the scene.
SFRS area manager David Young said: "The fire has now largely been contained but this remains a protracted incident and our efforts very much continue at this stage to extinguish the fire and ensure the community is protected.
"There will be disruption around Dalhousie Street, Sauchiehall Street and Renfrew Street and I would advise the public to avoid these areas at this present time.
Firefighters sent to the scene had been faced with "an extremely challenging and complex incident", Deputy Chief Officer Iain Bushell said earlier. All floors of the building were affected.
Firefighters used water from the River Clyde to tackle the blaze, resulting in a number of road closures in the area.
Insp Catherine McNally, of Police Scotland, praised the response of both the public and nearby licensed premises which were asked to evacuate. Parts of Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street look normal for a Saturday morning. The rain falls heavily on top of chip boxes, the remnants providing breakfast for many a hungry bird.
But the presence of fire engines, police officers, bewildered passers-by and an acrid smell of smoke in the air indicate this is far from normal.
Smoke still billows from the Glasgow School of Art, the Campus nightclub and the O2 ABC venue, with all the streets around the area closed.
Once again, the people of Glasgow are watching on as one of its most famous buildings is on fire.
Once again, the words "so sad" are heard on every corner.
Ben, an eyewitness, told the BBC the latest fire looked "much worse" than the previous one.
"This is a blaze, the building is just going up like a tinderbox. It's quite shocking," he said.
Aileen Clarke, BBC Scotland
Water is still being pumped onto Glasgow School of art this morning, though firefighters now say they have contained the blaze which has so extensively ravaged the Mackintosh building there may still be pockets of fire flaring up. The operation on the ABC building next door they still describe as active firefighting, the fire spread to the roof of that building though it's smoke more than flames visible from the street, now. Deputy assistant chief fire officer Peter Heath says there is damage to every part of the Mackintosh building, and the fire had such a grip of the building when they arrived here just after 23:15 last night, that they don't know where it started let alone how. Initial impressions are that it seems unlikely that any of the restoration work carried out since fire ripped through the building four years ago, will have survived this latest blaze. Connor Neil, 22, said people were being evacuated from their homes and there was a "big orange light" which could be seen from streets away.
One Twitter user posted a video of the O2's roof appearing to collapse as firefighters sprayed water onto the building from an aerial platform.
Stuart Robertson, the director of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, said the second fire was "unbelievable".
"It is like deja vu from four years ago," he said.
"Last weekend was a joyous occasion, we were celebrating Mackintosh's 150th birthday and the rebirth of the Willow Tea Rooms in Sauchiehall Street, the Hill House in Helensburgh is about to have major restoration and we were looking forward to the reopening of this building after four years since the last fire."
Mr Robertson said he had been in the building a few weeks ago to look at how the restoration was progressing.
He said the famous "hen-run" had been restored, work on the library was well under way and the studios "looked amazing".
"This is like a nightmare," he said.
"I can't put into words how heartbroken I feel."
Glasgow North East MP Paul Sweeney described the building, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, as "the most architecturally important building in Glasgow".
The Labour politician said the restoration effort had suffered a "horrific setback" which he hoped would be overcome.
"We cannot lose this building," he added.
Devastated that a major fire has broken out at the Glasgow School of Art tonight. The Mack has been undergoing restoration since the last devastating fire in 2014. @scotfire_glasgo are doing everything they can to salvage the most architecturally important building in Glasgow.
Mr Sweeney went on to say: "The 1909 library extension, that was the origin of the 2014 blaze, is now fully alight too. "It looks like the entire interior space is now fully alight. "The best we can probably hope for is structural facade retention and a complete rebuild of the interior. Devastating."
Nicola Sturgeon said the Scottish government stood "ready to provide any support" in the wake of the blaze. She said the government's resilience room was activated as the fire developed overnight. Paying tribute to the fire service and other emergency services, the first minister added: "This is a very sad morning in the city of Glasgow." "This is clearly an extremely complex and large-scale incident, and one that is ongoing," she said.
"I would like to thank the emergency services for their continued efforts. "The Scottish government stands ready to provide any support that may be required, now and in the period ahead."
Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell, who had visited the building only two weeks ago, said he was "devastated".
He said the government "stands ready to help, financially or otherwise".
Devastated to hear news of fire at Glasgow School of Art. Only fortnight since I was there to see restoration. My heart goes out to all those who had worked so hard on that. @UKGovScotland stands ready to help, financially or otherwise @GSofA
Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard said "hard questions" needed to be asked as to why and how the building has suffered two serious fires in four years.
He said: "In the meantime, we can be relived that there appears to have been no serious casualties."
The Mackintosh building was completed in 1909 based on designs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scotland's most-lauded designer.
It has been described as "a working art school as well as a work of art", and has an A-list rating from Historic Scotland.
In recent years, the school has produced many of the UK's leading contemporary artists such as Douglas Gordon, Alison Watt, David Shrigley, and three recent Turner Prize winners: Simon Starling in 2005, Richard Wright in 2009 and Martin Boyce in 2011.
Other former students include actors Robbie Coltrane and Peter Capaldi, and artist Peter Howson.
The fire in 2014, caused by a faulty projector, destroyed the building's library, which was recognised as being one of the finest examples of art nouveau in the world.
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But the number of Delta variant cases recorded in the UK has risen by 79% in a week, figures show. | Fire | June 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
Sudanese military and opposition leaders agree to resume talks that broke down after a violent crackdown on protesters earlier in June. The military also agrees to release political prisoners, while the opposition agrees to end its campaign of strikes and civil disobedience. | Protest and military leaders in Sudan have agreed to resume talks soon, an Ethiopian mediator says.
Separately, an opposition alliance agreed to suspend its campaign of civil disobedience and widespread strikes.
The army - which has been in control since long-time President Omar al-Bashir was ousted in April - has agreed to release political prisoners, special envoy Mahmoud Dirir told reporters.
Pro-democracy protesters are demanding a return to civilian government.
Talks broke down after dozens of protesters were killed in a crackdown on a sit-in on 3 June. Since then much of the country has been shut down after the opposition called for an open-ended strike. Doctors say 118 people have died in the recent outbreak of violence, while officials say there were fewer fatalities – putting the number at 61. Soldiers have patrolled the streets of Sudanese towns since then, while most businesses have remained closed.
On Tuesday, the Ethiopian mediator between the two sides said that talks on restoring a civilian administration would begin soon.
The army has agreed to release political prisoners as a confidence-building measure, Mahmoud Dirir said.
The opposition Alliance for Freedom and Change issued a statement urging people to return to work on Wednesday. The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), which called the strikes in the first place, backed the temporary suspension and urged people to return to work for the time being.
Some shops and services had already started to re-open, mostly among small businesses and daily wage earners who could not afford to remain closed.
Military leaders have yet to formally confirm the return to talks.
But a member of the Transitional Military Council (TMC), Salah Abdelkhalek, told BBC Arabic that it might agree to "equal" power sharing with the opposition. However, he said the TMC was adamant that the head of the new council should be from the military.
He also said that some military officers had been responsible for the 3 June crackdown, and said hundreds of soldiers, including officers, had been arrested – and endorsed the idea of an international inquiry into the violence. But he added the TMC was willing to negotiate without preconditions. Earlier on Tuesday, the top US diplomat for Africa announced a trip to Sudan to urge both sides to resume talks. News of the return to talks followed the intervention of Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who met both sides to try and break the impasse.
There are some reports suggesting that Mr Abiy proposed a 15-member ruling council for the transitional period, made up of eight civilians and seven military officials.
As ever in this story, scepticism is necessary. The Ethiopian assertion that talks will resume "soon" depends on what is meant by soon. The opposition Forces for Freedom and Change insist they are not about to return to the negotiating table. For now, any contact between both sides will take place via international mediators. It is negotiation of a sort – but the opposition insists that before face to face talks begin, six conditions need to be met:
So far they have only the promise of prisoner releases. But any negotiation - even if it happens soon - will circle back to the same issue: will the military cede power to a civilian government? Nothing about the generals' actions has indicated that this is an imminent possibility. The fear is that they will use any negotiations to try to divide the opposition while security pressure is maintained on the streets. Sudan's political crisis explained | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | June 2019 | ['(BBC)'] |
In the Foyle constituency, Social Democratic and Labour Party leader Mark Durkan wins a seat with a large majority over the expected victor, Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughlin. | The border seat was one of the last great prizes for republicans and it had been thought the contest might be much closer. However, the figures do reveal a big reduction in the SDLP majority of 24,538 to Sinn Fein's 12,988 in 2001. Much of that was a huge personal vote for the then SDLP leader John Hume.
Speaking after the result was announced Mr Durkan said the party had proved the pundits wrong.
"I was written off. The SDLP was written off. People called this election two or three nights ago.
"I know it is a bit of a Jose Mourinho tactic to do it and show those sorts of tactics. But the fact is like Jose Mourinho, the result wasn't as it was called."
He said he felt "vindicated at a personal level and at a party level".
Mr Durkan said he had "learned the lesson of taking voters for granted".
Earlier on Friday, the SDLP scored an unexpected electoral success when they took the South Belfast seat from the Ulster Unionists.
However, they lost Newry and Armagh to Sinn Fein. Mr Durkan succeeded John Hume as the SDLP leader in 2001. He is a former Derry City councillor, a Foyle assemblyman and one of the party's main strategists. He recently became a father for the first time. Damaging
Mitchel McLaughlin is the Sinn Fein party chairman. In January 2005 he rejected calls to resign over remarks he made about an IRA murder victim. He told an RTE television programme that the killing of Jean McConville - one of the Disappeared - was not a criminal act. His remarks were seen as possibly damaging for his electoral fortunes and were raised again during the campaign. | Government Job change - Election | May 2005 | ['(BBC)'] |
A court in Vietnam sentences a man to one and a half years in jail for posting anti-government content on Facebook. | HANOI (Reuters) - A court in Vietnam on Monday sentenced a man to 1-1/2 years in prison for uploading anti-state posts to Facebook, the security ministry said, days after Facebook sources told Reuters they had agreed to censor more content in the Southeast Asian country.
Chung Hoang Chuong, who posts under the name “Lucky Chuong” on the social media platform, was charged with “abusing the rights to democracy and freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State” at a one-day trial in the southern province of Can Tho, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said in a news release.
Chuong, 43, was accused of writing “anti-state” posts and making comments which insulted three policemen killed in a clash with protesters near Hanoi in January this year, the MPS said.
Reuters could not reach Chuong’s lawyer for comment.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | April 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
At least 23 people are killed and more than 100 injured in suicide attacks on police headquarters and training centers by suspected Boko Haram members in N'Djamena, Chad. | DAKAR, Senegal Suicide bombers struck for the first time in the capital of Chad on Monday morning, apparently in retaliation for the leading role the country has played in a regional war against the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, officials said.
Bombs were detonated at Police Headquarters in the heart of the capital, Ndjamena, and at the police training academy. Twenty-three people were killed, in addition to the four attackers, and 101 people were wounded, according to a statement from the president’s office. Images on state television showed the bloodied, uniformed bodies of police cadets scattered on the floor of the police academy.
Boko Haram became the largest affiliate of the Islamic State after months of strengthening its propaganda. | Armed Conflict | June 2015 | ['(New York Times)'] |
Mayor Yiannis Boutaris of Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki, is hospitalized after being assaulted by a group of nationalists at a Greek genocide remembrance event. | The mayor of Greece's second-largest city Thessaloniki has been treated in hospital after being beaten up by about a dozen people, officials say.
Yiannis Boutaris, 75, was kicked in the head and legs and beaten with bottles by a group of nationalists angry over his appearance at a remembrance event.
The mayor, who is known for his anti-nationalist views, was attending a ceremony to mark the killing of ethnic Greeks by Turks in World War One.
Politicians have condemned the attack.
A dozen people approached Mr Boutaris demanding he leave a flag-lowering ceremony in Thessaloniki on Saturday to mark what is known in Greece as the "Pontic Genocide", Thessaloniki city council president Calypso Goula said.
Ms Goula, who was also attending the event, described seeing several men throw bottles at Mr Boutaris and kicking the mayor in the head and legs after he had fallen down.
"It was a nightmare," Mr Boutaris was quoted by the Greek Reporter website as saying.
"There were several people that attacked me. They were hitting me everywhere."
The mayor's aides helped to get him away from the attackers, and take him to hospital where he was reportedly kept in overnight. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in a statement, called the attackers "far-right bullies who have to face the consequences of their actions".
Greece's ruling left-wing Syriza party described it as a "fascist attempt to target and intimidate" the mayor.
The main opposition party, New Democracy, also condemned the attack and called for the perpetrators to be "arrested immediately". | Riot | May 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
Political activist Ahmed Douma is given a six–month suspended jail sentence for insulting the President of Egypt. | An Egyptian opposition activist has been given a six-month suspended jail sentence for insulting President Mohammed Morsi, state media say.
Correspondents say Ahmed Douma is the first prominent critic of Mr Morsi to be convicted on the charge, which has been levelled at other activists.
He has been held since 30 April after calling the president "a killer", in reference to a deadly crackdown.
Violent protests have left dozens dead and many more injured this year.
Douma can pay 5,000 Egyptian pounds ($705; £470) to be released on bail until an appeal decision.
Supporters of the activist gathered at the courthouse and shouted slogans against the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.
Mr Morsi's government accuses its opponents of fuelling unrest to undermine his rule.
Douma's lawyer, Rami Ghareb, said the verdict was "politicised". "What Douma has said is what all the people in the streets are saying," he told the Associated Press.
Douma was also convicted of spreading false news, the agency reported.
He was one of five leading political activists whose arrest was ordered by Egypt's top prosecutor following clashes near the Muslim Brotherhood's Cairo headquarters in March.
Mr Morsi, the Islamist candidate who won last June's elections, has been accused of seeking to suppress critics by accusing them of defamation - a charge he denies. The new constitution, which came into force this year, has sparked protests from opponents who say it favours Islamists and does not sufficiently protect the rights of women, free speech or Christians.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | June 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
Andy Coulson, former director of communications for British Prime Minister David Cameron, is detained for questioning by police investigating claims of perjury. | Prime Minister David Cameron's former director of communications Andy Coulson has been charged with perjury. Mr Coulson, 44, was questioned in Glasgow as part of an investigation into evidence at the perjury trial of former MSP Tommy Sheridan in 2010.
He was detained at his south London home on Wednesday by Strathclyde Police and formally arrested that evening.
The ex-News of the World editor was a Downing Street employee at the time he was a witness at Glasgow's High Court.
Mr Coulson was detained at his south London home at 06:30 BST on Wednesday. He arrived at Govan police station shortly before 15:30 BST and was held for about six hours before being released.
A Crown Office spokesman said there was no legal obligation for Coulson to stay in Scotland, and he was free to return to his home in London.
The spokesman said no date had been set for any court appearance.
A decision will now be taken by Scotland's prosecution service, the procurator fiscal, about whether Mr Coulson should face a trial.
Earlier, a police spokeswoman said: "Officers from Strathclyde Police's Operation Rubicon team detained a 44-year-old man in London this morning under section 14 of the Criminal Procedure Scotland Act 1995 on suspicion of committing perjury before the High Court in Glasgow."
Mr Coulson gave evidence at the trial of former Scottish Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan in 2010.
Sheridan was awarded 200,000 in damages from the News of the World in 2006 after it printed allegations that he had committed adultery and visited a swingers' club.
After the court action, the former MSP and his wife Gail were charged with perjury. She was acquitted during the subsequent trial but Sheridan was convicted in December 2010. He has since been freed after serving just over a year of a three-year sentence.
Mr Coulson was called to give evidence at Sheridan's trial over two days as he was editor of the News of the World between 2003 and 2007.
During heated exchanges with Sheridan, who represented himself at the trial, Mr Coulson denied being involved in, or aware of, any illegal activities, including phone hacking.
Mr Coulson resigned from the post of Mr Cameron's director of communications in January 2011, saying coverage of the News of the World phone hacking scandal had "made it difficult to give the 110% needed in this role".
In July 2011, he was arrested by Metropolitan Police investigating the News of the World hacking scandal and later released on bail.
BBC chief political correspondent Norman Smith said: "Unlike the arrest of Mr Coulson last year by the London Metropolitan Police - which centred on claims about hacking during his time as editor of the News of the World - this arrest relates to a period when Mr Coulson was working as David Cameron's director of communications." | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | May 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
A bushfire burns out of control near the South Australian town of Wasleys with authorities warning of significant risk to lives and property. Two deaths have been confirmed with another person feared dead. | The 69-year-old man killed in a bushfire that swept through South Australia's Mid North has been identified as Pinery man Allan Tiller.
A 56-year-old woman from Hamley Bridge has also been confirmed dead and at least 13 people have been taken to hospital.
SA Premier Jay Weatherill said the fire had destroyed 16 homes and 22 "significant buildings" as well as dozens of cars and machinery.
However, he said they were interim figures and expected the numbers to increase.
Mr Weatherill said SA Ambulance Service had treated 30 people for various injuries, including for burns and smoke inhalation.
He said 16 people had been taken to hospital and five were in a critical condition.
Mr Weatherill said the number of those who had died or were seriously injured in the fire remained unchanged.
"On behalf of my Government and the community of South Australia I extend my condolences to their families and all those who knew and loved them," he said.
No-one is believed to be missing as a result of the fires.
A post on Twitter described Mr Tiller as a "loved uncle" from a farming family who died fighting the fire.
Mr Weatherill said the State Government was ready to provide relief grants for families affected by the fires.
Cash grants will be paid to the value of $280 per adult, $140 per child up to a maximum of $700 per family.
The grants are available from the relief centres, which have been set up at Gawler, Balaklava and Clare.
Bereavement grants will also be made available.
Mr Weatherill said about 200 CFS firefighters and 50 appliances were involved in the effort to contain he fires.
He sent his "heartfelt" thanks to all the firefighters tackling the blazes.
Two strike teams from Victoria are already on the ground, and Mr Weatherill said he expected a total of 300 personnel from Victoria to join the firefighting effort.
The State Emergency Service has set up a base for the Victorian firefighters at Nuriootpa High School.
The cause of the fire is still unknown, but Mr Weatherill said initial investigations suggested it was not deliberately lit.
Thousands of homes still have no power, and may be without it for some time as SA Power Networks work to reach fire-affected areas.
ABC News: Malcolm Sutton
Mr Weatherill said emergency services were working quickly to open roads, but urged residents from the area to check for closures.
Country Fire Service chief officer Greg Nettleton said the fire had burnt through about 85,000 hectares so far, and the 200km perimeter of the fire was now 60 per cent contained.
He said steady progress had been made on the fireground and crews would work through the night with the focus being on a section of difficult terrain on the fire's edge.
"Our preliminary estimate is we've probably got about 60 per cent of the fire contained, however I might add that that is in the areas where it is easy to do that," Mr Nettleton said.
"That's in particular where crops are associated and there is no heavy timber.
"At this stage our priority areas are now to the north-east of the fire."
Fire activity remains around many townships including Owen, Hamley Bridge, Tarlee, Freeling, Wasleys, Kapunda, Greenock and surrounding areas.
The fire has affected an area that is bounded approximately by Roseworthy, Kapunda, Mallala, Owen and Riverton.
Conditions have improved for firefighters battling the blaze.
Yesterday afternoon crews were facing wind gusts of up to 80 kilometres per hour (kph) at Roseworthy amid 34 degrees Celsius heat.
Today the temperature has dropped to about 17C with wind gusts between 30 and 40kph.
Mr Eden said the perimeter of the fire was blacked out.
"By the air, the news is getting better and better," he said.
"The perimeter of the fire is well and truly blacked out, we are continuing to ensure a number of hot spots, particularly up in the north-eastern corner, where there is some taller timber, are cleaned up this afternoon."
Mr Eden said fire crews from Victoria, some of who have already arrived, will then take over to give respite to local crews for three days.
"Our intention for this fire is that at the time of handing it back to the locals, which at this point we hope is in three to four days' time, once the CFA has completed their deployment to us, we hope we can hand that back to the local community with no fire activity on the fire ground whatsoever."
ABC News: Tony Hill
Several schools have been closed and others are open but will not be running a full service.
Mallala farmer John Lush lost all of his wheat crop and millions of dollars of farming equipment in the fire.
He said that even though he was well-equipped, he could not save all his property.
"We've got a big machinery shed that we are in line with and the gutters on that are 25 feet off the ground and the flames were coming over the top of that shed so it was just horrific," Mr Lush said. The blaze started at Pinery about midday on Wednesday and travelled 50 kilometres in just four hours.
An appeal has been set up by the State Emergency Relief Fund Committee.
The SA Pinery Fire Appeal has been set up for cash donations to help those affected by the fire.
People can make donations to the appeal online, via cheque or in person at any Commonwealth Bank branch. | Fire | November 2015 | ['(ABC News Australia)', '(ABC News)'] |
The first of four Blackwater security guards to be sentenced is given a life sentence in the United States for his role in killing 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007. | A federal judge Monday sentenced a former Blackwater Worldwide security guard to life in prison and three others to 30-year terms for killing 14 unarmed civilians in a Baghdad traffic circle in 2007, an incident that fomented deep resentments about the accountability of American security forces during one of the bloodiest periods of the Iraq war.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the District rejected a claim of innocence by Nicholas A. Slatten, 31, of Sparta, Tenn., who received the life sentence after being convicted of murder in October for firing what prosecutors said were the first shots in the civilian massacre. The three others Paul A. Slough, 35, of Keller, Tex.; Evan S. Liberty, 32, of Rochester, N.H.; and Dustin L. Heard, 33, of Maryville, Tenn. were sentenced to 30 years plus one day after being convicted of multiple counts of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter.
All the defendants vowed to appeal what one called a “perversion of justice,” saying they fired in self-defense in a war zone and a city that was then one of the world’s most dangerous places.
Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee and former Army captain, said the defendants, all U.S. military veterans, “appear overall to be good young men who have never been in trouble,” but commended the U.S. government for “finding and exposing the truth of what happened in Nisour Square” on Sept. 16, 2007.
The government entrusts service members and contractors with deadly weapons and provides them with training to use them only when necessary and justified by the circumstances, Lamberth said.
“It is clear these fine young men just panicked,” Lamberth said. “The overall, wild, thing that went on here can just not be condoned by a court. ... A court has to recognize the severity of the crimes committed, including the number of victims.”
During the 10-week trial, Lamberth said, no witness testified they saw the guards come under fire, nor was evidence found that AK-47 rifles carried by Iraqi insurgents were used at the time.
The sentences delivered the government a long-sought legal victory in the aftermath of one of the lowest points of the Iraq war, in which the Blackwater name then one of the country’s most profitable and politically connected security firms became shorthand for unaccountable U.S. power.
Prosecutors said the four defendants, among 19 Blackwater guards providing security for State Department officials in Iraq, fired machine guns and grenade launchers in a reckless and out-of-control way after one of them falsely claimed that their convoy, called Raven 23, was threatened by a car bomber.
The guards said that they acted in self-defense after coming under AK-47 gunfire as they cleared a path back to the nearby Green Zone for another Blackwater team that was evacuating a U.S. official from a nearby car bombing.
Officials with the Justice Department and the FBI field office in Washington said the prosecution reflected the American justice system’s commitment to the rule of law and expressed hope that the results would bring some comfort to victims and their survivors.
“In killing and maiming unarmed civilians, these defendants acted unreasonably and without justification,” the U.S. attorney’s office for the District said in a statement. “In combination, the sheer amount of unnecessary human loss and suffering attributable to the defendants’ criminal conduct on Sept.16, 2007, is staggering.”
The sentencing came after an emotional, day-long hearing in a courtroom packed with 100 family members and supporters of the defendants, who appeared in leg cuffs and blue jail jumpsuits, as well as Justice Department lawyers, former jurors and relatives of the shooting victims.
Attorneys for Slough, Liberty and Heard criticized prosecutors’ decision to charge them with using military firearms while committing a felony, an offense that carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison, twice as long as a manslaughter conviction.
The charge has primarily been aimed at gang members, rarely against police officers accused of misconduct and never before against security contractors given military weapons by the U.S. government.
“I feel utterly betrayed by the government I honorably served,” Slough said. “I have faith I will be exonerated in both this life and the next.”
Like the others, he maintained his innocence. Heard, who did not testify at the trial and spoke for the first time before the judge, said, “I am very sorry for the loss of innocent life. But I cannot say in all honesty to the court that I believe I did anything wrong.”
In a brief statement, Liberty added, “I don’t want to spend any more time in jail. As God is my witness, I shot at two people that day, who were dressed in Iraq police uniforms and they were shooting at me.”
“The system failed in this case,” Brian M. Heberlig, the head of Slough’s defense team at the Steptoe & Johnson law firm, said in a statement. “It was impossible for a civilian jury in peacetime Washington, D.C., to understand the extreme mortal threats that Paul and his colleagues faced on a daily basis and in the Baghdad traffic circle that day.”
Thomas Connolly, an attorney for Slatten, said he would appeal the verdict as the result of a vindictive prosecution, adding that prosecutors chose the nation’s capital to try the case, where he said jurors had “ambivalence toward gun culture, and ambivalence toward the military.”
Mohammed Kinani, 43, formerly of Baghdad but now a U.S. green-card holder living in Michigan, was the government’s first witness, testifying about the death of his 9-year-old son, Ali Mohammed Hafedh Abdul Razzaq.
In the courtroom, Kinani called the sentencing a test of “who wins, the law or Blackwater.” Afterward, he thanked the U.S. military for trying to liberate his country and the justice system for showing “how fair the law is and that it applies to everyone. My mission is done.”
Prosecutors had sought terms of 47 to 52 years for the men, in addition to life for Slatten.
Lamberth instead adopted a package that sentenced the three others to time served for manslaughter and attempted manslaughter, as defense attorneys sought, but did so saying he expected that he could re-sentence them if higher courts reject the applicability of mandatory 30-year term for the firearms charge.
Before the sentencing, Christin Slough, 34, the wife of Paul Slough, said relatives had been constrained to keep quiet during legal proceedings but now would speak out against what they believe is an unjust prosecution.
“For seven years, this has been about seeking a conviction, not the truth. We are not going to be silent anymore,” said Slough, of Sanger, Tex. Slough and relatives of the other men have created a Web site, Supportraven23.com, seeking to build public support.
Supporters of the men held out hope for other forms of relief. They cited the cases of Jose A. Compean and Ignacio Ramos, two former Border Patrol agents who served more than two years in prison before President George W. Bush commuted their sentences shortly before leaving office in 2009.
The government brought civilian charges in 2008 against six other Blackwater employees. One, Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, testified against the others and still faces sentencing. Charges were dropped against another man, Donald Ball. Three other members of the Blackwater team were granted limited immunity by the government to testify against their former colleagues.
The security firm’s founder, Erik Prince, eventually left the company, which was renamed Xe Services, then later sold and renamed Academi. | Armed Conflict | April 2015 | ['(Washington Post)'] |
Japan agrees to help with the construction of an Indian bullet train. | Gujarat to Mumbai 217mph train will cut journey time from eight hours to three and is funded with low-interest Japanese loan First published on Thu 14 Sep 2017 08.22 BST
India’s creaking, colonial-era railway system is preparing to take a giant leap forward as the Indian prime minister breaks ground on the country’s first bullet train project. Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the high-speed line on Thursday during a visit by his Japanese counterpart, Shinzō Abe, to the western state of Gujarat.
“This is the new India and the flight of its dreams is endless,” Modi said at the ceremony. “The bullet train project will bring speed and employment. It is human-friendly and eco-friendly.”
The high-speed line, which the government aims to launch by the 75th anniversary of Indian independence on 15 August 2022, will run from Ahmedabad, the Gujarat capital, to the financial hub of Mumbai.
Indian officials say the train will have a maximum speed of 217mph (350km/h), more than twice the speed of the country’s current fastest train, which runs from the capital, Delhi, to Agra at a comparably sluggish maximum of 100mph.
The Shinkansen model train will cut the 316-mile journey from Ahmedabad to Mumbai from eight hours to around three. More than four-fifths of the project’s $19bn (£14.4bn) cost will be funded by a 0.1% interest-rate loan from Japan as part of a deepening economic relationship that both countries hope will act as a bulwark against Chinese influence in Asia. “Japan has shown that its a true friend of India,” Modi said on Thursday.
The fast rail is also significant for the Modi government, which made the bullet train a key part of the modernisation agenda on which it campaigned at the 2014 elections. It also claims the project will create about 36,000 jobs. India is reportedly considering another six potential high-speed rail corridors, including one connecting Mumbai and Delhi. But the former chairman of India’s railway board Vivek Sahai said that the financial investment required to build such fast rail meant it was unlikely to phase out traditional trains any time soon.
“India runs more than 10,000 trains each day, which carry the equivalent of the population of Australia – you can’t just discontinue them,” Sahai said.
The country might also find it cheaper to invest in medium-speed trains that could run on the existing system, he added, rather than paying for the special infrastructure required to run bullet trains.
The spread of super-fast trains would ultimately “depend on the finances”, he said. “High speed trains have to come to India ... but how to get it and the financial viability of the projects is still to be questioned,” he said.
Trains are still the preferred choice of long-distance travel for most Indians but passenger numbers, particularly in the more expensive berths, have started to decline since 2014. Growing incomes in the past three decades have seen a surge in car ownership, and India’s domestic flight market grew 14% last year, second only to China’s.
The industry is also marred by a horrendous safety record: a 2012 government report referred to the annual death toll from the country railway’s system as a “massacre”.
More than 33,700 people died in train-related accidents in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, the majority by falling from overcrowded trains or being hit as they tried to cross tracks. Modi replaced the country’s railway minister in August after a horror 12 months that included an accident last November that killed 150 people.
The government has committed to spending $137bn (£111bn) over its five-year term to upgrade India’s railways, including improving track structure and introducing long welded rails and track patrols to prevent railway infrastructure from falling into disrepair.
India’s train network, built during British colonial rule is Asia’s oldest and the fourth-longest in the world, covering more than 67,000km.
| Financial Aid | September 2017 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
In Alpine skiing, Austrian Marcel Hirscher and Slovenian Tina Maze win the overall men's and women's 2013 Alpine Skiing World Cup titles, respectively. | LENZERHEIDE, Switzerland (AP) — Tina Maze got the anger out of her system Sunday, one day after her heartbreaking World Cup slalom title defeat to American teenager Mikaela Shiffrin.
Maze won the season-ending giant slalom race to complete the most statistically dominating year since the World Cup started in 1967.
Still, losing the World Cup slalom title to Shiffrin's thrilling second-run performance Saturday still burned for a skier who described herself as "addicted" to her sport.
"That's why I could put out some anger today," Maze, smiling again 24 hours after sobbing in the finish area, told reporters. "Yesterday, I had some disappointments. If I didn't do good today, I would not be 100 percent happy."
Maze performed her trademark celebration cartwheel in the finish area after first-run leader Tessa Worley of France fell 0.35 seconds behind her winning two-run time of 2 minutes, 16.67 seconds. Lara Gut of Switzerland was third, 1.38 back.
The Slovenian racer's 11th World Cup victory this season extended her record overall points total to 2,414. Austrian great Hermann Maier set a mark of 2,000 in the 1999-2000 season.
"I'm impressed, too," Maze said, when asked about her impressive year in a finish-area interview. "It was an amazing season for me. I started with a win and I finished with a win."
After crossing the finish line to set the fastest time, Maze twirled her right ski-pole above her head in excitement. It seemed an understandable release of emotion after two big setbacks here at World Cup finals week.
On Saturday, Maze's first-run slalom lead couldn't withstand Shiffrin astonishing victory run in their winner-take-all race for the discipline title. Maze cried with her head resting on her arm as Shiffrin displayed the crystal trophy.
Maze, who declined to speak with international media Saturday, revealed she had not known how fast Shiffrin was when she stood in the slalom start house as the last racer to go.
"I had a feeling I will be OK if I just come down," Maze said, acknowledging she had felt nerves. "And that was not good enough."
When the downhill was canceled on Wednesday, Maze was denied the chance to overhaul the injured Lindsey Vonn in the standings. At that stage, Maze was still aiming to sweep the season's World Cup titles.
There was disappointment Sunday for the 2011 overall World Cup champion, Maria Hoefl-Riesch of Germany. She appeared injured after skiing out in the first run and quickly left the venue.
Hoefl-Riesch was traveling to her home base in Kitzbuehel, Austria, for a diagnosis, German team spokesman Ralph Eder said in a text message to The Associated Press.
On a tricky snow surface for the GS race, Julia Mancuso of the United States was eighth, 2.47 behind Maze, and Shiffrin placed 11th, trailing by 3.58.
"I'm definitely tired," the 18-year-old Shiffrin told AP. "I put a lot on the line in the second run (on Saturday). It was emotionally exhausting."
Mancuso was the top American in the overall standings, in fourth place with 867 points. Shiffrin was fifth, 45 points behind her teammate.
Vonn, the four-time overall champion from 2008-10 and in 2012, ended eighth despite taking a midseason break and not racing after Feb. 5, when she ruptured right knee ligaments crashing in the world championships super-G race won by Maze.
The 29-year-old Maze's improvement was remarkable despite having finished second overall to Vonn one year ago, though without winning a race. Then, Vonn's 1,980 points was a women's record and Maze got 1,402.
Maze reeled off 11 wins this time, across all five events, and improved her points total by more than 1,000.
Her 24th top-3 finish in a World Cup race Sunday extended another record she took from Maier, who stood on the podium 22 times in his dominating 2000 season.
Maze also took three medals at the worlds in Schladming, Austria, super-G gold and silvers in giant slalom and super-combined. Looking ahead to next season, Maze pledged to be better in slalom. | Sports Competition | March 2013 | ['(AP via Yahoo! News)'] |
A powerful earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter Scale rocks Peru 100 miles near Lima, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A tsunami warning is issued for Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Colombia, following the earthquakes. At least 72 people are killed and another 680 injured. | A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7. struck Peru on Wednesday shaking buildings in the capital and causing electrical power failures in some areas, the U.S. Geological Survey and eyewitnesses said. REUTERS/Graphic
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A tsunami warning was issued for Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Colombia after two powerful earthquakes struck Peru late on Wednesday, said the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.
| Earthquakes | August 2007 | ['(Fox News)', '(USGS)', '(Reuters)', '(Reuters via Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
Mayor of Mogadishu Abdirahman Abdi Osman dies from injuries he sustained during the 24 July 2019 Mogadishu bombing. | MOGADISHU, Somalia — The mayor of Mogadishu has died after being badly wounded in a suicide bombing by Al Shabab in his offices last week, Somalia’s government said on Thursday. Six of his colleagues were also killed in the attack, and nine members of his staff wounded.
Mayor Abdirahman Omar Osman had been airlifted to Qatar, along with nine other injured people, for treatment after the attack, which struck on July 24, the lawmaker Dahir Amin Jesow said.
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If you have a critical piece of feedback for us, you can always reach the newsroom via the Reader Center. | Famous Person - Death | August 2019 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
China and Australia agree to hold yearly security meetings. | Mr Bush described the talks as friendly despite the fact they tackled thorny issues including religious freedom, climate change and exchange rates.
Few details have emerged so far, but Mr Bush said Mr Hu was "quite articulate" over the issue of product safety.
This contentious topic was highlighted recently by a series of recalls of Chinese-made products.
Mr Hu and Mr Bush were meeting ahead of a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders. While the official leaders' meetings of the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum are not due to take place until the weekend, several bilateral discussions have already taken place on the sidelines.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard met Mr Hu earlier on Thursday, and the two countries agreed to hold annual security summits.
Mr Bush, meanwhile, began his day by meeting Australian opposition leader Kevin Rudd. Mr Rudd is far ahead of Mr Howard in opinion polls with a general election due later this year. He wants to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq, in contrast to Mr Howard, who has been a staunch supporter of US policy on Iraq. Olympic invitation
Mr Bush acknowledged ahead of the meeting that the US and China had a "complex relationship", and said he would be "darned sure" to raise contentious matters during the bilateral talks.
But after their 90-minute meeting, Mr Bush described his Chinese counterpart as "an easy man to talk to," saying: "I'm very comfortable in my discussions with President Hu."
Mr Hu, in return, called the talks "candid and friendly".
The US president was invited to next year's Olympic Games in Beijing, an invitation which he said he was "anxious to accept".
Hu in product safety vow In pictures: Apec leaders
Apec seeks to silence critics
The two men did not take questions after their session, but both spoke briefly to reporters.
"We talked about Iran and North Korea and Sudan. We talked about climate change and our desire to work together on climate change," Mr Bush said.
Mr Hu added that they had also discussed increasing trade ties between their two countries.
Meanwhile, other leaders from the Apec nations are gathering in Sydney ahead of the weekend summit. Security is extremely tight in the city, with large demonstrations expected at the weekend. A 5km (three-mile) barrier has been erected across the city's central business district and more than 5,000 police and troops are patrolling the streets. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | September 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
A bomb explodes in the center of the capital, Damascus, killing at least 8 people and injuring more than 50 others. | Eight people have been killed in a blast in the centre of the Syrian capital, Damascus, the Sana state news agency reports.
It said 50 were also wounded in the Hijaz Square explosion, which hit the offices of the railway company.
Eight people were also killed by a rare blast in the town of Suweida, home to Syria's Druze minority, say reports.
Suweida has remained under government control through the conflict, and had so far been largely free of violence.
Wednesday's blast there went off outside the headquarters of the Air Force Intelligence, the most feared security service in Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based activist group, said it had been a suicide car bomb and that the intelligence branch chief was among those killed.
Sana blamed the attack on "terrorists", the government's way of referring to rebels forces.
Syria's Druze minority - adherents of an offshoot of Shia Islam - numbers about 700,000. Its main leadership has so far stayed out of the conflict publicly.
The Observatory said were conflicting reports about whether the Damascus explosion had been caused by a bomb or a mortar shell.
No group has said it was behind the blast but Sana again quoted police sources blaming "terrorists.
| Armed Conflict | November 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
Jon Kyl will replace John McCain as Senator of Arizona. | Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) on Tuesday named Jon Kyl to fill the late John McCain’s Senate seat.
“There is no one in Arizona more prepared to represent our state in the U.S. Senate than Jon Kyl,” Ducey said in a statement. “He understands how the Senate functions, and will make an immediate and positive impact benefiting all Arizonans.”
Kyl, 76, previously served 18 years in the U.S. Senate, becoming the second-highest-ranked GOP senator before retiring in 2013. According to the Arizona Republic, he has agreed to serve at least through the end of this year. If Kyl chooses to step down at that point, Ducey will have to name another successor.
Kyl said he would not run for the seat in 2020.
Kyl joined top K Street firm Covington & Burling shortly after his retirement in 2013, and was recently retained by Facebook to help the social media network combat partisan bias in its news distribution. Ducey contacted Kyl in the hours after McCain’s death on Aug. 25 to see if he’d return to Capitol Hill.
The governor said in his statement he was “deeply grateful” to Kyl for agreeing to succeed his friend and former colleague McCain.
“Every single day that Jon Kyl represents Arizona in the United States Senate is a day when our state is being well-served,” the statement read.
President Donald Trump, who was frequently critical of McCain, praised his replacement:
Jon Kyl will be an extraordinary Senator representing an extraordinary state, Arizona. I look forward to working with him!
Cindy McCain, wife of the late senator, tweeted about Kyl on Tuesday, calling him “a dear friend”: | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | September 2018 | ['(Huffington Post)'] |
The Australian state of Queensland declares a state of emergency after more than 50 wildfires burn out of control. | MORE than 100 homes in Rockhampton are under threat from bushfires as wind gusts of up to 40km/hr create horror conditions for firefighters.
Assistant commissioner Neil Gallant said the homes most vulnerable are east of Shields Avenue in Frenchville. Commissioner Gallant said today's conditions are the worst he's experienced. "We now have the worst fire conditions for the Central Highlands ever," he said. The only positive was a slight increase in humidity but the nature of the terrain east of Shields Avenue is expected to only exacerbate the blustery conditions. "There's lots of creeks and gullies where the wind swirls around so the winds could increase beyond 40km/hr," Commissioner Gallant said. Fire crews from across the state are fighting the flames with a helicopter and a fixed wing plane water bombing. More than 4000ha of mostly national park land has burnt. One house has been destroyed. | Fire | October 2009 | ['(TVNZ)', '(Al Jazeera)', '(The Australian)'] |
Iranian Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei says an Iranian court sentenced Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian to a prison term, length unspecified, for espionage. Mohseni Eje said, "I cannot give details." Post foreign editor Douglas Jehl said this might move the case closer to a final resolution in the judiciary, so it can then go to Iranian leaders who can make things right. | Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter who has been held by the government of Iran for the past 16 months and was convicted on unspecified charges last month, has been sentenced to a prison term, the state news agency announced Sunday.
Rezaian faced four charges, including espionage, according to his lawyer. But in announcing a conviction in October, Iranian authorities did not provide any details of the verdict.
Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, a spokesman for Iran’s judiciary, confirmed the punishment in a statement posted on the official Islamic Republic News Agency’s Web site, according to the Associated Press.
He did not say how long the prison term would be.
“The verdict has been issued but has not been officially handed down to the accused or his lawyer,” Mohseni-Ejei said. “Given the fact that the verdict has not been officially handed down, I cannot reveal the details, but what I can say is that the accused has been sentenced to prison.”
Referring to the possibility of an appeal, Mohseni-Ejei noted that the verdict was “not finalized,” the AP reported.
[Iran’s internal rifts widen as officials clash over jailed Post reporter] Since Rezaian’s arrest, The Post has maintained that he is innocent and called for his immediate release.
“We’re aware of the reports in the Iranian media but have no further information at this time,” said Douglas Jehl, The Post’s foreign editor. “Every day that Jason is in prison is an injustice. He has done nothing wrong.
“Even after keeping Jason in prison 488 days so far, Iran has produced no evidence of wrongdoing,” Jehl added. “His trial and sentence are a sham, and he should be released immediately.”
State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the government is aware of the sentence and called for Rezaian’s release.
“We’ve seen the reports of a sentence in the case of U.S. citizen Jason Rezaian in Iran but cannot confirm the details ourselves at this time,” Kirby said. “If true, we call on the Iranian authorities to vacate this sentence and immediately free Jason so that he can be returned to his family.”
[Journalists and family of Jason Rezaian denounce guilty verdict] Rezaian — who grew up in Marin County, Calif., and has dual American and Iranian citizenship — has been held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison since his arrest on July 22 last year. He had been working as The Post’s Tehran correspondent since 2012.
Rezaian was arrested with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, and a photographer, both of whom were eventually released on bail.
[U.N. human rights experts call for ‘immediate release’ of Post’s Rezaian] Rezaian’s lawyer, Leila Ahsan, told the Associated Press that she was not made aware of the verdict or any details surrounding the sentence.
“I have no information about details of the verdict,” she said. “We were expecting the verdict some three months ago.”
An indictment cited by Iran’s state media calls Rezaian an “American spy” and accuses him of gathering information about individuals and companies inside the country. The indictment also accuses him of leaking information to the U.S. government.
His brother, Ali Rezaian, issued a statement Sunday that said, in part, “The Iranian judicial process around Jason’s case has been profoundly flawed from the outset. The confusion and lack of transparency throughout these proceedings has only made this situation more difficult for Jason and our family. My brother is an innocent man and a well-respected journalist. As our family gathers for Thanksgiving, we remain hopeful that Jason will soon be reunited with us.”
Carol Morello in Boston contributed to this report. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | November 2015 | ['(Reuters)', '(Washington Post)'] |
As many as 53 members of the World Trade Organization sign an agreement in Nairobi, Kenya, to remove import tariffs on 201 information technology products that account for trade of $1.3 trillion annually. | As many as 53 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have agreed in Nairobi to a seven-year time frame to scrap all tariffs on 201 IT products that account for an annual trade of $1.3 trillion, in the biggest deal to remove barriers to such trade in close to two decades.
The expansion of the 1996 Information Technology Agreement is projected to raise global gross domestic product by $190 billion a year, as most of the industries that use such products as inputs will get a boost and prices of items ranging from video cameras to semi-conductors are expected to fall.
Although a WTO statement said the negotiations were concluded by its members — both developed and developing countries — making up for roughly 90% of world trade in such products, it wasn’t immediately clear if India had also endorsed the deal. Even the list of participants in the ITA expansion, provided by the WTO, didn’t feature India, which had been opposing the talks to extend the ITA on fears that the deal would benefit only those countries (notably the US, China, Japan and South Korea) that have a robust manufacturing base in these products, and not a country like India. Government officials attending the Nairobi ministerial couldn’t be reached for a response. An email query to the commerce ministry in this regard remained unanswered.
However, analysts have warned that even if India isn’t part of the deal yet, conclusion of the pact at the WTO would put immense pressure on the country to endorse it sooner or later. Moreover, it would have to boost local local manufacturing of electronics to such a level where domestic companies withstand the likely cheaper inflows from overseas.
India’s electronics imports in the first half of the fiscal beat those of bullion to become the country’s second-largest product category of imports. Electronic product imports are expected to touch as high as $40 billion in 2015-16, rising sharply from roughly $28 billion just five years ago. However, even though India is a fast-growing consumer of electronics, its local production of such items was only $31 billion in the last fiscal, accounting for just 1.5% of global output. Its domestic market size in these items is estimated at $70 billion.
The WTO statement, however, said all 162 WTO members will benefit from the agreement as they will all enjoy duty-free market access to the markets of the members eliminating tariffs on these products, it added. The list of 201 products, which was originally agreed to by the ITA participants in July this year, include a new generation of semi-conductors, GPS navigation systems, tools for manufacturing printed circuits, telecommunications satellites touch screens and some state-of-the-art medical products.
“Eliminating tariffs on trade of this magnitude will have a huge impact. It will support lower prices — including in many other sectors that use IT products as inputs — it will create jobs and it will help to boost GDP growth around the world,” said WTO director general Roberto Azevedo.
Such items account for roughly 10% of the total global trade and is larger than trade in automotive products or even the global trade in textiles, clothing, iron and steel combined.
As per the plan, around 65% of tariffs lines, accounting for 88% of imports, will be eliminated in 2016. By 2019, this will increase to 89% of the tariff lines (and 95% of imports) and 100% in over seven years, Azevedo said.
Some of these products currently face much higher tariff than the global average tariff of 9%, he added. For example, in some markets, the import tariff for video cameras is as high as 35% and for magnetic cards, it is 30%. | Sign Agreement | December 2015 | ['(Reuters)', '(The Financial Express)'] |
Simcha Rotem, the last surviving fighter of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, also a participant in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, dies at the age of 94. | As German forces were mobilizing to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto, Simcha "Kazik" Rotem resisted and fought back. Rotem said he and his comrades fought to "choose the kind of death" they wanted.
Simcha "Kazik" Rotem, the last surviving fighter of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis, died on Saturday in Israel at the age of 94. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin made the announcement.
Rotem, who went by the nom-de-guerre Kazik, served in the Jewish Fighting Organization that staged the uprising on April 19, 1943, when the Nazis began deporting the surviving residents of the Jewish ghetto in Poland's capital.
Thousands of Jews died in what was Europe's first urban anti-Nazi revolt. Most of them burned alive, while nearly all the rest were sent to Treblinka concentration camp.
"This evening, we part from... Simcha Rotem, the last of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters," Rivlin said in a statement. "He joined the uprising and helped save dozens of fighters."
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu mourned Rotem's death, saying that "his story and the story of the uprising will accompany our people forever."
Read more: 75 years on: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in film
Sewer escape
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Rotem was born in Warsaw in 1924. At the outbreak of World War II, his family's home was destroyed by German bombing raids, resulting in the death of his brother, grandparents, aunt and uncle.
"When I regained consciousness, I found myself under the wreckage of the house. Only after I managed to extricate myself did I see that our house was totally destroyed and no sign of life was to be seen," the resistance fighter said in an interview with the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum.
Rotem was sent to live with relatives in the city of Klwow. But by 1943, he returned to the Warsaw Ghetto and that is when he joined the Jewish Combat Organization, commanded by the legendary Mordechai Anielewicz. He was 19 years old at the time.
Read more: Poland, Greece team up on Nazi-era war reparations demands
"We knew that something was about to happen. But to tell the truth, even at this stage, meaning in the final stage before the ghetto's liquidation, we probably still couldn't accept this thing... A total annihilation, in the 20th century, in the very heart of Europe — something like this is just impossible. It was hard to accept this notion," he said.
After World War II, Rotem lived the rest of his life in Israel
Rotem ultimately survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by masterminding an escape through the drainage system with dozens of comrades, guided by Polish sewer workers.
To choose one's death
After the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, he went on to participate in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising led by Polish resistance fighters against the Nazis. When the war concluded, he immigrated to Israel and lived there the rest of his life.
Speaking at a 2013 ceremony in Poland to mark the 70th anniversary of the uprising, Rotem recalled that by April 1943 most of the ghetto's Jews had died and the 50,000 who remained expected the same fate.
Read more: WWII Jewish uprising remembered in Warsaw
Of the uprising, Rotem said he and his comrades took up arms in order to "choose the kind of death" they wanted.
"But to this very day I keep thinking whether we had the right to make the decision to start the uprising and by the same token to shorten the lives of many people by a week, a day or two," Rotem said.
Rotem's funeral will be held on Monday afternoon at Kibbutz Harel. He is survived by children and grandchildren. | Famous Person - Death | December 2018 | ['(Deutsche Welle)'] |
French police arrest Félicien Kabuga in Paris. He is suspected of funding militias that massacred around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. Kabuga had been on the run for 26 years and was living under a false identity. | PARIS/KAMPALA (Reuters) - Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga, who is accused of funding militias that massacred about 800,000 people, was arrested on Saturday near Paris after 26 years on the run, the French justice ministry said.
The 84-year-old, who is Rwanda’s most-wanted man and had a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, was living under a false identity in a flat in Asnieres-Sur-Seine, according to the ministry.
French gendarmes arrested him at 0530 GMT on Saturday, the ministry said.
Kabuga was indicted in 1997 on seven criminal counts including genocide, complicity in genocide and incitement to commit genocide, all in relation to the 1994 Rwanda genocide, according to the UN-established International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT).
Rwanda’s two main ethnic groups are the Hutus and Tutsis, who have historically had an antagonistic relationship and fought a civil war in the early 1990s.
A Hutu businessman, Kabuga is accused of funding the militias that massacred some 800,000 Tutsis and their moderate Hutu allies over a span of 100 days in 1994.
“Since 1994, Felicien Kabuga, known to have been the financier of Rwanda genocide, had with impunity stayed in Germany, Belgium, Congo-Kinshasa, Kenya, or Switzerland,”
Related Coverage
the French ministry statement said.
His arrest paves the way for the fugitive to come before the Paris Appeal Court and later be transferred to the custody of the international court, which is based in the Hague, Netherlands and Arusha, Tanzania. He would then be brought before UN judges, an IRMCT spokesman said.
Two other Rwandan genocide suspects, Augustin Bizimana and Protais Mpiranya, are still being pursued by international justice.
“The arrest of Félicien Kabuga today is a reminder that those responsible for genocide can be brought to account, even twenty-six years after their crimes,” the IRMCT’s Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said in a statement.
He added the arrest was the result of cooperation between law enforcement agencies in France and other countries including the United States, Rwanda, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and others.
Rwanda’s justice minister, Johnston Busingye, told Reuters that a statement on the arrest would be issued but did not specify when.
Kabuga, who controlled many of Rwanda’s tea and coffee plantations and factories, was part-owner of Radio Television Milles Collines which ran a radio station that fanned ethnic hatred against Rwanda’s Tutsis, told Hutus where Tutsis were to be found and offered advice on how to kill them.
He is accused of being a main financier of the genocide, paying for the militias that carried out the massacres.
His arrest “is an important step towards justice for hundreds of thousands of genocide victims...survivors can hope to see justice and suspects cannot expect to escape accountability,” Mausi Segun, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.
Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Additional reporting by Katharine Houreld and George Obulutsa in Nairobi and Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Editing by Frances Kerry and Ros Russell
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays.
Exclusive: Fed’s Neel Kashkari opposes rate hikes at least through 2023 as the central bank becomes more hawkish | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | May 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
In Italy, the Council of State allows Alessandra Mussolini to stand in elections. | Alessandra Mussolini had appealed to the court to overturn a ban imposed after it was alleged signatures backing her far-right candidacy were fake.
Her Alternativa Sociale party will now stand in polls for the Lazio region.
Incumbent regional president Francesco Storace may lose his seat if her party takes votes from him, analysts say.
Mr Storace is a member of the rightwing National Alliance, to which Ms Mussolini belonged before falling out with party leader Gianfranco Fini after he openly distanced himself from Italy's fascist past.
Her Alternativa Sociale party had collected 3,500 signatures to be able to stand against Mr Storace in the central Lazio region, which includes Rome.
Across Italy, some 40 million people are eligible to vote in the elections for regional presidents, taking place on 3 and 4 April.
A court first banned Ms Mussolini's party from running after it ruled hundreds of the signatures were doubtful. That ban was then upheld by a court of appeal last Monday.
Ms Mussolini, who went on a hunger strike limiting her to three cappuccinos a day in protest, celebrated the council of state's decision to overturn the ban on Tuesday.
Voter 'manipulators'
"It's the victory of transparency, pluralism and democracy over a dark procedure," she told reporters at her home in Rome.
"For me, we have won. Now, it's for the citizens to decide."
Ms Mussolini had earlier alleged Mr Storace sparked the investigation that led to the first court ruling excluding her from the ballot.
But Mr Storace said Tuesday's ruling showed there was no "regime" in place acting against Ms Mussolini, according to the Ansa news agency.
"With our heads high we call on the people of the region to pronounce themselves against the manipulators of the voter lists," he is quoted as saying.
Analysts believe Ms Mussolini could take 2-3% of the vote from Mr Storace, putting his otherwise probable re-election at risk. | Government Job change - Election | March 2005 | ['(AGI)', '[permanent dead link]', '(BBC)'] |
The uncrewed Boeing X–37B spacecraft returns to Earth after spending a record 780 days in orbit. The nature of the X–37B's mission remains classified information. | The Air Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle Mission 5 successfully landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility Oct. 27, 2019, at 3:51 a.m.
The spaceplane conducted on-orbit experiments for 780 days during its mission, recently breaking its own record by being in orbit for more than two years. As of today, the total number of days spent on-orbit for the entire test vehicle program is 2,865 days.
“The X-37B continues to demonstrate the importance of a reusable spaceplane,” said Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett. “Each successive mission advances our nation’s space capabilities.”
This is the Air Force’s premier reusable and unmanned spacecraft, providing the performance and flexibility to improve technologies in a way that allows scientists and engineers to recover experiments tested in a long-duration space environment.
“The safe return of this spacecraft, after breaking its own endurance record, is the result of the innovative partnership between government and industry,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein. “The sky is no longer the limit for the Air Force and, if Congress approves, the U.S. Space Force.”
Managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, the X-37B program performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies.
“This program continues to push the envelope as the world’s only reusable space vehicle. With a successful landing today, the X-37B completed its longest flight to date and successfully completed all mission objectives,” said Randy Walden, Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office director. “This mission successfully hosted Air Force Research Laboratory experiments, among others, as well as providing a ride for small satellites.”
The distinctive ability to test new systems in space and return them to Earth is unique to the X-37B program and enables the U.S. to more efficiently and effectively develop space capabilities necessary to maintain superiority in the space domain.
“This spacecraft is a key component of the space community. This milestone demonstrates our commitment to conducting experiments for America’s future space exploration,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Keen, X-37B program manager. “Congratulations to the X-37B team for a job well done.”
This will be the second time the X-37B landed at the Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility — Mission 4 landed after 718 days in orbit. The spaceplane was designed for an on-orbit duration of 270 days.
“Today marks an incredibly exciting day for the 45th Space Wing,” said Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess, 45th Space Wing commander. “Our team has been preparing for this event, and I am extremely proud to see their hard work and dedication culminate in today’s safe and successful landing of the X-37B.”
The fifth mission launched on Sept. 7, 2017, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on-board a Space X Falcon 9 booster, and the Air Force is preparing to launch the sixth X-37B mission from CCAFS in 2020. | Break historical records | October 2019 | ['(United States Air Force)', '(Space)'] |
A Central Criminal Court judge sentences Dutch-Somali terror convict Aweys Shikhey to eight years with an extended licence of four years. Shikhey received international attention for fantasy chats with a Kenyan online about murdering David Cameron, Queen Elizabeth II, Jews, and football fans. | A court in London sentenced Dutch man Aweys S. to eight years in prison for terrorism. He was found guilty of preparing for acts of terrorism and planning to join terrorist organization ISIS in Syria, British newspapers Mail Online and Mirror report.
In 2013 S. left his family behind in Breda to move to London, where he got a job as a package deliverer, according to newspaper AD. In London he became radicalized, the British judiciary said in court. The Somali-born Dutch man made headlines in the United Kingdom when prosecutors revealed chat conversations he had with a man in Kenya in court. In these chats they talked about killing former Prime Minister James Cameron and Queen Elizabeth, and opening fire on football supporters and Jewish people.
The court did not convict him for these statements. "These conversations, although chilling, dangerous and testament to your increasing radicalization, were in my judgment more in the nature of fantasy than conspiracy", the judge told him, according to the Mirror. "I am not sentencing you, indeed cannot sentence you on this charge, for threatened acts of terrorism in this country."
The judge added: "Given the scope of your ambition, including your fantasies about the commission of very grave terrorist acts in the UK and your hatred for those who do not share your views, I have no hesitation in finding you dangerous."
S. was arrested at Stansted airport in London on May 24th last year, as he was preparing to board a flight to Turkey, from where he wanted to sneak across the border to Syria or Iraq, according to the Prosecutor.
"You can have no illusions about the nature of the fighters whose ranks you aspired to join, no illusions about their murderous behavior, their atrocities", the judge said, according to Mail Online. "But for your detention at Stansted you could have been within the heart of the area then controlled by so-called Islamic State within a few days." | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | April 2018 | ['(The Times of Israel)', '(NLTimes.nl)'] |
A court in China sentences a Canadian man to death on drug charges. His alleged accomplice receives life imprisonment. Police had confiscated 120 kilograms of ketamine from the defendant's home. He is the third Canadian citizen to receive the death sentence for drug smuggling since Canadian authorities arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in late 2018 on an extradition request from the United States. | BEIJING (AP) — China has sentenced a third Canadian citizen to death on drug charges amid a steep decline in relations between the two countries.
The Guangzhou Municipal Intermediate Court announced Xu Weihong’s penalty on Thursday and said an alleged accomplice, Wen Guanxiong, had been given a life sentence. Death sentences are automatically referred to China’s highest court for review. The brief court statement gave no details but local media in the southern Chinese city at the heart of the country’s manufacturing industry said Xu and Wen had gathered ingredients and tools and began making the drug ketamine in October 2016, then stored the final product in Xu’s home in Guangzhou’s Haizhu district. Police later confiscated more than 120 kilograms (266 pounds) of the drug from Xu’s home and another address, the reports said. Ketamine is a powerful pain killer that has become popular among club goers in China and elsewhere. Relations between China and Canada soured over the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, an executive and the daughter of the founder of Chinese tech giant Huawei, at Vancouver’s airport in late 2018. The U.S. wants her extradited to face fraud charges over the company’s dealings with Iran. Her arrest infuriated Beijing, which sees her case as a political move designed to prevent China’s rise as a global technology power. In apparent retaliation, China detained former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor, accusing them of vague national security crimes. Soon after, China handed a death sentence to convicted Canadian drug smuggler Robert Schellenberg in a sudden retrial, and in April 2019, gave the death penalty to a Canadian citizen identified as Fan Wei in a multinational drug smuggling case. China has also placed restrictions on various Canadian exports to China, including canola seed oil, in an apparent attempt to pressure Ottawa into releasing Meng. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said there was no connection between Xu’s sentencing and current China-Canada relations. “I would like to stress that China’s judicial authorities handle the relevant case independently in strict accordance with Chinese law and legal procedures,” Wang said at a daily briefing Thursday. “This case should not inflict any impact on China-Canada relations.” Like many Asian nations, China deals out stiff penalties for manufacturing and selling illegal drugs, including the death penalty. In December 2009, Pakistani-British businessman Akmal Shaikh was executed after being convicted of smuggling heroin, despite allegations he was mentally disturbed. “Death sentences for drug-related crimes that are extremely dangerous will help deter and prevent such crimes,” Wang said. “China’s judicial authorities handle cases involving criminals of different nationalities in accordance with law.” | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | August 2020 | ['(266 pounds)', '(AP)'] |
Hurricane Ida makes landfall in Nicaragua. | Miami, Florida (CNN) -- Hurricane Ida made landfall Thursday morning over east central Nicaragua, pelting the Central American nation with heavy rain and weakening to a tropical storm.
At 1 p.m. ET, Ida had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph) with higher gusts, the National Hurricane Center said. It was earlier a Category 1 Hurricane with 75 mph winds.
Flash floods and mudslides in Nicaragua and Honduras are expected. Because Ida is a slow-moving storm -- it had been nearly stationary for the past few hours, the hurricane center said -- rainfall totals could approach 30 inches in some locations.
The storm is expected to weaken as it moves over Nicaragua and into Honduras, the National Hurricane Center said.
Ida is forecast to emerge into the western Caribbean Sea on Saturday morning and then slowly move toward the north-northwest, brushing past Cancun, Mexico, on Monday afternoon. After that, forecast models offer a variety of possibilities as to which way the storm could head and how intense it could be. Ida, or remnants of the storm, could make landfall anywhere along the U.S. Gulf Coast late next week. It is too early to pinpoint a specific location.
Coastal flooding and dangerous riptides will be possible this weekend along coastal Louisiana and Mississippi because of an area of low pressure in the western Gulf of Mexico and a strong area of high pressure over the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Ida may contribute to the abnormally high tides early next week. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | November 2009 | ['(Reuters)', '(CNN)'] |
Violent anti–government protests in Antananarivo, Madagascar, are temporarily halted. | . AFP- The Madagascan capital was deserted Thursday as residents heeded a call by the city's mayor to turn it into a ghost town after anti-government protests that have killed at least 68 people.
Shops and businesses were shut, schools remained closed and the weekly Thursday market was deserted with only small stalls in local neighbourhoods open, an AFP correspondent reported.
Public transport was, however, operating and cars passed intermittently on the practically deserted streets.
Antananarivo Mayor Andry Rajoelina on Wednesday urged residents to stay at home as he issued an ultimatum to the government to punish those behind the killing of a protestor on Monday.
Rajoelina, a vocal government critic, called for a general strike against President Marc Ravalomanana's regime which he has labelled a dictatorship. The demonstrations turned nasty Monday as protestors looted shops, set fire to the state radio building, and ransacked Ravalomanana's private TV station.
The protests have posed the biggest political threat yet to Ravalomanana who won a second term of office in 2006.
Rajoelina has been at odds with the government since his December 2007 election. The tense relations worsened last month when the government shut his television station after airing an interview with former president Didier Ratsiraka.
Who does this Andry think he is? He was invited by the church leaders and the President Ravalomanana to have a talk and work things out and he did NOT show up. Instead, he went to the independence Avenue and self proclaimed himself as the president of Madagascar. He said that the Malagasy people want him to be president!!
This is not democracy , if he wants to see what Malagasy people really want then they should vote. You can't just self proclaim yourself as a president because you think Malagasy people love you. There are 20 million people in M/car, how many of them what this pretentious mayor that has done nothing to be their president. I bet all of the DIRTY, OLD, CORRUPT Politicians with RATSIRAKA are all behind this nonsense.
He has even the audacity to change the Malagasy Constitution. SOme people are really shameless.
We were in Madagascar in december and first week january, we happe to be back. This situation is becouse the pournes and to high prices.
The rich don't care about the pour, they walk over them.
John
The guys below of Mayor is the ancien political men, what they did during the time in governement??
It's as distrouble only the life of Malagasy and put the society Malagasy in the rtue povrety.
They'll have a food and whatever they need but the people will have nothing, no work, the food will be high the price. Now just after two day the price of rice, oil already incrise!!!
Just I know only by this governemnt we got the big projects, and the altitude of Malagasy I'm very sade for that.
If like that, we'll live like the other African faithing every times like zimbabwe, congo or rowanda.
Please, thinking twice the Malagasy people.
Pardom my ignorance ,but didn't Ratsiraka had enough time imposing his ideas ? Do those guys think that they are the only ones with ideas? Why they have a Democratic Republic if not to change people in power every so often?
Hoping some day dictators like Dos Santos ,Mugabe and Ratsiraka be only bad mjemories of HISTORY!
| Protest_Online Condemnation | January 2009 | ['(France 24)'] |
Conflict in Iraq: A group of at least 40 Iraqi insurgents attacks Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, using car bombs, grenades, and small arms. At least 20 American soldiers and 12 Iraqi prisoners are injured, but the US Army says it has put down the assault. | BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sunday, April 3 - Using suicide car bombs and an array of weapons, scores of insurgents made the biggest assault yet on the American-controlled Abu Ghraib prison on Saturday evening, American military officials said. At least 20 American soldiers and marines were wounded.
Forty to 60 insurgents attacked the prison from opposite directions, but were repelled by the Americans in a pitched battle that lasted for 30 to 40 minutes, the officials said. They added that they knew of only one insurgent who had been killed, but said it was almost certain the guerrillas suffered additional casualties.
.
| Armed Conflict | April 2005 | ['(NYT)', '(BBC)'] |
At least 10 people die and 19 others are injured when more than 100 vehicles smash into each other near Poyang Lake in Jiangxi, China. | BEIJING - AT LEAST 10 people were killed and 19 injured when more than 100 vehicles rammed into each other early on Monday in a massive chain reaction pile-up on a foggy, icy road in east China, state media said.
The accident in Jiangxi province occurred on an icy bridge near Poyang Lake, one of China's largest freshwater lakes, when vehicles moving in opposite directions collided, the China News Service reported.
Following the initial collision, further accidents ensued due to the fog as cars and trucks continued to collide in a pile-up that stretched for more than a kilometre (0.6 miles), it said.
China's roads are among the most dangerous in the world, with nearly 73,500 people dying in road accidents last year, or just over 200 fatalities per day, according to police statistics. -- AFp | Road Crash | December 2009 | ['(The Straits Times)', '(Melbourne Herald Sun)', '(Xinhua News Agency)', '(Press Trust of India)'] |
Republican Senators filibuster the nomination of Chuck Hagel as US Secretary of Defence. | The US Senate's top Democrat attacked Republican senators Thursday for blocking Chuck Hagel's nomination to be President Barack Obama's next secretary of defense, saying it was "shocking" and "tragic" that they would attempt such a move at a time when the US military is engaged in so many places around the world.
A vote to end debate on Hagel's nomination failed to pass with the required threshold of 60, meaning the president's pick remains in limbo until the Senate returns on 26 February, after the recess.
Senate Republicans say they want more information about what Obama was doing on the night of the deadly attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in September. The attack killed the US ambassador.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid said such a move was unprecedented. He said Republicans notified him Wednesday night they would withhold the votes needed to advance Hagel's nomination. In the event, the result was 58 to 40. The White House responded on Wednesday to the Republicans' request for information about Benghazi, Reid said. "But now Republicans say this is not enough," Reid said. "This is no way to operate."
On Thursday the White House said Obama did not speak to any Libyan government officials until the night after the attack. White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler sent a letter Thursday to three Republican senators saying former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Libyan president Mohamed Magariaf on Obama's behalf on September 11 to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya.
Ruemmler said Obama spoke to Magariaf on the evening of September 12.A White House official said there was no new information in Ruemmler's letter. The fact of Clinton's call to Magariaf has previously been public. If there were a need to push the Libyans to do something, Obama would have called, but the Libyans were trying to do the right thing and were being as helpful as possible, the official said.
The official, discussing internal communications only on the condition of anonymity, said that it wasn't clear that an earlier call from Obama to the Libyans would have been helpful in the deadly, fast-moving assault.Hagel, a former Republican senator and twice-wounded Vietnam combat veteran, has already faced sharp questioning from his former colleagues over his past statements and votes on Israel, Iran, Iraq and nuclear weapons.
A bitterly divided Armed Services Committee on Tuesday voted to approve Hagel by a 14-11 vote, with all the panel's Democrats backing him. The committee's Republicans were unified in opposition to their onetime colleague, who will succeed Defense secretary Leon Panetta if he's confirmed.
Panetta on Thursday said the struggle over Hagel is getting on his nerves. "The second-best Valentine's Day present would be to allow Sylvia and I to get the hell out of town," he quipped at a Pentagon award ceremony for former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
While Democrats hold a 55-45 edge in the Senate and have the numbers to confirm Hagel on a majority vote, they need the support of five Republicans to clear the way for an up-or-down vote on him.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, said he'll vote against ending debate on Hagel's nomination, and senator John McCain, another Republican who most sharply questioned Hagel during his Senate hearing, may join him.
They want to know whether Obama spoke to any Libyan government official during the assault and requested assistance for the American personnel at the mission. US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in the raid at the compound in Benghazi.
"There seems to not be much interest to hold this president accountable for a national security breakdown that led to the first ambassador being killed in the line of duty in over 30 years," Graham said. "No, the debate on Chuck Hagel is not over. It has not been serious. We don't have the information we need."
McCain declined to say Wednesday whether he would try to delay Hagel's confirmation if Obama did not provide an answer. "My position right now is I want an answer to the question," he said.
The nomination of John Brennan as CIA director is also being delayed; the Senate Intelligence Committee is pushing off a vote amid demands that the White House turn over more details about drone strikes against terror suspects and about the Benghazi attacks. Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, said a vote likely will be postponed till late February.
A president's pick for a Cabinet post usually requires only a majority vote, leading Reid to accuse Senate Republicans of orchestrating a filibuster against a nominee for defense secretary for the first time in the country's history.
But the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee challenged Reid's claim, saying it's not unusual to hold a Cabinet nominee to a 60-vote threshold. "It's not a filibuster," said senator James Inhofe. "This has happened (before), and it's happening again right now."
senator Carl Levin, the Democrat and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he's confident that the White House will supply the information Graham and McCain want and that Hagel will be confirmed. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | February 2013 | ['(AP via the Guardian)'] |
A woman opens fire at the Indonesian National Police headquarters in Jakarta before being shot dead by police. A male accomplice flees the scene. No other casualties are reported. | Indonesian media reports that one person was shot dead in an exchange of gunfire during an ‘alleged terror attack’.
A woman entered the Indonesian National Police Headquarters in Jakarta and pointed a gun at several officers before being shot dead by police, in the latest in a series of attacks in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
Authorities had earlier imposed a counterterrorism crackdown and were on heightened alert for possible attacks against police and places of worship following a suicide bombing at a Roman Catholic cathedral during Palm Sunday Mass on Sulawesi island which wounded at least 20 people.
Television video on Wednesday showed an unidentified woman wearing a long black robe and a blue veil walking near a parking lot at the police headquarters toward the police chief’s office building. She pointed a gun at several police officers before being shot dead by other officers.
The body lay motionless afterwards, with the reports calling it an “alleged terror attack”.
Police said the couple belonged to pro-ISIL (ISIS) group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) and warned of more possible attacks.
The attackers detonated their bombs when they were confronted by guards outside the church.
Indonesia has been rocked by a string of deadly attacks by armed groups in recent years.
These include a 2016 Starbucks attack in Jakarta which killed four civilians and four fighters, an attack on a bus terminal in the capital that killed three police officers, and an attack on a church in Kalimantan that killed a 2-year-old girl a year later. Several other children suffered serious burns in the Kalimantan attack.
Indonesia’s last major militant attack was in May 2018, when two families carried out suicide bombings on churches in Surabaya, killing a dozen people including two young girls whose parents involved them in one of the attacks. Police said the father was the leader of a local affiliate of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah.
| Armed Conflict | March 2021 | ['(Al Jazeera)'] |
Four Azerbaijani soldiers are killed in fresh clashes with Armenian groups near the border of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. | Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry says four of its troops have been killed near the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The ministry said in a statement that the four were killed on August 2 in a clash with "Armenian sabotage groups" conducting an operation in the Agdam-Terter area. The statement said Azerbaijani units repelled the attack. A ministry official told RFE/RL that "Azerbaijani military jets are conducting maneuvers to protect the homeland." Asked about reports of troop movements toward the Armenian border, the official responded that "to protect Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, the military can and will move troops and hardware within its own jurisdiction."
In a statement issued on August 3, Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry urged the international community to "adopt serious sanctions against Armenia." The self-styled Ministry of Defense of Nagorno-Karabakh meanwhile said on August 2 that its forces killed at least nine Azerbaijani troops and lost one serviceman overnight in what it described as a successful repulsion of an attack by Azerbaijani commando units. It also reported attacks by Azerbaijani troops in several other directions, all of which, it said, had been successfully repelled without further casualties. Meanwhile, the Armenian Defense Ministry on August 2 again blamed Azerbaijan for the escalation of violence around Nagorno-Karabakh. In a statement it said that, in recent days, Azerbaijani armed forces have been making attempts to overrun Armenian positions and conduct subversive activities. It accused Azerbaijan of using large-caliber guns and artillery, and of increasingly shelling populated areas. Later on August 2, a spokesperson for Armenia’s prime minister told RFERL that President Serzh Sarkisian would most likely meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on August 8-9 to discuss the crisis.
An RFE/RL correspondent reporting from the northeastern province of Armenia said on August 2 that the situation at the border with Azerbaijan remains tense.
The correspondent says Armenian positions regularly come under fire. Intensive fire was, in particular, heard near the border village of Berkaber. Exchanges of fire between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces on the Karabakh frontline have become more frequent in recent days. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said on August 1 that Armenian troops had attacked Azerbaijani positions and killed eight Azerbaijani troops over the previous three days.
On July 31, Nagorno-Karabakh authorities said that two of their troops were killed in an attack by Azerbaijani forces.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a conflict over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh for years. Nagorno-Karabakh, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, declared independence from Azerbaijan after a 1988-94 war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
Internationally mediated negotiations with the involvement of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's so-called Minsk Group have failed to result in a resolution. The Minsk Group is co-chaired by France, Russia, and the United States. Russia's Foreign Ministry on August 2 expressed concern over the flare-up of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh, and said "any further escalation is unacceptable."
On August 1, the United States called on the sides "to take immediate action to reduce tensions and respect the cease-fire."
State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statement that Washington is urging the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to meet "at the earliest opportunity to resume dialogue on key issues."
Harf said the United States remains "committed to participating in the Minsk Group process and stands ready to help efforts to bring about a lasting settlement."
Despite near-total government control over the media, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service has built a high-impact social-media presence in Azerbaijan and a reputation as a leading source of independent news.
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, operating out of a bureau in Yerevan, is a leading source of trusted reporting and technical innovation, reaching outsized audiences when developments demand authoritative, up-to-the-minute news most. | Armed Conflict | August 2014 | ['(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)'] |
Three American hikers detained on the border between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran are to be charged for espionage by Iranian authorities. | TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Iranian judiciary official announced on Monday that three American citizens arrested in July near the country's border with Iraq for illegal entry to Iranian territory have been charged with espionage. Tehran's Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said that the three American citizens have been charged with espionage.
The three American citizens had illegally entered Iranian borders from Iraq, he added.
Speaking to the Islamic republic news agency, he said investigations on their charges are now underway and their status will be declared in the future. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | November 2009 | ['(The Independent)', '(Fars News Agency)'] |
Israel and Syria conclude talks on the Golan Heights issue held in Turkey. | Israel and Syria have completed two days of indirect peace talks in Turkey, with Israeli and Turkish officials hailing them as a success.
The two sides have agreed to at least two more sets of talks under Turkish mediation, the officials said. The Israeli delegation is thought to include two top aides of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Previous peace talks collapsed in 2000 over disagreements about the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967. The two sides announced the existence of indirect talks last month. An unnamed Israeli official told journalists the discussions had been held "in a positive and constructive atmosphere". "The two sides reiterated their commitment to make progress in the talks and to meet on a regular basis." Turkish officials also said an agreement had been reached to carry on the talks, although Damascus has not yet confirmed that any talks have taken place. And it is not thought there is any firm plan for a face-to-face meeting between the two sides. At the moment, Turkish officials have been passing messages between the two delegations. Israeli President Shimon Peres said on Sunday that Israeli and Syrian leaders should meet. He recalled the groundbreaking visit by Egypt's Anwar Sadat to Israel in 1977 which triggered a process that led to a peace treaty. "If the Syrians really want peace, they must agree to a summit meeting between the Syrian president and the Israeli prime minister," said Mr Peres during a visit to the US. The Syrian government has insisted peace talks can be resumed only on the basis of Israel returning the Golan Heights. Israeli authorities, for their part, have demanded that Syria abandon its support for Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups. What are these? | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | June 2008 | ['(BBC News)'] |
The New York Times claims that Mohammed Zia Salehi, an official of Afghanistan's Karzai administration accused of graft is on the United States Central Intelligence Agency payroll. | KABUL, Afghanistan The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.
Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.
Mr. Salehi’s relationship with the C.I.A. underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan, with American officials simultaneously demanding that Mr. Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his government while sometimes subsidizing the very people suspected of perpetrating it. Mr. Salehi was arrested in July and released after Mr. Karzai intervened. There has been no suggestion that Mr. Salehi’s ties to the C.I.A. played a role in his release; rather, officials say, it is the fear that Mr. Salehi knows about corrupt dealings inside the Karzai administration. The ties underscore doubts about how seriously the Obama administration intends to fight corruption here. The anticorruption drive, though strongly backed by the United States, is still vigorously debated inside the administration. Some argue it should be a centerpiece of American strategy, and others say that attacking corrupt officials who are crucial to the war effort could destabilize the Karzai government.
The Obama administration is also racing to show progress in Afghanistan by December, when the White House will evaluate its mission there. Some administration officials argue that any comprehensive campaign to fight corruption inside Afghanistan is overly ambitious, with less than a year to go before the American military is set to begin withdrawing troops.
“Fighting corruption is the very definition of mission creep,” one Obama administration official said.
Others in the administration view public corruption as the single greatest threat to the Afghan government and the American mission; it is the corrupt nature of the Karzai government, these officials say, that drives ordinary Afghans into the arms of the Taliban. Other prominent Afghans who American officials have said were on the C.I.A.’s payroll include the president’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, suspected by investigators of playing a role in Afghanistan’s booming opium trade. Earlier this year, American officials did not press Mr. Karzai to remove his brother from his post as the chairman of the Kandahar provincial council. Mr. Karzai denies any monetary relationship with the C.I.A. and any links to the drug trade.
Mr. Salehi was arrested by the Afghan police after, investigators say, they wiretapped him soliciting a bribe in the form of a car for his son in exchange for impeding an American-backed investigation into a company suspected of shipping billions of dollars out of the country for Afghan officials, drug smugglers and insurgents.
Mr. Salehi was released seven hours later, after telephoning Mr. Karzai from his jail cell to demand help, officials said, and after Mr. Karzai forcefully intervened on his behalf.
The president sent aides to get him and has since threatened to limit the power of the anticorruption unit that carried out the arrest. Mr. Salehi could not be reached for comment on Wednesday. A spokesman for President Karzai did not respond to a list of questions sent to his office, including whether Mr. Karzai knew that Mr. Salehi was a C.I.A. informant.
A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment on any relationship with Mr. Salehi. “The C.I.A. works hard to advance the full range of U.S. policy objectives in Afghanistan,” said Paul Gimigliano, a spokesman for the agency. “Reckless allegations from anonymous sources don’t change that reality in the slightest.”
An American official said the practice of paying government officials was sensible, even if they turn out to be corrupt or unsavory.
“If we decide as a country that we’ll never deal with anyone in Afghanistan who might down the road and certainly not at our behest put his hand in the till, we can all come home right now,” the American official said. “If you want intelligence in a war zone, you’re not going to get it from Mother Teresa or Mary Poppins.” Last week, Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, flew to Kabul in part to discuss the Salehi case with Mr. Karzai. In an interview afterward, Mr. Kerry expressed concern about Mr. Salehi’s ties to the American government. Mr. Kerry appeared to allude to the C.I.A., though he did not mention it. “We are going to have to examine that relationship,” Mr. Kerry said. “We are going to have to look at that very carefully.”
Mr. Kerry said he pressed Mr. Karzai to allow the anticorruption unit pursuing Mr. Salehi and others to move forward unhindered, and said he believed he had secured a commitment from him to do so. “Corruption matters to us,” a senior Obama administration official said. “The fact that Salehi may have been on our payroll does not necessarily change any of the basic issues here.”
Mr. Salehi is a political survivor, who, like many Afghans, navigated shifting alliances through 31 years of war. He is a former interpreter for Abdul Rashid Dostum, the ethnic Uzbek with perhaps the most ruthless reputation among all Afghan warlords.
Mr. Dostum, a Karzai ally, was one of the C.I.A.’s leading allies on the ground in Afghanistan in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The agency employed his militia to help rout the Taliban from northern Afghanistan.
Over the course of the nine-year-old war, the C.I.A. has enmeshed itself in the inner workings of Afghanistan’s national security establishment. From 2002 until just last year, the C.I.A. paid the entire budget of Afghanistan’s spy service, the National Directorate of Security.
Mr. Salehi often acts as a courier of money to other Afghans, according to an Afghan politician who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation.
Among the targets of the continuing Afghan anticorruption investigation is a secret fund of cash from which payments were made to various individuals, officials here said.
Despite Mr. Salehi’s status as a low-level functionary, the Afghan politician predicted that Mr. Karzai would never allow his prosecution to go forward, whatever the pressure from the United States. Mr. Salehi knows too much about the inner workings of the palace, he said. “Karzai will protect him,” the politician said, “because by going after him, you are opening the gates.”
Mr. Salehi is a confidant of some of the most powerful people in the Afghan government, including Engineer Ibrahim, who until recently was the deputy chief of the Afghan intelligence service. Earlier this year, Mr. Salehi accompanied Mr. Ibrahim to Dubai to meet leaders of the Taliban to explore prospects for peace, according to a prominent Afghan with knowledge of the meeting. Mr. Salehi was arrested last month in the course of a sprawling investigation into New Ansari, a money transfer firm that relies on couriers and other rudimentary means to move cash in and out of Afghanistan.
New Ansari was founded in the 1990s when the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan. In the years since 2001, New Ansari grew into one of the most important financial hubs in Afghanistan, transferring billions of dollars in cash for prominent Afghans out of the country, most of it to Dubai.
New Ansari’s offices were raided by Afghan agents, with American backing, in January. An American official familiar with the investigation said New Ansari appeared to have been transferring money for wealthy Afghans of every sort, including politicians, insurgents and drug traffickers.
“They were moving money for everybody,” the American official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The flow of capital out of Afghanistan is so large that it makes up a substantial portion of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product. In an interview, a United Arab Emirates customs official said it received about $1 billion from Afghanistan in 2009. But the American official said the amount might be closer to $2.5 billion about a quarter of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product.
Much of the New Ansari cash was carried by couriers flying from Kabul and Kandahar, usually to Dubai, where many Afghan officials maintain second homes and live in splendorous wealth.
An American official familiar with the investigation said the examination of New Ansari’s books was providing rich insights into the culture of Afghan corruption.
“It’s a gold mine,” the official said.
Following the arrest, Mr. Salehi called Mr. Karzai directly from his cell to demand that he be freed. Mr. Karzai twice sent delegations to the detention center where Mr. Salehi was held. After seven hours, Mr. Salehi was let go.
Afterward, Gen. Nazar Mohammed Nikzad, the head of the Afghan unit investigating Mr. Salehi, was summoned to the Presidential Palace and asked by Mr. Karzai to explain his actions.
“Everything is lawful and by the book,” a Western official said of the Afghan anticorruption investigators. “They gather the evidence, they get the warrant signed off and then the plug gets pulled every time.”
This is not the first time that Afghan prosecutors have run into resistance when they have tried to pursue an Afghan official on corruption charges related to New Ansari.
Sediq Chekari, the minister for Hajj and Religious Affairs, was allowed to flee the country as investigators prepared to charge him with accepting bribes in exchange for steering business to tour operators who ferry people to Saudi Arabia each year. Mr. Chekari fled to Britain, officials said. Afghanistan’s attorney general issued an arrest warrant through Interpol. American officials say a key player in the scandal is Hajji Rafi Azimi, the vice chairman of Afghan United Bank. The bank’s chairman, Hajji Mohammed Jan, is a founder of New Ansari. According to American officials, Afghan prosecutors would like to arrest Mr. Azimi but so far have run into political interference they did not specify. He has not been formally charged. In the past, some Western officials have expressed frustration at the political resistance that Afghan prosecutors have encountered when they have tried to investigate Afghan officials. Earlier this year, the American official said that the Obama administration was considering extraordinary measures to bring corrupt Afghan officials to justice, including extradition.
“We are pushing some high-level public corruption cases right now, and they are just constantly stalling and stalling and stalling,” the American official said of the Karzai administration.
Another Western official said he was growing increasingly concerned about the morale and safety of the Afghan anticorruption prosecutors.
So far, the Afghan prosecutors have not folded. The Salehi case is likely to resurface and very soon. Under Afghan law, prosecutors have a maximum of 33 days to indict a person after his arrest. Mr. Salehi was arrested in late July. That means Afghan prosecutors may soon come before the Afghan attorney general, Mohammed Ishaq Aloko, to seek an indictment. It will be up to Mr. Aloko, who owes his job to Mr. Karzai, to sign it.
“They are all just doing their jobs,” the Western official said. “They are scared for their lives. They are scared for their families. If it continues, they will eventually give up the fight.” | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | August 2010 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been arrested in the state of Texas on suspicion of killing four women. | A US Border Patrol agent has been arrested in the state of Texas on suspicion of killing four women.
Officers began looking for Juan David Ortiz in the city of Laredo after a fifth woman allegedly escaped from him and got help from local police.
Mr Ortiz, who has worked for the force for a decade, initially fled but was later arrested in a hotel parking lot.
The names of the four victims have not been revealed. Police said they had been working as prostitutes.
Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar said police believed Mr Ortiz had acted alone.
"The county, the city can rest assured we have the serial killer in custody," Sheriff Cuellar said, in quotes reported by the Laredo Times newspaper.
Two of the victims were found earlier this month in a rural area by the Interstate 35 road, and the third and fourth victims were found in the same area in recent days, according to local reports. A 42-year-old woman had been found injured on Thursday but died in hospital.
District Attorney Isidro Alaniz described the killings as a "horrific case" and confirmed Mr Ortiz was set to face four charges of murder and one of aggravated kidnapping.
He said the cause of death was similar for all four women who, authorities believe, were killed over two weeks. He said all of the victims had worked as prostitutes and that investigators were trying to find a motive for the killings. Two of the victims were US citizens and one was a transgender woman, he added. Few other details have been released. The Texas Tribune reports the fifth woman fled from a petrol station after Mr Ortiz allegedly pointed a gun at her when she tried to get out of his vehicle.
Andrew Meehan, assistant commissioner for public affairs for US Customs and Border Protection, confirmed in a statement that the agency was co-operating with police. "Our sincerest condolences go out to the victims' family and friends," he said. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | September 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
In England, Wigan Athletic, playing in their first FA Cup Final, defeat Manchester City with a last minute goal by Ben Watson at Wembley Stadium. | 7.24pm BST And here come Wigan to collect their trophy. They're led up the Wembley steps by Emmerson Boyce. What a preposterous team. Beaten by Swansea reserves on Tueday night, winners of the FA Cup on Saturday evening. You've gotta love 'em. You've got to love this. The FA Cup is lifted by Emmerson Boyce and Gary Caldwell. Emmerson Boyce and Gary Caldwell. Wigan. Good old Wigan. They might go down next week. They truly are the most absurd team of all time. Thanks for reading and emailing. Sorry I couldn't use them all. Farewell. 7.19pm BST The camera focuses on a couple of young Manchester City fans. One has his head in his hands; the other is repeatedly shouting "eff" and "cee". And well he might. City were an abject disgrace. You wonder how much this morning's reports about Roberto Mancini played a part in that. Not to take anything away from Wigan, but this was a seriously shabby performance from City, who have surely hammered the final nail in Mancini's coffin. In pouring rain, they're up to collect their losers' medals. 7.14pm BST "The Argentine commentators have come up with a fantastic nickname for Wigan's goalscorer: Big Ben Watson," says Pierre-Louis Le Goff. "I hope it sticks." 7.13pm BST Ben Watson, Wigan's matchwinner, has just been interviewed. Summary: he's emotional. Callum McManaman? "I'm made-up." 7.12pm BST Khaldoon Mubarak is having a private conversation with a City lackey. He's covering his hand with his mouth. I imagine it's something along the lines of "Bring me Roberto Mancini's head. Now." 7.10pm BST Dave Whelan can't believe it. On the pitch, Roberto Martinez is hugging anything that dares move, though not before a dignified handshake with his City counterparts. 7.10pm BST WIGAN ATHLETIC HAVE WON THE FA CUP! There's your romance. What a story. Ben Watson will never have to buy a pie in Wigan again. Footballl? Bloody hell. Updated at 7.11pm BST
7.08pm BST 90 min+4: City are pressing. It's manic. This is amazing. I can't believe it. Espinoza boots it away. Updated at 7.09pm BST
7.08pm BST 90 min+3: Joel has been booked for wasting time over a goal-kick. Edin Dzeko is on for City. 7.07pm BST 90 min+2: Wigan, though. Those were some celebrations. You should have seen the reaction in this office. What a header too. Hart didn't have a chance. There will be time added on to the three minutes of stoppage time. Updated at 7.07pm BST
7.06pm BST This is unbelievable! Ben Watson has surely won the FA Cup for Wigan Athletic. I'll say that again: Ben Watson has surely won the FA Cup for Wigan Athletic. And they don't care about not getting that penalty now. Maloney whipped the corner to the near post and Watson darted in front of Rodwell and glanced a brilliant header past Hart and into the far corner! Updated at 7.15pm BST
7.05pm BST 90 min: Has Andre Marriner bottled this? McManaman steams past Clichy again on the right and reaches the byline, before tumbling under his challenge. No penalty. It's a corner - and...
7.03pm BST 88 min: Watson's tame free-kick is blocked by the wall. Moments later, Maloney produces a jink and a shot which Kompany blocks. 7.02pm BST 87 min: Now Barry is booked after bringing down down Maloney. It's in a similar position to where McManaman was fouled. 7.01pm BST 87 min: James Milner has moved to right-back. 7.00pm BST 86 min: Maloney whips the resulting free-kick over the bar. 7.00pm BST 84 min: Pablo Zabaleta becomes the third man to be sent off in FA Cup final and Manchester City are down to 10 men! Vincent Kompany was played into trouble by a square pass from Clichy, who knocked it into the centre circle where Kone was waiting. Kone got there first and shuffled it through to McManaman. His touch was heavy but he beat Zabaleta to the ball 30 yards from goal and was sent flying. He wasn't the last man but he was on a booking. Out came the yellow, then the red. Oh me, oh my! Zabaleta follows in the footsteps of Kevin Moran and Jose Antonio Reyes. Updated at 7.04pm BST
6.55pm BST 81 min:Ben Watson replaces Jordi Gomez. "First final since 1963 that both managers shared the same first name," says Richard Oldale. "Matt Gillies and Busby. That's how bored I've been." Updated at 6.56pm BST
6.54pm BST 79 min: Yaya Toure's drive from the edge of the area is deflected wide for a corner on the left. There is still no way through. Wigan's defending has been magnificent. 6.51pm BST 76 min: Maloney hits the bar! He didn't mean to, but that's what happened! It actually looked like he had woefully overhit and misdirected his cross but it dipped at the last moment and bounced off the top of the bar, much to Hart's amazement. He was expecting it to sail behind harmlessly. 6.49pm BST 75 min: Nor is McManaman v Nastasic. The youngster bursts past him just outside the area on the right and is shoved to the floor. Nastasic is booked. Both City yellow cards have been for fouls on McManaman. 6.49pm BST 74 min: McManaman v Clichy isn't remotely a contest. "Poor Gus doesn't know what's happening, both in the game and in the announcer's booth," says Scott Bassett. "When his partner said Wigan's keeper "flapped at the ball," Gus said flatly "What does that mean?" He start-stops sentences, hoots and howls at the wrong moments, growls and emotes for no reason. It reminds me of the Simpsons when Smithers somehow snags a job as the announcer for the race track and asks, on mic, "The people are already here, we don't need to keep hustling them like this do we?" Except, Johnson thinks we do need to keep hustling them and every sentence ends with an exclamation mark (or question mark)." 6.46pm BST 72 min: Espinoza clips Milner on the right to concede a soft free-kick. That said, most of City's set-pieces have been appalling. Milner whips it in and Rodwell rises highest to plant a header straight at Joel. Updated at 6.47pm BST
6.44pm BST 70 min: Prediction: Edin Dzeko will come off the bench to score a late winner. 6.44pm BST 69 min: Carlos Tevez, wearing as perplexed smile, is replaced by Jack Rodwell. Big call. "Amazing the poor Wigan fan can't watch the FA Cup Final in Brittany as I'm watching it here in Argentina!" says Paul Hobson. 6.43pm BST 68 min: Jack Rodwell is being readied by City and it sounds like Tevez will be replaced. Curious. 6.42pm BST 66 min: Callum McManaman is such a talent. With Wigan pressing hard, he's found on the right by McCarthy. He goes past Silva as if he wasn't there before brushing Clichy inside. He's more or less in Ricky Villa territory now and this would be one of the all-time great FA Cup final goals, only for Vincent Kompany to deny him with an exceptional last-ditch challenge. The spoilsport. 6.39pm BST 64 min: Maloney and Kone work the ball between themselves neatly enough before Gomez sends one over the bar from 25 yards out. There's not a lot going on in an attacking sense at the moment and the tension is growing. 6.36pm BST 61 min: City have improved since the introduction of James Milner. He's played into the Wigan area on the right and he scuffs a cross-shot across the face of the six-yard box. It's begging to be tapped in at the far post by Silva but he's on his heels. 6.36pm BST 60 min: Zabaleta picks up the first booking of the afternoon after cynically checking McManaman on the halfway line as Wigan broke at pace from a City corner. He knew. "Jacob I am a Wigan supporter who foolishly booked a holiday before the end of the season," says Tom Coulton. "As such I am in Brittany, a land which appears to reject the notion of the FA Cup. | Sports Competition | May 2013 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
A man in Sydney, Australia, stabs and kills one person and wounds another. The motive of the suspect, who was arrested at the crime scene, is unknown. | Police have linked the murder of a woman to a stabbing rampage in central Sydney which left another woman in hospital.
The body of the 21-year-old woman was found in an apartment complex on Clarence Street, a short distance from where a man, identified as 21-year-old Mert Ney, was wielding a large butcher's knife and later restrained by bystanders.
Police said the incident which they described as "terrifying carnage" did not appear to be terror related, the suspect had no known terrorist links and he was acting on his own.
Officers are currently searching the suspect's home near Blacktown in Sydney's west.
Twitter: David Vaux
The ABC understands the man escaped from a mental health facility and police confirmed he had a history of mental health problems.
The injured woman, a 41-year-old who police said was stabbed in the back in a "random attack", remains in a stable condition in Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital.
AAP: Dean Lewins
Reports of a man armed with a large knife on the streets of Sydney first emerged about 2:00pm, sparking a major police operation.
In what police described as "heroic" actions, passers-by and firefighters used chairs, a crowbar and a milk crate to apprehend the alleged offender, before he was arrested by authorities. Police said the investigation was "live and ongoing".
"He was clearly dangerous and had motive," NSW Police Commissioner Michael Fuller said. "But it is not currently classed as a terrorist incident, as the investigation continues we will reassess that."
Twitter via AAP
However, Commissioner Fuller said a thumb drive linked to the alleged offender suggested he had "some ideologies" in relation to terrorism.
"[It was] information [on] mass deaths and mass casualties around the world, namely from North America and New Zealand," he said.
"He was known to police but his history was unremarkable."
Armed with nothing more than chairs, a milk crate and crowbar, several men chased the knife-wielding man up a Sydney street.
Channel 7 cameraman Paul Walker, who was stuck in traffic in the area at 2:00pm and spotted the alleged offender running down the street, told the ABC the man was "covered in blood" carrying a large knife.
"He jumped on the roof of the car behind us," he said.
"Then suddenly these firies who were in a firetruck a couple of vehicles in front jumped out.
"They had axes in their hand and were yelling at him to stop, put his weapon down and he just ignored them."
AAP: Dean Lewins
The man then ran down a nearby street.
"Another person [on the street] was screaming at people to get out of the way, the fact he had a knife and the fact he is going to kill you," Walker said.
He said the alleged offender was then knocked to the ground by a member of the public who grabbed a chair and "whacked him".
"Seconds later he was just piled on by quite a few people."
When the man fell he dropped a knife into the gutter.
NSW Police Superintendent Gavin Wood said the man had tried to stab others.
"There has been, again, subsequent to that stabbing a number of attempted stabbings by the same offender," he said.
Superintendent Wood lauded the actions of the bystanders who restrained the alleged offender and called them "heroes".
"They were brave and I can only use that word seriously they were significantly brave people," he said.
"To approach a person with a mindset of obviously what this person did, with clear evidence of a stabbing previously, these people are heroes."
The man has been taken to Day Street Police Station.
A number of crime scenes have been established and a number of road closures are in place.
| Armed Conflict | August 2019 | ['(Australian Broadcasting Corporation)'] |
The death toll from the Karachi traffic accident rises to 62. | At least 62 people, including women and children, were today killed when their overcrowded bus collided head-on with a speeding oil tanker, sparking a major fire in southern Pakistan, in the deadliest road accident to hit the country in recent times.
The deadly accident occurred in the early hours on the Super Highway about 50 kms from here in Sindh province as the bus was travelling from Karachi to Shikarpur, Karachi Commissioner Shoaib Siddiqui said.
The overcrowded bus, carrying around 80 people with some sitting on its roof, collided with an oil tanker coming from the opposite direction and wrong side of the road.
“It was the mistake on part of drivers of both vehicles as they were overspeeding and the passenger bus was overloaded with some passengers even sitting on the roof,” Siddiqui told
The driver of the tanker is absconding.
“It was a very tragic incident because those killed include women and children and most were burnt alive after the bus and tanker caught fire,” Siddiqui said.
He said rescue workers recovered bodies of children stuck to their mothers as they were apparently trapped after the collision and could not escape the fire.
The devastating incident also killed nine members of a Karachi family, including its 80-year-old head and a two-year- old toddler.
So far, 62 bodies were recovered from the site and sent to the state-owned Jinnah Hospital here.
Seemi Jamali, the emergency department incharge at the hospital, said most of the bodies were beyond recognition and could only be identified with DNA tests.
An unspecified number of injured have also been shifted to the Jinnah Hospital, where emergency has been declared.
“The death toll has climbed since this morning as rescue workers recovered bodies from the burnt vehicles after the fire was put off,” she said.
The bus was completely burned on the inside due to the fire.
“Some even tried to save their lives by trying to leap out of the windows and from the roof of the bus,” senior police official in Shikarpur Nadeem Khan said.
Earlier, senior police official Rao Muhammad Anwaar said the bus hit the oil tanker and caught fire.
A probe has been launched but it appeared the poor condition of the single track road also contributed to the fatal accident, another senior police official Aamir Shiekh said.
“We are trying to ascertain if the driver of the oil tanker was solely at fault or whether the bus driver also showed negligence,” Anwaar said.
One survivor told Geo News channel that the passenger bus was overcrowded and the driver was also overspeeding.
“He lost control and panicked when the oil tanker driver lost control and came the wrong way,” he said.
Television channels showed both vehicles on fire as rescue workers and fire engines were on duty at the site.
Roads in Sindh province are notorious for being poorly maintained while lax checking by the highway police also emboldens drivers to overspeed during night.
Last November, around 57 people, including women and children, were killed in a similar accident when a passenger bus collided with a container carrying coal near Khairpur on the Super Highway.
In March, 43 people were killed when an oil tanker crashed into a trailer tractor on the highway.
Close to 9,000 road accidents are reported to the police every year since 2011, killing over 4,500 people on average, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
In 2013, around 4,672 people were killed in 8,885 road accidents in Pakistan.
Bad roads, driver’s negligence, overspeeding and overloading are the main reasons behind major accidents in Pakistan. | Road Crash | January 2015 | ['(Indian Express)'] |
H1N1 influenza kills a third United States citizen and spreads to Australia and Japan. | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Washington state man with H1N1 influenza died last week, health officials said, the third U.S. sufferer to die as the new flu strain confirmed in more than 2,200 Americans appeared in Japan and Australia.
Health officials have warned that the true number of cases may be underestimated. Although most cases appear to be mild, the new swine flu strain has killed just as seasonal flu does.
Another 48 people have died in Mexico and one each in Canada and Costa Rica.
Washington state officials said on Saturday a man in his 30s with underlying heart conditions died last week, state governor Chris Gregoire describing his death as a sobering reminder that influenza is serious.
The virus has moved into the southern hemisphere, where influenza season is just beginning, and could mix with circulating seasonal flu viruses or the H5N1 avian influenza virus to create new strains, health officials said.
One of the big challenges with influenza viruses is the way that they change, the way they combine and their prevalence in a number of species, Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told a news briefing on Saturday.
This is why it is so important for countries to have a strong capacity to deal with influenza and also why it is very important to understand what happens at the interface between people and animals.
Before the Washington mans death was announced, the CDC reported 2,254 confirmed U.S. cases of the virus with 104 people in hospital, up from 1,639 cases previously.
Today there are almost 3,000 probable and confirmed cases here in the United States, Schuchat said. The good news is we are not seeing a rise above the epidemic threshold.
Japan reported four cases, and globally officials reported more than 4,200 people in 30 countries had been ill. Australia reported its first case, a woman who been traveling in the United States but officials said she had made full recovery.
We think this virus is in most of the United States, Schuchat said. The individual numbers are likely to be a very great underestimate.
More Americans are seeing doctors for influenza-like illnesses at a time of year when such visits usually decline.
Schuchat said tests showed they do not all have the new H1N1 virus. Many have seasonal flu -- the H1N1 seasonal strain, the H3N2 seasonal strain and influenza B -- and other infections.
Seasonal flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people globally and infects up to a third of the population each year.
Health experts have not openly criticized efforts by other countries to stop the virus from getting in -- most notably China and its territory of Hong Kong, which have quarantined travellers in contact with patients.
A spokeswoman in Hong Kong said on Saturday that a Mexican traveler confirmed as Hong Kongs first and only case of the new flu strain had been discharged from hospital.
The unidentified man, who unwittingly caused the confinement of almost 300 guests and staff at a Hong Kong hotel where he had stayed, had been in hospital for a week.
China put seven people who had been exposed to three Japanese passengers diagnosed with the H1N1 flu in quarantine, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the government as saying.
Mexican health ministry spokesman Carlos Olmos said the government was testing thousands of samples to confirm which patients with severe respiratory symptoms were actually infected with the flu.
He said more than 5,000 tests had been done on suspected cases and that 1,578 people were ill but were being treated.
After the virus was identified on April 23, Mexico banned public events and shut schools, bars, restaurants and many businesses to prevent people from gathering. Officials say disinfection of public spaces has helped control its spread.
Schools in the capital will reopen on Monday.
But the state government of Jalisco, home to Mexicos second-largest city Guadalajara, said schools, nightclubs and theaters there will remain shut for another week after three suspected flu deaths.
Schuchat said it is not yet clear whether some measures taken have slowed the outbreak, but she said it was clear that early detection methods had alerted the world quickly.
She noted that the AIDS virus, which has now killed 25 million people globally and infects 33 million, spread for years before it was even identified.
If we end up having a bad pandemic of influenza from this strain we would have had a real jump-start on things like vaccines, she said.
| Disease Outbreaks | May 2009 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2018 is postponed to 2019 after Jean-Claude Arnault, husband of the former Swedish Academy member Katarina Frostenson, is accused of sexual assault, resulting in her resignation, and leaving the academy without a quorum. | Swedish Academy says it needs to ‘commit time to recovering public confidence’ after string of resignations and wide-ranging scandal
Last modified on Sat 5 May 2018 00.00 BST
Riven by infighting and resignations following allegations of sexual misconduct, financial malpractice and repeated leaks, the Swedish Academy has said no Nobel prize for literature will be awarded this year.
For the first time since 1949, the secretive jury that hands out the world’s most prestigious literary prize will not unveil a winner this autumn, instead revealing two laureates in 2019, it announced on Friday.
“The present decision was arrived at in view of the currently diminished academy and the reduced public confidence in the academy,” the body, founded by King Gustav III in 1786 and still under royal patronage, said in a statement.
“We find it necessary to commit time to recovering public confidence ... before the next laureate can be announced,” its interim permanent secretary Anders Olsson said. “This is out of respect for previous and future literature laureates, the Nobel Foundation and the general public.”
At the root of the institution’s unprecedented crisis are a raft of wide-ranging allegations against Jean-Claude Arnault, a photographer and leading cultural figure in Sweden, who is married to Katarina Frostenson, an academy member and author.
Last November, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published detailed allegations by 18 women accusing Arnault of sexual harassment and physical abuse over a period of more than 20 years, in France and Sweden and including at properties owned by the academy.
For years, Arnault and Frostenson ran Forum, a club in Stockholm that showcased exhibitions, readings and performances by prominent cultural personalities including Nobel laureates. Now closed, the club was partly funded by the academy, prompting allegations of a conflict of interest.
As the escalating scandal unfolded, Dagens Nyheter also reported that an internal investigation by the academy had concluded that Arnault may have leaked the names of seven Nobel literature laureates the subject of heavy betting in advance, including those of Bob Dylan in 2016 and Harold Pinter in 2005. The Franco-Swedish photographer’s lawyer, Bjrn Hurtig, has repeatedly said his client denies all the allegations against him, adding that Arnault has become “the victim of a witch hunt” and that the accusations “may have been made with the sole purpose of harming” him. The hidebound and traditionally deeply patriarchal academy’s inability to respond adequately to the allegations against Arnault sparked a bitter internal feud, with members exchanging public insults in the pages of the Swedish media. Three members of the 18-strong academy resigned last month in protest over a decision not to expel Frostenson, followed days later amid protests that women were being made to carry the can for male misbehaviour by the permanent secretary, Sara Danius, who had battled in vain to reform it, and by Frostenson herself. Technically, academy members are appointed for life and not permitted to resign, although they could choose to leave their chairs empty. But with the body now down to 10 active members and 12 required to elect new ones King Carl XVI Gustaf this week announced a change in its statutes to ensure its survival.
The decision to postpone the 2018 award was broadly welcomed. “I think it’s wise; this is the best decision they could make,” said Dagens Nyheter’s literature critic, Maria Schottenius. “They’ll have a chance to restore the institution this year and fill the empty seats, and come back with a strong academy that can award the prize.” One academy member, Gran Malmqvist, told Sweden’s TT news agency that the body was in crisis and would take time to rebuild. But Jens Liljestrand of the Expressen newspaper told TT it was “a disaster for the Swedish Academy’s reputation … that they didn’t manage to handle this better”.
The Nobel Foundation, which administers the estate of dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, said the crisis had “adversely affected” the literature prize and its judges. “Their decision underscores the seriousness of the situation and will help safeguard the long-term reputation of the prize,” it said in statement. Public prosecutors have said they are dropping parts of their probe against Arnault due to a lack of evidence, but the bulk of the investigation continues. Sweden’s economic crimes bureau last week said it was investigating a case linked to the academy, widely assumed to be the subsidies it paid to Arnault.
How the academy chooses the winner of the literature award has remained opaque for decades. Each February, academy members review around 200 nominations, coming up with a shortlist by May, and then reading up on the five authors still in the running for the prize over the summer. The winner is the author deemed to best fulfil Alfred Nobel’s desire to reward “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.
The honour has not been awarded at all on seven occasions since its launch in 1901, although previously never over a scandal. The prize was missed in 1914, 1918, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943, during the first and second world wars, and in 1935 for reasons never disclosed. It has also been “reserved” due to a lack of suitable winners in 1915, 1919, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1936 and 1949.
The chairman of the Foundation, Carl-Henrik Heldin, said separately that the awarding of the 2018 Nobel prizes in other categories would not be affected. The Foundation now expected the academy to “put all its efforts” into restoring its credibility, Heldin said, calling on the remaining members to show “greater openness towards the outside world” in future. … as you’re joining us today from Korea, we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s high-impact journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million readers, from 180 countries, have recently taken the step to support us financially keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.
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| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | May 2018 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Fighting erupts between unknown assailants and police in the southern part of Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo, after a disputed Presidential election that brought Denis Sassou Nguesso back to power for a third term. The reason for the clashes is not immediately clear but they have taken place in districts where support for the opposition is strong. The government blames the violence on the Ninjas, a militant group active during the Second Republic of the Congo Civil War. | The Congolese government has blamed attacks on government buildings in the capital, Brazzaville, on the Ninja militia group.
Security forces were deployed on Monday morning and heavy gunfire was heard in the streets The Ninjas were a major anti-government force in the 1997-99 civil war.
The violence comes weeks after Denis Sassou Nguesso won a third presidential term in a poll that the opposition said was marred by "massive fraud".
At least one police station and a government building were attacked in the Makelekele district. The Ninjas were loyal to former Prime Minister Bernard Kolelas, the father of Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas, who stood in the presidential election in March and got 15% of the vote.
Mr Sassou Nguesso, in power for more than 30 years, won the election with 60% of the vote.
Reuters news agency reports that on Monday morning young opposition supporters were chanting "Sassou, leave!" in Makelekele , which is in the south of the capital city. | Riot | April 2016 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(BBC)'] |
Derek Jeter, shortstop for the New York Yankees, becomes the 28th member of the 3,000 hit club in Major League Baseball history by means of a home run off David Price of the Tampa Bay Rays. | Derek Jeter became the 28th player in baseball history to reach 3,000 hits on Saturday, with a home run in the third inning at Yankee Stadium off the Tampa Bay Rays’ David Price. In doing so, Jeter became the first player in the Yankees’ storied history to reach the hallowed number.
Jeter is the active leader in hits and the first player to collect his 3,000th since Craig Biggio of Houston in 2007. He is also the first to achieve the milestone at Yankee Stadium, old or new, and the fourth youngest player to do it. Only Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron and Robin Yount joined the club at a younger age than Jeter, who turned 37 on June 26.
Jeter accomplished it all without playing anywhere but shortstop, the most physically demanding position on the field besides catcher. Only three other players, Honus Wagner, Cal Ripken Jr. and Yount, have recorded 3,000 hits while playing most of their careers at shortstop.
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Like Ripken and Yount, Jeter has never won a batting title. But he has twice been the runner-up, churning out hits at a rate few have ever matched. Jeter has seven 200-hit seasons, and 10 with at least 190. Only Pete Rose and Cobb, who rank first and second on the career hits list, have more 190-hit seasons.
Jeter’s pace has slowed the last two seasons. In 2010 he hit .270, the lowest average of his career and a rare bit of bad timing. The sharp drop in performance did not stop Jeter from getting a three-year, $51 million contract, but the Yankees gave it grudgingly, publicly questioning his skills and challenging him to explore free agency.
Jeter tried an adjustment in the off-season and during spring training, eliminating his stride to give himself more time to react to the pitch. But he abandoned it soon after the season started, reverting to his old mechanics, without his old results.
After a two-hit game in Cleveland on Wednesday lifted his average to .257, Jeter — a .314 career hitter before this season — acknowledged that the scrutiny of his struggles had taken some fun from the chase for 3,000. He has little experience with bad press; few athletes in his era have received such overwhelmingly positive coverage in their careers.
“It’s kind of hard to enjoy it when there’s a lot of negativity that’s out there,” Jeter said. “Hopefully, I might be able to enjoy it the next few days.”
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The Cleveland series ended with Jeter needing three hits for 3,000, and the Yankees headed back to the Bronx. Jeter closed the old Yankee Stadium with a stirring speech to the crowd in 2008, and helped christen the new version with a championship in 2009.
He also passed Lou Gehrig that season for the franchise record in hits, with 2,722. It was a stirring moment, even if it had little resonance outside Yankee Stadium. With 3,000 hits, Jeter has matched a revered number in the game’s history, and left an indelible mark. | Sports Competition | July 2011 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
A new henge is discovered at Stonehenge World Heritage Site, described to be the biggest discovery of a major monument in over 50 years around Stonehenge. | Archaeologists have discovered a second henge at Stonehenge, described as the most exciting find there in 50 years.
The circular ditch surrounding a smaller circle of deep pits about a metre (3ft) wide has been unearthed at the world-famous site in Wiltshire.
Archaeologists conducting a multi-million pound study believe timber posts were in the pits.
Project leader Professor Vince Gaffney, from the University of Birmingham, said the discovery was "exceptional".
The new "henge" - which means a circular monument dating to Neolithic and Bronze Ages - is situated about 900m (2,950ft) from the giant stones on Salisbury Plain.
Images show it has two entrances on the north-east and south-west sides and inside the circle is a burial mound on top which appeared much later, Professor Gaffney said.
"You seem to have a large-ditched feature, but it seems to be made of individual scoops rather than just a straight trench," he said.
"When we looked a bit more closely, we then realised there was a ring of pits about a metre wide going all the way around the edge.
"When you see that as an archaeologist, you just looked at it and thought, 'that's a henge monument' - it's a timber equivalent to Stonehenge.
"From the general shape, we would guess it dates backs to about the time when Stonehenge was emerging at its most complex.
"This is probably the first major ceremonial monument that has been found in the past 50 years or so.
"This is really quite interesting and exceptional, it starts to give us a different perspective of the landscape."
Other wooden structures have been found in the area, one of these being Durrington Walls about 3km (1.86 miles) to the north east of the stones. Data from the site is being collected as part of a virtual excavation to see what the area looked like when Stonehenge was built.
Speculation as to why the 4,500-year-old landmark was built will continue for years to come, but various experts believe it was a cemetery for 500 years, from the point of its inception. In 2008, the first excavation in nearly half a century was carried out at the iconic site on Salisbury Plain.
This latest project is being funded by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, in Vienna, and the University of Birmingham, and is assisted by the National Trust and English Heritage.
Professor Gaffney said he was "certain" they would make further discoveries as 90% of the landscape around the giant stones was "terra incognita" - an unexplored region.
"The presumption was this was just an empty field - now you've got a major ceremonial monument looking at Stonehenge," he said.
| New archeological discoveries | July 2010 | ['(BBC News)'] |
Three people are shot after armed forces open fire at a reunion of students, kidnapped in Zamfara a week ago, and their parents in Jangebe, Nigeria, while the parents protest the kidnapping. | A reunion of kidnapped daughters and their parents in Jangebe, Nigeria, turned violent on Wednesday when armed forces reportedly opened fire.
At least three people were reportedly shot at the official handover ceremony. It is unclear if there were any deaths.
Parents were said to have become frustrated at how long the ceremony was taking and started throwing stones at government officials.
The 279 girls were kidnapped by armed men while at school last Friday.
They were then freed on Tuesday.
They were kept in the custody of the Zamfara state government, and given medical treatment in the state capital Gusau, before Wednesday's official handover ceremony.
UN experts have called for the traumatised pupils to receive urgent rehabilitation.
One mother at the reunion told AFP news agency that parents became angry at the length of the reunion because they wanted to get back home before dark, as the roads were unsafe.
The Zamfara state government has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Jangebe in response to the shootings.
Authorities also demanded that all market activities in the town stop until further notice, claiming that they had found evidence that such activities were helping criminals operate in the area.
The government's spokesperson did not explain how this was connected with Wednesday's incident. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari declared a no-fly zone across the state on Tuesday, and banned all mining activities. No group has yet said it carried out the kidnapping.
But it is believed to be the work of criminal gangs who often stage kidnaps for ransom in Zamfara, rather than the Boko Haram Islamist group behind the 2014 kidnapping of schoolgirls in Chibok, hundreds of miles away.
The authorities have denied paying a ransom to secure the girls' release.
. | Armed Conflict | March 2021 | ['(BBC)'] |
Taufa'ahau Tupou IV, the King of Tonga, dies at the age of 88 in an Auckland, New Zealand hospital after battling illness. | Public buildings are being draped in black and purple as a mark of respect. King Tupou IV was absolute ruler of the South Pacific island nation for 41 years, making him the world's fourth longest-serving monarch. His son, Crown Prince Tupouto'a, was sworn in as the new king at a brief ceremony on Monday, but it could be at least a year before a full coronation.
Correspondents say King Tupou IV was much loved by his people, but his death is likely to fuel calls for greater democracy. King Tupou's death was reported late on Sunday at Auckland's Mercy Hospital, where he had been receiving treatment since April. The Tongan government made a formal announcement shortly afterwards. "The sun has set in the kingdom of Tonga," it said in a statement.
The king's body will remain in Auckland until Wednesday, before being moved back to Tonga to lie in state. Mourning has already begun and is expected to last up to a year. Heaviest monarch King Tupou took over the monarchy in 1965, after the death of his mother, Queen Salote, and soon began modernising the archipelago's education system and infrastructure. Throughout his reign, the royal family controlled Tonga's semi-feudal political system and most of the economy, which is dependent upon farming, fishing and remittances from expatriate Tongans. The king made headlines around the world in the 1970s, when he became the world's heaviest monarch at over 200 kg (440 lb).
But in the 1990s he headed a national keep fit campaign and shed a third of his weight. For most of his reign, King Tupou had the respect and loyalty of his subjects and other leaders in the South Pacific.
But in recent years, he has faced increasing dissent.
In 2005, thousands of people took to the streets to demand democracy and public ownership of key assets, in unprecedented public demonstrations. South Pacific analysts say the king's death is likely to fuel demands for greater liberalisation in Tonga. The king's death is the second blow to the Tongan royal family and the Tongan people in recent months. The kingdom has only recently mourned the death of one of the king's nephews, who, along with his wife, was killed in a car crash in San Francisco in July. | Famous Person - Death | September 2006 | ['(BBC)'] |
Vanuatu backtracks on a controversial law that would have allowed immigration authorities to racially profile and closely follow people from the Middle East. | Vanuatu's government has backtracked on a controversial immigration policy that would racially profile visitors from the Middle East.
Internal Affairs Minister, Andrew Napuat (right). The policy, released in a statement from Internal Affairs Ministers Andrew Napuat on Tuesday, said people arriving from countries in the Middle East would be subject to "close monitoring" and would only be granted entry if they had "good intentions". Unusually, the statement in the local Bislama language was not translated into English.
But in an about-turn, Mr Napuat on Wednesday denied the policy was in place after inquiries from RNZ Pacific.
"Reference in the press statement to special profiling of visitors from the Middle East was unintentional and incorrect and does not reflect official government policy," Mr Napuat said in an email.
"Vanuatu does not discriminate on the basis of the nationality, region or race of visitors and investors and encourages visitors and investors from all countries," he said. Mr Napuat declined a phone interview but added that several other nations in the region were tightening their borders.
Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu also denied the Middle East restrictions, saying it was "not government policy".
Still, the measure was just one of several announced by Mr Napuat on Tuesday as part of a broad reform of immigration rules that will tighten Vanuatu's borders.
Other measures include a database with profiles of every visitor, increased penalties for overstayers, and higher fees to appeal against immigration decisions. Work had also started on a new immigration detention centre previously announced in July, Mr Napuat's statement added.
In his email Thursday, the Internal Affairs Minister said the changes were already part of laws enacted in 2010 but had gone unenforced by officials.
Vanuatu's business community said the changes would erode the country's image as a "friendly" tourist destination, and put off would-be investors.
Mr Napuat's statement comes after several immigration furores: dozens of Bangladeshi human trafficking victims were stuck in Vanuatu for months; six accused Chinese nationals were deported in a joint-operation with Chinese police, which drew widespread condemnation; and an expatriate director of a local newspaper has been locked out of Vanuatu after his criticism of its ties to China.
Bangladeshi human trafficking victims in Vanuatu Photo: Supplied
"We are a friendly country and we will continue to remain friendly and we ask our visitors not to take advantage of our great hospitality and our friendliness to create issues that will tarnish Vanuatu's reputation," Mr Napuat said on Thursday.
Observers say by tightening restrictions and strengthening penalties, Vanuatu hopes to avoid further embarrassment, and also nationalise key economic assets in response to fears it was ceding too much sovereignty to Chinese and other foreign interests in the private sector.
Last month, Mr Regenvanu said Vanuatu was reviewing its controversial passport sales scheme that generates about a third of government revenue.
"They are a little bit worried about the invasion of the Chinese community into the country, and the Chinese people taking over the position of the Melanesian," said David Russet, the chair of Vanuatu's Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Also caught up in Vanuatu's new immigration approach is the former Vanuatu Daily Post director Dan McGarry, who is currently in Australia after the government refused to renew his work permit, and then denied him a tourist visa.
Mr McGarry, whose case has been picked up by several media freedom groups, has linked the government's treatment of him to his criticism of Vanuatu's deportation of the Chinese nationals. Mr Napuat has denied any political involvement.
"We really are on a bit of a slippery slope now," said Glen Craig, a managing partner at the Port Vila-based firm Pacific Advisory.
"Why would you invest money in a country where you can be at risk at the whim of a minister who [if he] just doesn't like you, he can deport you?"
| Government Policy Changes | November 2019 | ['(RNZ)'] |
Authorities in Venezuela arrest a number of people accused of being secret service agents from neighbouring Colombia, on charges of espionage. | Venezuela has announced the arrest of a number of people whom it accuses of being agents spying for Colombia.
Deputy Foreign Minister Francisco Arias Cardenas said they were members of Colombia's DAS state security agency. He said they were "captured carrying out actions of espionage", without giving any further details. Ties between the two nations have been frozen since July when Colombia said it would let the US army use its military bases for anti-drugs operations. The agreement has caused alarm among some of Colombia's neighbours, who object to an increased US military presence in the region. When news of the deal first broke in August, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned that "winds of war" were blowing across the continent. 'Serious event'
Mr Cardenas said on Tuesday that Caracas would soon produce evidence to back up its claims in the spying row. "Do not underestimate the importance of an event as serious and as grave as the capture of Colombian DAS security agents committing acts of espionage," he told reporters in Caracas. Colombia's ambassador to Venezuela, Maria Luisa Chiappe, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying she had no information about DAS agents working on Venezuelan soil. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | October 2009 | ['(El Universal)', '(Colombia Reports)', '(BBC)'] |
Various California state district attorneys fine Safeway a total of $10 million for the illegal dumping of electronics and pharmaceuticals into landfills. | OAKLAND (CBS/AP) — The Safeway supermarket chain has been ordered to pay nearly $10 million for illegally dumping batteries, electronics and pharmaceuticals in California landfills.
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley says the practice occurred at more than 500 Safeway, Vons, Pavilions and Pak`n Save stores and distribution sites throughout California for more than seven years.
More than 40 state district attorneys and two city attorneys united to sue Pleasanton, California-based Safeway Inc. A judge ordered the company to pay $9.87 million in a settlement approved Friday.
The settlement claims Safeway illegally disposed of aerosol products, ignitable liquids and other toxic, ignitable and corrosive materials as well as customer records containing confidential medical information.
Safeway adopted new procedures to reduce and dispose of hazardous waste. The company tells the Oakland Tribune it’s committed to helping protect the environment. | Organization Fine | January 2015 | ['(KPIX)'] |
First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, 28, publicly refuses to go to Iraq, saying it would make him party to war crimes. | TACOMA, Washington (Reuters) - A U.S. Army officer said on Wednesday that fighting in the war in Iraq would make him "party to war crimes" and he would not go.
First Lt. Ehren Watada's supporters -- including clergy and a military family group -- said he is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to serve in Iraq and risked being court-martialed.
The Pentagon said Watada was among a number of officers and enlisted personnel who have applied for conscientious objector status.
"The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people is not only a terrible moral injustice but a contradiction of the Army's own law of land warfare. My participation would make me party to war crimes," said Watada in a taped statement played at a Tacoma news conference.
His superiors at the nearby Fort Lewis military base would not let Watada leave the base to attend the press conference. Another news conference took place in Watada's native Hawaii.
Watada, 28, had been scheduled to be deployed to Iraq for his first tour later this month. He joined the Army in 2003, and has served in Korea.
Watada said his moral and legal obligations were to the U.S. Constitution "not those who would issue unlawful orders."
Nearly 2,500 U.S. soldiers and an estimated 40,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. | Famous Person - Give a speech | June 2006 | ['(Reuters)', '(Aljazeera)', '(ABC)', '(FOX)'] |
Five soldiers between the two rival Sudan People's Liberation Army factions are killed in clashes in the capital Juba, with reports of heavy gunfire continuing, despite President Salva Kiir Mayardit and rebel leader Riek Machar having reached a peace deal back in April. | There has been heavy gunfire near the presidential palace in South Sudan's capital Juba, a day after five soldiers were killed. Soldiers loyal to Vice-President Riek Machar opened fire at a checkpoint manned by troops of President Salva Kiir on Thursday, officials say.
Civil war broke out in South Sudan in 2013 after clashes between soldiers loyal to the two men.
This is the most serious fighting since Mr Machar returned to Juba in April.
Both Mr Kiir and Mr Machar were inside the palace when the gunfire broke out on Friday - they were calling for calm following the soldiers' deaths.
| Riot | July 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
A California storm in the Calaveras Big Trees State Park fells the 1,000–year–old American tree, the Pioneer Cabin Tree. | Storms in California have toppled one of America's most famous trees - the Pioneer Cabin Tree. The giant sequoia was known for having a hole cut through its trunk - big enough for a car to drive through. The tree, estimated to be more than 1,000-years-old, was felled by the strongest storm to have hit the area in more than a decade. California and Nevada have been hit by unusually high rainfall levels, leading to flooding and falling trees.
The Calaveras Big Trees Association first reported that the drive-through Pioneer Cabin Tree - carved 137 years ago - was no more.
The storm was "just too much for it", the group wrote in a Facebook post that has drawn nearly 2,000 comments.
"Many memories were created under this tree," one read. "They will remain good memories."
Others pointed out that the tree might have survived for longer if a tunnel had not been carved into it.
"You can't cut a hole in a tree like this and expect it to live," said one comment. "This hole always bothered me so much. Why not just drive around it?"
Park volunteer Jim Allday said the sequoia, also known as the Tunnel Tree, shattered as it hit the ground.
"We lost an old friend today," he wrote in a social media post.
Giant sequoia are closely related to the redwood tree, which is considered the tallest tree species on earth, reaching 250ft (76 metres). They can only grow naturally in the groves of California's Sierra Nevada mountains.
The tree fell as parts of California and Nevada were drenched by a seasonal weather system known as the Pineapple Express.
Not to be confused with the Seth Rogen movie of the same name, the Pineapple Express is an "atmospheric river" that extends across the Pacific from Hawaii to the US West Coast, meteorologists say.
"This is a serious flood situation," the National Weather Service said in a special flood statement late Sunday night after the Russian River in California and the Truckee River in Nevada burst their banks.
Hundreds of people have been forced to flee their homes in Northern California and Nevada as water levels rise, and avalanches and mudslides close roads. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | January 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
Voters in the US state of Texas go to the polls for a runoff election in the Republican Senate primary with Ted Cruz defeating David Dewhurst. | Cruz, an emerging conservative star whose father emigrated to the United States from Cuba, has drawn comparisons to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and has been lauded by national conservative political pundits and groups for over a year. His victory is a major blow to the Republican establishment in Texas, which lined up squarely behind Dewhurst. It’s also a victory for the tea party and national conservatives who lined up behind Cruz even when a surprise win appeared unlikely. In other elections held on Tuesday, state lawmaker Pete Gallego won a Democratic runoff in Texas’s 23rd District over former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez. Gallego will face freshman Republican Rep. Quico Canseco in a battleground race this November. Meanwhile, vulnerable Democratic Rep. John Barrow will have to wait until Aug. 21 to find out who his Republican opponent will be in Georgia’s 12th District, with the GOP primary headed to a runoff. Barrow is running on more conservative turf than in the past, due to redistricting. Cruz’s win is a remarkable political feat and arguably the Senate upset of the cycle. In early 2011, when Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison announced her intention to retire, observers regarded Dewhurst as a virtual shoo-in to take her place in the upper chamber. Dewhurst is very well-known in Texas, enjoys immense personal wealth, and enlisted the help of Gov. Rick Perry’s top political hands. Perry endorsed Dewhurst during the campaign. But in a multiple-candidate primary election that also included former Dallas mayor Tom Leppert on May 29, Dewhurst was unable to cross the crucial 50 percent threshold, managing just 45 percent of the vote to Cruz’s 34 percent. Once the two-month overtime period was triggered, Cruz seized on new momentum. He outraised Dewhurst 3-1 in the first third of July and brought in an impressive cast of national conservative stars to stump with him during the closing weekend of the campaign. Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who both endorsed Cruz’s candidacy, campaigned for him Friday in the Houston area. While Dewhurst was extremely well-funded, a crucial national ally helped Cruz keep pace on the expensive Texas television airwaves. The anti-tax Club For Growth spent $5.5 million on independent expenditures to help the underdog pull off the upset. Despite their buy-in, Dewhurst and his allies still outspent Cruz and his allies on the air during the final week of the runoff campaign. Cruz also performed well during early voting for the runoff, which took place last week. During the early voting period leading up to the May primary, it was Dewhurst who performed best. The preparation paid off, considering Cruz’s overall margin of victory. With 48 percent of precincts reporting, he led Dewhurst 55 percent to 45 percent, according to the AP.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, congratulated Cruz on his win and added that the candidate “and his team ran a remarkable race and this is a well-deserved and well-earned victory.” With a full slate of competitive Senate primaries on tap in August, look for other insurgent Republicans like Sarah Steelman and Rep. Todd Akin in Missouri, Mark Neumann and Eric Hovde in Wisconsin, and Clark Durant in Michigan, to try to seize on Cruz’s momentum in the coming weeks. | Government Job change - Election | July 2012 | ['(Washington Post)'] |
The German government asks its citizens to stop using Microsoft's web browser Internet Explorer to protect their own security. | Microsoft Corp. on Saturday rejected a German government warning against using Internet Explorer until a patch can be developed to fix a security flaw, saying the problem is not a threat to general users.
The Federal Office for Information Security, or BSI, told Germans to avoid use of all versions of Explorer after the security hole led to hacks against Google and others.
Microsoft confirmed the weakness earlier this week after Google announced that hackers in China had pried into e-mail accounts of human rights activists. The company said, however, that the hole could be closed by setting the browser's Internet security zone to "high."
But the BSI insisted that such measures were not sufficient.
"Using Internet Explorer in 'secure mode,' as well as turning off Active Scripting makes attacks more difficult, but can not fully prevent them," BSI said in a statement released Friday.
Thomas Baumgaertner, a Microsoft spokesman in Germany, said the company was aware of the warning, but did not agree with it, pointing out that the attacks on Google were by highly motivated people with a very specific agenda.
"These were not attacks against general users or consumers," Baumgaertner said. "There is no threat to the general user, consequently we do not support this warning. | Government Policy Changes | January 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The Sydney Morning Herald)', '(The Daily Telegraph)'] |
People continue to peacefully protest against cuts and unemployment in cities across Spain as the country votes in regional elections; the number of participants increases despite a government ban on such occurrences. | Spain is voting in regional elections as thousands of young protesters remain camped out in squares across the country.
Demonstrators are angry at the government's economic policies and Spain's high youth unemployment rate.
Their numbers have swelled despite a ban on political protests ahead of elections. The governing Socialists are expected to suffer major losses in voting for city councils and regional governments.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government is struggling to overcome recession and create jobs.
In the capital Madrid, about 30,000 people have occupied the central Puerta del Sol square. Similar protests, popularly known as 15-M, have sprung up in many other cities including Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and Bilbao.
"I'm happy that they're finally protesting. It was about time," said Maria, an elderly woman visiting her grandson in the Puerta del Sol.
Protest organisers have urged those taking part not to confront the police, and have tried to discourage the distribution of alcohol.
"It's a revolution, not a drinking party," read one sign.
Brooms donated by supporters are being used to keep the square clean, witnesses say.
The BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Madrid says there is also a creche, a kitchen area and even a vegetable patch.
One protester, Alejandro, said: "I hope this changes our situation. We have a right to regular jobs, a future and a decent salary, to more opportunities in life, the chance to get a house, to pay for that house without being enslaved, but especially a better quality of life."
The protesters are urging people not to vote for either of Spain's two main parties - the governing Socialists or the centre-right opposition.
Analysts say that despite the strength of the protests, they are unlikely to affect the outcome of Sunday's elections, other than to worsen the Socialists' defeat.
The Socialists are predicted to lose control of strongholds such as Barcelona, Seville and the Castilla-La Mancha region.
Spanish law forbids political rallies on the day before elections to allow for a "day of reflection".
But as the ban came into effect, the crowds stayed put and police did not try to disperse them.
Organisers say the protests may continue after the elections.
The demonstrations began a week ago in Madrid as a spontaneous sit-in by young people frustrated at 45% youth unemployment.
Spain's overall jobless rate soared to 21% in the first quarter of this year, the highest in the industrialised world.
Dubbed "los indignados" [the indignant], the protesters are demanding jobs, better living standards, a fairer system of democracy and changes to the government's austerity plans.
Prime Minister Zapatero had urged protesters to respect the day of reflection but also said he was sensitive to their concerns and praised their "peaceful manner".
| Protest_Online Condemnation | May 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Deputy Mayor of Kandahar Azizollah Yarmal, Afghanistan is shot dead while praying at a mosque. | Azizollah Yarmal was killed while praying at a mosque late on Monday, officials said. The gunmen escaped. The militants later said they killed Mr Yarmal. He is the latest in a series of officials to be targeted in the area. The attacks come as Nato and Afghan troops prepare for a major offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar province, a key insurgent stronghold. Provincial spokesman Zalmai Ayubi said Mr Yarmal was shot while he and dozens of others were praying. No arrests have been made. "This is the work of the enemies of Afghanistan. They don't want these honest people to serve the Afghan people and work in government institutions," Mr Ayubi said. Correspondents say mosques provide little security for officials, making them vulnerable to attacks while at prayer. The deputy mayor's death is the latest in a string of killings in the city of Kandahar and the surrounding province. Kandhar was the country's designated capital during Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001 and has been the centre of their increasingly violent insurgency since they were overthrown in the US-led invasion of 2001. | Famous Person - Death | April 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
Heavy exchanges of fire in the IsraeliLebanese border. Hezbollah fired at least 9 mortar shells or Katyusha rockets on outposts in the disputed Shebaa Farms. The IDF retaliated by artillery fire and IAF aircraft bombed 3 Hezbollah positions. Israel maintains that Lebanon bears full responsibility for the border attacks, committed by Hezbollah and local Palestinian groups, while Hezbollah maintain that they are acting in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory including a hit on civilian houses in the village of Kfar Shouba. , | The security situation on the Lebanese border heated up on Friday, as Israel Defense Forces planes, gunships and tanks destroyed Hezbollah posts in Lebanon, in response to Hezbollah shelling of IDF positions.No IDF soldiers were wounded during the fighting. The number of Hezbollah casualties is unknown.The border has been quiet since the IDF activity ended on Friday night. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said over the weekend, "We shall not open a northern front and have no interest in escalation there."
The Hezbollah mortar fire was the third attack from Lebanon within less than 48 hours. While nobody had claimed responsibility for the two previous incidents - Israel assumed small Palestinian groups sponsored by Hezbollah were behind them - this time Hezbollah took responsibility for the attack.A senior government source said, "Hezbollah has an interest in heating up the border and we have an interest to act with restraint, up to a certain point. We believe they will not escalate the situation further."Tension rose along the Lebanese border last Monday when the IDF accidentally fired a shell over the eastern part of the Lebanese border while trying to dismantle explosives placed by Hezbollah on Har Dov. No one was hurt by the shell.On Wednesday, the eve of Independence Day, a Katyusha rocket was fired from Lebanon, striking a bakery in Shlomi's industrial zone and causing extensive damage, but no casualties. On Thursday night two more rockets were fired from Lebanon. They landed in an open area on the slopes of Har Dov.On Friday, close to 4 P.M., another volley was fired. This time at least 12 mortar shells landed near the IDF's Gladiola position. Nobody was hurt. Israel's response was harsher this time.Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz gave his approval to attack Hezbollah positions that had been targeted in advance, along the border.In the central sector, IDF tanks fired toward a Hezbollah position opposite Moshav Dovev. In the eastern sector, fighter planes and gunships attacked three other positions. The IDF reported that all the positions were destroyed. Sources in the Northern Command said Hezbollah had suffered casualties, but this was not confirmed in Lebanon.The United States, France and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued statements expressing concern over the deterioration in Lebanon and called on both sides to act with restraint. Senior government and military sources said Israel was not interested in escalation and that Sharon had instructed the IDF to retaliate in strength, but at isolated points. This was meant to deter the Hezbollah, but not to lead to further escalation, the sources said.Major General Benny Gantz, head of the Northern Command, said on Friday that Hezbollah had gone too far lately, and that Israel needed to retaliate. Gantz told reporters, "We retaliated today, and if we have to retaliate more sharply, we will."Gantz said he held the Lebanese government, which has failed to restrain Hezbollah, responsible for the shellings.Sheikh Nabil Kauk, the senior Hezbollah leader in southern Lebanon, said the organization had reacted to IDF machine gun fire a few hours earlier, which had hit a house in Kafr Shuba. IDF sources confirmed the firing, saying it was intended to warn a group of shepherds who had come suspiciously close to the border at Har Dov.Kauk said Hezbollah could not no longer restrain itself after "Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty."Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud blamed Israel for the escalation on the border and called on the international community and the United States to act "to ensure stability in the area." Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said he was monitoring events closely and was in touch with UNIFIL.IDF sources said Hezbollah wanted to escalate the situation with a view toward the elections due in Lebanon at the end of the month. | Armed Conflict | May 2005 | ['(Haaretz)', '(BBC)'] |
Sudanese police fire tear gas and detain some 38 protesters in clashes at a planned pro–democracy rally in Omdurman. | Unconfirmed reports say dozens of protesters were arrested during the clashes, in the city of Omdurman. The violence came a day after rival parties agreed rules for a national election and a referendum on southern independence due in the next two years. The north and south fought a two-decade civil war which ended in 2005, when both sides agreed to share power. The deal saw President Omar al-Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP) going into government with former rebels from the south. But leaders of the ex-rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) have repeatedly expressed fears that Mr Bashir's supporters were trying to sabotage the votes to retain power over the whole country. Southern leaders have been seeking changes to electoral laws which they believe would have allowed the NCP to rig the votes - and at the weekend they appeared to have sealed a deal. However, many of the details of the agreement have not been released and both sides need it approved by their parties. Senior figures held
The protest Omdurman, just across the River Nile from Khartoum, had been planned by the SPLM and northern opposition parties well before Sunday's deal was announced. The BBC's James Copnall in Omdurman says hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the headquarters of one of the parties organising the rally, intending to march to parliament.
They chanted slogans about freedom and justice, but riot police stopped them about 100m up the road firing tear gas, our correspondent says. The opposition Ummah party told the AFP news agency that one of its senior members had been arrested - though there was no confirmation of their claim. Last week similar protests in Khartoum and Omdurman were suppressed by the authorities, who said the demonstrators had not gained the proper permits. Several senior SPLM officials were briefly detained by police during that rally, raising concerns about its participation in the power-sharing government. Analysts say the build-up to next April's national election appears to have galvanised opposition to Mr Bashir's rule. The protests have been organised by southern politicians, but the northern opposition has been increasingly involved. | Protest_Online Condemnation | December 2009 | ['(AFP)', '(IOL)', '(BBC)'] |
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon schedules a meeting Wednesday with European Parliament President Martin Schulz about remaining in the EU, and intends to discuss the Scottish issue with the European Commission. | Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon urged Scottish lawmakers on Tuesday to back her bid to protect Scotland’s place in Europe.
She is seeking a cross-party mandate from the Scottish parliament in Holyrood to pursue discussions with the European Parliament— where she plans to discuss how Scotland can protect its place in the E.U. “Scotland spoke clearly for Remain and I am determined that Scotland’s voice will be heard,” she told the Scottish Parliament.
Sturgeonwill travel to Brussels on Wednesday for talks with European Parliament President Martin Schulz about remaining in the E.U. No other British officials will be present at the meeting and Sturgeon will discuss whether Scotland will be able maintain access to the E.U. while also being a part of the U.K., or if independence is required.
Sturgeon said last Friday that the Scottish government would prepare for a second independence referendum. Scotland voted in favor of the U.K. remaining in the E.U. by 62% to 38%. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | June 2016 | ['(Time)', '(Reuters)'] |
The United States Department of Justice announces that former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker has resigned from the Department, with his final day in the department having been March 2. He had remained in the Department as a senior counselor to the Associate Attorney General after his stint as acting Attorney General. | Whitaker was replaced last month when William Barr was confirmed as attorney general. He became a counselor in the associate attorney general’s office.
Whitaker was elevated to acting attorney general in November after President Donald Trump ousted then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Whitaker was chief of staff to Sessions, who angered the Republican president by recusing himself from the Russia investigation.
Democrats criticized Whitaker for past negative comments about the special counsel’s Russia probe.
The House Judiciary Committee’s chairman said Whitaker didn’t offer clear responses about his communications with the White House when he testified last month. Whitaker agreed to return to clarify his testimony. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | March 2019 | ['(AP)'] |
In baseball, Texas Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish comes within one batter of throwing a perfect game. | In his first start of the season, Rangers starter Yu Darvish threw 8 2/3 perfect innings against the Astros in Houston in a 7-0 win for Texas. The 26-year-old Darvish struck out 14 batters in the game.
With his pitch count escalating, Darvish got designated hitter Jason Castro to ground out to the shortstop to start the ninth inning. Catcher Carlos Corporan followed with a ground out to second base. But on Darvish's first pitch to shortstop Marwin Gonzalez -- his 111th pitch of the evening -- Gonzalez smacked a ground-ball base hit up the middle. Rangers manager Ron Washington pulled the pitcher after he allowed the first Astros' hit of the night.
Rangers reliever Michael Kirkman allowed a hit to second baseman Jose Altuve, but struck out pinch-hitter J.D. Martinez to end the game and preserve the shutout.
BOX SCORE:Rangers, 7, Astros 0
The Astros were on the wrong end of a perfect game last June, when the San Francisco Giants' Matt Cain victimized them in one of the most dominant pitching performances ever.
Rangers catcher A.J. Pierzynski caught Philip Humber's perfect game at Safeco Field in Seattle on April 21, 2012 while a member of the Chicago White Sox. He also caught Mark Buehrle's no-hitter on April 18, 2007.
To date, there have been 23 perfect games in major league history. The most recent came from the Mariners' Felix Hernandez on Aug. 15, 2012.
Darvish signed a six-year, $56 million contract with the Rangers last offseason after pitching in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball league for five seasons. He went 76-28 with a 1.72 ERA for his career in Japan. | Sports Competition | April 2013 | ['(USA Today)'] |
The European Union pledges an additional $39 million and the Islamic Development Bank pledges $11.2 million. | More aid pledges for Pakistan have come through after complaints that the international community's response to the devastating floods was inadequate.
The European Union promised an extra $39m following higher commitments from Australia and Japan, while the Islamic Development Bank pledged $11.2m.
The UN has said it has now raised nearly half of the $460m (£295m) it needs for initial relief efforts.
Meanwhile new flood warnings have been issued in some areas of Pakistan.
Pakistani authorities say as many as 20 million people are affected by the floods. The UN says six million desperately need emergency aid but most still have not received it. Tens of thousands of villages remain under water.
There are growing health concerns for those surviving without proper shelter, food or clean drinking water, three weeks after the country's worst natural disaster began. Survivors have criticised the speed of the government's response to the disaster. There are also increasing reports of flood victims staging protests to demand help from the government.
Announcing the increase in aid, EU international aid commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said Pakistan was now facing "two disasters in one".
"In the northern part of the country... [the] internally displaced population has already been devastated by conflicts and they are now hit very hard again by the flash floods; this is where most of the loss of life has occurred.
"In the southern lowlands where the floods have expanded - especially in the last days - and where the country relies on agricultural land to feed its people, poor rural and vulnerable populations are affected by the slow but steady rise of the water."
The EU's announcement brings the total promised by the group to 70m euros ($90m), and does not include money donated by individual member states.
The pledge from the Islamic Development Bank came at a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference on Wednesday.
The group called on the "international community in general and Islamic world in particular... to provide urgent material and financial aid to Pakistan".
The UK's International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, visiting north-west Pakistan, announced new support from the UK worth $22.6m (£14.5m), bringing the government's contribution to $48.5m.
He said he felt Pakistani relief teams were doing well in getting supplies to many of the victims, but criticised the international community for being slow to tackle the crisis.
In the latest announcements of aid donations, Australia said it was offering an extra $21.6m, and Japan another $10m. Turkey has said it will double its donation to $10m.
Saudi Arabians donated $20.5m on the first day of a national fund-raising campaign on Tuesday, while the government has already pledged $100m in aid.
Canada was expected to announce at a UN emergency session on Thursday in New York that it would match every dollar donated by citizens. This comes on top of the $32m already pledged by the government.
In Pakistan, the government has sought to reassure international donors that funds to help victims of its devastating flooding will not fall into the hands of extremists.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the BBC the Taliban would not be allowed to take advantage of the crisis to increase its support.
Mr Malik said he was satisfied that the government had coped with the initial response but that it had been overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis.
"What happened was never expected. In the history of the whole sub-continent there was never such a disaster," he said.
Even as aid becomes the primary focus, there have been warnings of fresh flooding in some of Pakistan's provinces.
A series of towns in north-west Sindh, close to the border with Baluchistan, have been placed on high alert. Rising floodwaters, carried by the River Indus, are travelling south and are expected to hit the region soon.
UN officials say the floods are now covering an area the size of England. At least 1,600 people have been killed, with health officials warning the toll could rise as water-borne diseases spread.
Aid agencies say six million people are in need of immediate assistance but many have received no aid at all.
The distribution of supplies has been hampered by severe damage to the country's infrastructure, with roads and bridges washed away or blocked by landslides.
The UN has been struggling to raise the money it says is urgently needed for the immediate relief effort.
Spokesman Maurizio Giuliano told Reuters news agency there had been "an improvement" in donations, but added: "The challenges are absolutely massive and the floods are not over."
Unicef, the UN's children's fund, called for "an urgent effort" from donors, saying it needs $2m per day to provide clean water supplies.
As well as buildings, large areas of crops and farmland have been washed away, leading to fears of food insecurity in the future. "If immediate steps are not taken, we fear a famine," said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, a provincial information minister in north-west Pakistan.
"The farmers have lost everything: their crops, their machines, their houses, their seeds."
The World Bank has said it is redirecting $900m in existing loans to Pakistan to flood relief and recovery.
However, Pakistani officials have said it could take five years and up to $15bn for the country to recover. BBC Urdu will transmit six daily bulletins in Urdu and Pashto providing vital information including how to stay safe, avoid disease and access aid. Special programmes will be broadcast each day in Urdu at 12.30, 15.30 and 18.30 and in Pashto at 12.45, 15.45 and 18.45 (local times). | Financial Aid | August 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(Aljazeera)'] |
Eddie Gallagher, a U.S. Navy Seal charged with the murder of an ISIL prisoner, attempted murder of civilians, and obstruction of justice, is temporarily released from custody amidst allegations of misconduct by Navy prosecutors. | San Diego -- Attorneys for a decorated Navy SEAL facing a murder trial in the death of an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) prisoner will try again Friday to have the case dismissed, after their client was unexpectedly freed from custody.
A military judge released Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher from custody Thursday, drawing gasps in a San Diego courtroom.
The judge, Capt. Aaron Rugh, said releasing the platoon leader was a remedy for prosecutors interfering with his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
Gallagher's lawyers have condemned the prosecution for launching an unusual effort to find the source of news leaks in the politically charged case by embedding tracking code in emails sent to defense attorneys and a Navy Times journalist.
Defense attorney Tim Parlatore had accused prosecutors of a "rogue, relentless, and unlawful cyber campaign" that may have violated attorney-client privilege and hurt his client's ability to get a fair trial.
Gallagher's wife, Andrea, who has led a campaign to free her husband, put her hands to her face and burst into tears.
"I feel like it's a small victory on the way to the larger victory," Andrea Gallagher said outside court while her husband stood quietly by her side in his Navy whites.
"We have been utterly terrorized by this entire farce of a case," Andrea Gallagher said.
He didn't comment, on the advice of his attorneys.
A spokesman for the Navy prosecutors also wouldn't comment on Gallagher's freedom or developments at the hearing, which continues Friday.
Gallagher has pleaded not guilty to murder in the death of an injured teenage militant in Iraq in 2017 and attempted murder for allegedly picking off civilians from a sniper's perch.
His platoon supervisor, Lt. Jacob Portier, is fighting charges of conduct unbecoming an officer for allegedly conducting Gallagher's re-enlistment ceremony next to the militant's corpse.
Efforts to get the case thrown out come as President Trump considers pardoning several service members accused of war crimes, including Gallagher, who faces trial June 10.
One of Gallagher's civilian defense attorneys, Marc Mukasey, is also a personal lawyer for the president, the Reuters news service notes.
Gallagher could face life in prison if he's convicted of all the charges, including murder, attempted
murder and obstructing justice, Reuters points out.
Gallagher says fellow SEALS testifying against him -- several after being granted immunity -- are disgruntled subordinates who made up allegations in an effort to get him stripped of his command, Reuters adds.
Evidence at the hearing showed prosecutors enlisted a Naval Criminal Investigative Service intelligence specialist to conduct criminal background checks on three civilian lawyers, including Parlatore, and a journalist with the Navy Times who has broken several stories based on leaked documents.
On Thursday, Rugh said investigators told him privately that they planned to embed code in what he believed to be a court document to help them find the source of leaks but the judge said he didn't have the power to authorize it and wasn't told they planned to target emails sent to the defense lawyers or a journalist.
The lead prosecutor downplayed the move at a related hearing earlier in the day. Cmdr. Christopher Czaplak said the code embedded in the email recorded nothing more than where and when messages were opened by recipients.
Czaplak said the tracking ended May 10 after he was confronted by defense lawyers who discovered the code in an unusual logo of an American flag with a bald eagle perched on the scales of justice beneath Czaplak's signature.
On Thursday, Czaplak said the code was similar to what marketers use to see when an email is opened and on what device.
"It's still a web bug and it's still unethical," countered defense lawyer Jeremiah J. Sullivan III, who represents Portier.
The judge in Portier's case, Capt. Jonathan Stephens, said from what he had seen the tracking effort wasn't able to view the contents of any emails.
Several experts testified that the code couldn't generally be used to identify a specific person or capture content.
First published on May 31, 2019 / 5:26 AM
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | May 2019 | ['(CBS News)'] |
An American man is detained after crossing into North Korea from China. | North Korea says it has detained a US citizen for illegally entering its territory across the border from China.
The official news agency KCNA said the man, who has not been identified, had been arrested on Monday and was now being questioned. North Korea is currently holding another US citizen, Robert Park. Mr Park crossed a frozen border river from China on 25 December, to make a protest against repression in the hard-line Communist North. The US has been seeking access to Mr Park through the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang, which represents American interests in North Korea. Last year two US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were also arrested on the border with China. They were sentenced to 12 years' hard labour but freed after four months in captivity, as part of a diplomatic mission spearheaded by former US President Bill Clinton in August. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | January 2010 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(BBC)'] |
The uncrewed Soyuz MS–14 spacecraft successfully docks with the International Space Station on its second attempt, with the Zvezda module. The docking follows the failure of the automated systems aboard the Poisk module with which the spacecraft was originally intended to dock on 24 August. MS–14 carries supplies for the ISS, along with a humanoid robot named Fedor. (SpaceNews, Space.com) | WASHINGTON — An uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station Aug. 26, nearly 72 hours after aborting its original attempt to dock with the station.
The Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft docked with the aft port on the Zvezda service module at 11:08 p.m. Eastern. Flight controllers reported no issues with the automated docking of the spacecraft on a rare uncrewed test flight.
The Soyuz, launched Aug. 21 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, was originally scheduled to dock with the Poisk module early Aug. 24. However, cosmonauts on the station issued commands to the Soyuz to abort the attempted docking because of problems with the Kurs automated rendezvous system on the station.
The Russian state space corporation Roscosmos originally announced that cosmonauts would replace the Kurs unit in Poisk and attempt another docking about 48 hours later. Instead, Russian officials decided to move the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft, which originally docked with the Zvezda module, to Poisk, freeing up the Zvezda port for Soyuz MS-14.
Alexander Skvortsov, Andrew Morgan and Luca Parmitano boarded Soyuz MS-13 on the evening of Aug. 25, undocking from Zvezda at 11:35 p.m. Eastern and docking with Poisk 24 minutes later. The “relocation” maneuver was the first for a Soyuz spacecraft since August 2015, when the Soyuz TMA-16M moved from Poisk to Zvezda.
Russia launched Soyuz MS-14 without a crew as a test of using the newer Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle for future crewed Soyuz spacecraft, replacing the Soyuz-FG vehicle currently used for such missions. The Soyuz is carrying about 650 kilograms of cargo, including a humanoid robot known as FEDOR or Skybot F-850. Cosmonauts will test the robot on the station before returning it to Earth when Soyuz MS-14 undocks Sept. 7.
The successful Soyuz docking clears the way for the Aug. 27 departure of a Dragon cargo spacecraft berthed to the station for the last month. The Dragon, launched July 25 on the CRS-18 cargo mission, will be released from the station’s robotic arm at 10:42 a.m. Eastern and reenter several hours later, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean 500 kilometers southwest of Long Beach, California, at 4:21 p.m. Eastern. The Dragon will return a number of experiments performed on the station and other cargo with a total mass of more than 1,200 kilograms. | New achievements in aerospace | August 2019 | [] |
A study concludes that typhoons in Asia are becoming stronger. | Giant storms that wreak havoc across China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines have grown 50% stronger in the past 40 years due to warming seas
Last modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 17.10 GMT
The destructive power of the typhoons that wreak havoc across China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines has intensified by 50% in the past 40 years due to warming seas, a new study has found.
The researchers warn that global warming will lead the giant storms to become even stronger in the future, threatening the large and growing coastal populations of those nations.
“It is a very, very substantial increase,” said Prof Wei Mei, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who led the new work. “We believe the results are very important for east Asian countries because of the huge populations in these areas. People should be aware of the increase in typhoon intensity because when they make landfall these can cause much more damage.”
Typhoons can have devastating impacts in east Asia. In 2013, typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, killing at least 6,300 people and affecting 11 million. Typhoon Nina struck China in 1975, dumping 100cm of rain in a day and leading to 229,000 deaths and 6m destroyed buildings. Last week typhoon Lionrock left 11 people dead in northern Japan and caused power blackouts and property damage, while in July typhoon Nepartak hit Taiwan and China, killing at least nine people and leaving a trail of destruction.
In the new research, published in Nature Geoscience, the scientists took data collected independently by centres in Japan and Hawaii and, after accounting for differences in the way it had been collected, showed that typhoons in the north-west Pacific had intensified by 12–15% on average since 1977. The proportion of the most violent storms - categories 4 and 5 - doubled and even tripled in some regions over that time and the intensification was most marked for those storms which hit land.
The intensity of a typhoon is measured by the maximum sustained wind speed, but the damage caused by its high winds, storm surges, intense rains and floods increases disproportionately, meaning a 15% rise in intensity leads to a 50% rise in destructive power.
The researchers showed that the intensification of typhoons making landfall occurred because warmer coastal seas provided more energy to growing storms, enabling their wind speeds to increase more rapidly.
Scientists are not yet able to determine whether manmade climate change or natural cycles are to blame for the warming seas in the region because 40 years is a relatively short time span for such phenomena. But Wei is clear that the future global warming, as projected by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, would heat the oceans in the region and lead to even more intense typhoons.
Mei said: “We want to give the message that typhoon intensity has increased and will increase in the future because of the warming climate.” He said action was needed to both prepare for future typhoons and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to curb warming: “Understanding intensity change is very important for disaster preparation.”
Prof Kerry Emanuel, an expert on tropical cyclones at MIT and not involved in the new research said: “The results leave little doubt that there are more high intensity events affecting south-east Asia and China, and these are also intensifying more rapidly.”
“This is significant for these nations because what matters, in the end, is landfall size and intensity,” he said. “Stronger storms cause higher storm surges, which often cause the most destruction and loss of life.” Previous work by Emanuel showed tropical cyclones are likely to become more frequent and stronger if climate change is not curbed. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | September 2016 | ['(The Guardian)', '(Nature Geoscience)'] |
Kiir claims that the attacks by Sudan on his country amount to a declaration of war. | BEIJING (AP) - The president of newly independent South Sudan, in Beijing lobbying for economic and diplomatic support, told China's president on Tuesday that attacks by rival Sudan amount to a declaration of war on his country.
There has yet to be a formal declaration of war by either of the Sudans, and Salva Kiir's remark, made during talks with President Hu Jintao, signals a ratcheting up of rhetoric between the rival nations which have been teetering on the brink of war.
Kiir arrived in China late Monday for a five-day visit. He told Hu the visit comes at "a very critical moment for the Republic of South Sudan because our neighbor in Khartoum has declared war on the Republic of South Sudan."
China Central Television reported that Hu responded by saying that China hopes both sides will "cease the armed conflicts at the borders" and coordinate with the international community as it attempts to mediate the conflict.
South Sudan broke away from its neighbor and became independent last year. The countries have since been unable to resolve disputes over sharing oil revenue and determining a border. Talks broke down this month.
On Monday, Sudanese warplanes bombed a market and an oil field in South Sudan, killing at least two people after Sudanese ground forces had reportedly crossed into South Sudan with tanks and artillery. South Sudan reported Tuesday that eight more bombs had dropped overnight, although it was unclear whether there were any casualties from those attacks.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has vowed to press ahead with his military campaign until all southern troops or affiliated forces are chased out of the north.
China's energy needs make it deeply vested in the future of the two Sudans, and Beijing is uniquely positioned to exert influence in the conflict given its deep trade ties with the resource-rich south and decades-long diplomatic ties with Sudan's government in the north.
Both have tried to win Beijing's favor, but China has been careful to cultivate ties with each nation. Like others in the international community, China has repeatedly urged the two sides to return to negotiations.
Kiir, wearing his trademark black cowboy hat, told Hu that he came to China because of the "great relationship" South Sudan has with China, calling it one of his country's "economic and strategic partners."
Hu said he hoped Kiir's visit would enhance mutual cooperation and "promote the sound growth and cooperation" between China and South Sudan.
After their talks, Hu and Kiir oversaw the signing of six agreements, including a loan framework between South Sudan and the China Import Export Bank, and cooperation agreements on a bridge and a solar energy project.
Details of the agreements weren't disclosed.
The Financial Times on Sunday quoted South Sudan lead negotiator Pagan Amum as saying Kiir would be seeking Chinese financing for a long-planned oil pipeline that would bypass Sudan. The report said Beijing has already pledged technical assistance for the pipeline, which would allow landlocked South Sudan an alternative export route for its large oil reserves.
Jiang Hengkun, a professor with the Institute of African Studies at Zhejiang Normal University, said that if the pipeline is built, China would contribute heavily, from labor to loans.
"China will surely participate in the construction," Jiang said. "Chinese construction companies or oil companies can join the bidding for the project, while the Chinese government may provide development aid or loans to the South Sudan government." | Armed Conflict | April 2012 | ['(AP via KSL)'] |
Ethnic violence in Ethiopia over the weekend results in 23 deaths. Thousands protest against the killings in the capital Addis Ababa. | Ethnic violence in Ethiopia left 23 people dead at the weekend, state media reported Monday, as protests against the killings gripped the capital Addis Ababa where an angry crowd gathered in the city centre.
The state-owned Ethiopia News Agency said an organised mob carried out a spree of murder and looting in and around Burayu town, leaving 23 people dead and 886 displaced, citing Oromia regional police commissioner Alemayehu Ejigu.
On Twitter, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s chief of staff, Fitsum Arega, said the leader “strongly condemns the killings and acts of violence against innocent citizens.”
“These cowardly attacks represent a grave concern to the unity and solidarity of our people and will be met with an appropriate response,” he said, without providing a toll.
On Monday an angry crowd gathered in central Meskel Square to protest against the killings which some blame on ethnic Oromo youth.
There was a heavy police presence in the city centre while some roads out of the capital were blocked by other protesters.
The weekend killings followed the triumphant return from exile of leaders of the once-outlawed Oromo Liberation Front rebel group who struck an agreement to lay down arms with reformist Prime Minister Abiy.
Addis Ababa is an ethnically-mixed city of around four million people, but is situated within the larger Oromo-dominated Oromia region.
Oromo-led anti-government protests that began in late 2015 helped bring about the resignation of Ethiopia’s former leader and Abiy’s subsequent rise to power. | Protest_Online Condemnation | September 2018 | ['(Reuters)', '(The Punch)'] |
Sudan declares a state of emergency after unprecedented flooding kills at least 99 people and leaves over 100,000 people homeless. The floods are the worst on record in Sudan since 1988, while the Nile has risen to its highest levels in a century. | Sudan has declared a three-month state of emergency after flooding that has killed 99 people this year, according to the country’s state news agency.
The Sudanese minister of labour and social development said that in addition to the deaths, the floods had affected more than half a million people, injuring 46, and had damaged more than 100,000 homes.
Much of the flooding was triggered by heavy seasonal rains, mainly in neighbouring Ethiopia, which caused the Nile River to rise to nearly 17.5 metres (about 57ft) at the end of August – the highest level in 100 years, according to the authorities.
The rates of floods and rain for this year exceeded the records set in 1946 and 1988, with expectations of continued rising indicators, Lena el-Sheikh added.
The states of Khartoum, Blue Nile and River Nile are among the hardest-hit by the floods, while damage has also been reported in the Gezira, Gadarif, West Kordofan and South Darfur regions, according to the UN.
The UN said it was supporting the national response with emergency shelter and household supplies, together with water, sanitation and hygiene assistance, food, health services and vector control.
The UN reported that it was able to respond quickly as supplies to meet the needs of 250,000 people had been pre-positioned before the rains started.
But with stocks “being depleted rapidly”, the UN is calling for wider support from the international community. | Floods | September 2020 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Georgina Beyer, the world's first transgendered member of parliament, resigns from the Parliament of New Zealand. | Georgina Beyer says her biggest achievement was being elected to Parliament. Photo / Herald On Sunday
The world's first transsexual MP Georgina Beyer came into Parliament making a joke about her sexuality and left yesterday on the same note.
In her maiden speech Ms Beyer joked that she was the stallion that became a gelding, then a mayor (of Carterton) and then she became a member.
"Well Madame Speaker can I say to you at this point that while I have relished the opportunity at being a member in this House I am glad I don't possess one," she said in her valedictory speech last night.
But it was not all lightness and laughter as she talked about the difficult decision to support Labour over the foreshore and seabed legislation.
"I am Maori but I held a general seat and my electorate wanted me to support the Government."
However, she was listening to family and Maori who opposed it.
"We all actually experience from time to time being torn in this way."
Ms Beyer said her biggest achievement was being elected.
"The first transsexual in the world to be elected to a Parliament ... it was inspirational in itself."
She praised colleagues Chris Carter, who was New Zealand's first openly gay MP, and Tim Barnett.
"This has got to add to our country that significant minorities can have a voice, can have a say and can stand for representation in this House."
Other achievements included support for prostitution reform and the legislation enabling civil unions.
"I will not resile ever from being a staunch supporter for both of those."
She was also proud to have supported the Labour programme.
"I will always be a person that will have the utmost respect for democracy. I have been pleased and proud to be a positive participant in our society. I am so glad that I have been able to redeem my more lurid past and practise proper rights of being a citizen of this country.
"I could ask for no more than that and whatever my future holds this will have to have been the greatest moment of my life."
After her speech Ms Beyer was kissed and hugged by colleagues from several parties.
She was MP for Wairarapa from 1999 until 2005 then continued as a list MP.
Ms Beyer is considering running against incumbent Wellington City Mayor Kerry Prendergast.
She will be replaced by Southland union organiser Lesley Soper.
- NZPA
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When news happens send photos, videos & tip-offs to 021 YRNEWS (021 976 397) , or email us. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | February 2007 | ['(NZ Herald)'] |
The government of Panama announces that it is creating an "international panel" to help improve transparency in its offshore financial industry. The move follows the leak of millions of documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca, showing it helped some clients evade tax and avoid sanctions. | Panama is creating an international panel to help improve transparency in its offshore financial industry. The move follows the leak of millions of documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca, showing it helped some clients evade tax and avoid sanctions. Several countries are probing possible financial crimes by the rich and powerful in the aftermath of the leak. President Juan Carlos Varela said Panama would work with other countries over the revelations.
"The Panamanian government, via our foreign ministry, will create an independent commission of domestic and international experts," he said in a televised address.
The panel, he said, would examine working practices and propose measures that could be shared to strengthen the transparency of the financial and legal systems.
Correspondents say the president is eager to defend his country against a "media attack" by wealthy countries that he says are unfairly stigmatising him following the leak.
Mossack Fonseca, for its part, says that it has been the victim of a hack.
Mossack Fonseca partner Ramon Fonseca insisted the leak was not an "inside job" - the company had been hacked by servers based abroad.
It has now filed a complaint with the Panamanian attorney general's office.
Mr Fonseca served as a minister in the government of current President Juan Carlos Varela but stepped aside earlier this year after separate allegations linked the firm to the corruption scandal engulfing the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.
Mossack Fonseca's Brazilian arm was accused of helping several of those accused in the Petrobras case of opening offshore companies in Panama in order to launder money through property transactions.
Mr Fonseca said he had stepped aside "to defend my honour and my firm" and denies any wrongdoing on the part of his firm in the Petrobras case.
Mr Varela has been quoted in Panamanian media as saying that he is still in touch with Mr Fonseca, calling him a "friend".
"At difficult times friends do not run away, they are there," Mr Varela said.
Mossack Fonseca has accused media organisations reporting the leak of having "unauthorised access to proprietary documents and information taken from our company" and of presenting this information out of context.
The revelations have already sparked political reaction in several countries where high-profile figures have been implicated.
On Tuesday Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson stepped down after the documents showed he owned an offshore company with his wife but had not declared it when he entered parliament.
The ruling coalition has named Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson as the new prime minister, with early elections to be held in the autumn.
Mr Gunnlaugsson says he sold his shares to his wife and denies any wrongdoing.
| Organization Established | April 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
Protesters gather in Bangkok to shut down the city centre in an effort to bring down the government of Prime Minister of Thailand Yingluck Shinawatra. | Protesters are blocking roads in parts of the Thai capital, Bangkok, in a bid to oust the government before snap elections on 2 February.
The protesters have built barricades and occupied key road junctions, and want to replace the government with an unelected "People's Council". The government has deployed 18,000 security personnel to maintain order. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has offered to meet protest leaders to discuss potentially delaying the polls. Protesters allege Ms Yingluck is a proxy for her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by the military in 2006 and is currently in self-imposed exile. Thaksin-allied parties draw considerable support from rural voters and have won the last four elections. But the protesters claim the Thaksin-allied parties' populist policies have created a flawed democracy. The main opposition party is now boycotting the 2 February polls. Anti-government demonstrators have called on Ms Yingluck - who has urged protesters to respect the democratic process and use the February elections to choose the next government - to step down.
Thailand's election commission has called for the vote to be postponed to May.
But this is unlikely to satisfy the protesters, who want the Shinawatra family to be purged from politics, and a two-year period without elections in which an appointed committee would reform Thailand's political system, the BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok reports.
At least eight people have been killed since the protests began late last year. On Saturday, at least seven people were injured when unknown gunmen opened fire on demonstrators at the main rally site in Bangkok. On Sunday night, an unidentified gunman attacked demonstrators at a protest site, shooting at least one man, officials said.
Police said a gunman also fired shots at the opposition party headquarters in a separate incident, although no casualties were reported.
Thousands are reported to have turned out for Monday's demonstrations. Protesters say they intend to achieve what they are calling a shutdown of the capital.
Protester Darunee Suredechakul told AP news agency: "The government has to go. Reforms must be carried out." "We don't want to see the same old corrupted politicians returning to power over and over again," she added.
Seven major intersections have been blocked by the anti-government protest movement, which has erected stages and piles of sandbags across the roads, the BBC's Jonathan Head reports.
The government says it wants life to continue as normal through the shutdown and has ordered extra trains to run on the mass transit system and provided thousands of additional parking places outside the city centre, our correspondent adds.
Protesters also plan to surround key ministries and cut off their power supply in a bid to prevent them from functioning. About 150 schools have been told to close. The protesters say they will remain in place for several days - but say they will not target public transport or the airports, which were closed for several days by anti-Thaksin protesters in 2008. Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, who was formerly a senior opposition party politician, described the movement as "a people's revolution". Ms Yingluck was "no longer prime minister" in the eyes of the demonstrators, he told reporters on Monday. The government says it is deploying 8,000 soldiers and 10,000 police to keep order. The military - which has carried out several coups in the past - has refused to rule out another one. Some fear an escalation of violence could lead to a military intervention.
The government has so far worked to avoid confrontation with the protesters. Ms Yingluck had "ordered all police and military personnel to exercise utmost restraint and not to use all kinds of weapons in handling the protesters", the deputy prime minister said.
The political unrest is the worst to hit Thailand since the protests of 2010, which were against a government led by the current opposition party and left more than 90 people, mostly civilian protesters, dead.
The current protests began in November after Thailand's lower house passed a controversial amnesty bill which critics said could allow Mr Thaksin to return without serving time in jail for a corruption conviction. The bill was later rejected by the Senate.
Thailand remains bitterly divided over Mr Thaksin, one of the most polarising characters in Thai politics.
He is deeply unpopular with urban and middle class voters, but commands strong support in the rural communities his policies helped, with thousands of villages in north-east Thailand calling themselves "red villages" to indicate their loyalty to his party.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | January 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
Nigel Evans, Deputy Speaker of the UK House of Commons, is arrested on suspicion of three counts of indecent assault. | Commons Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans has said he "refutes all allegations" after being arrested on suspicion of three counts of indecent assault. The 55-year-old answered bail following his arrest in May on suspicion of rape and sexual assault, and was told that he faced the additional allegations.
All the allegations involve men in their 20s.
Mr Evans, Conservative MP for Ribble Valley, will not resume his Speaker duties while inquiries continue.
He has previously denied any wrongdoing.
The original rape and sexual assault allegations are said to have happened in Pendleton between July 2009 and March 2013.
The new indecent assault allegations are claimed to have occurred in Blackpool and London between 2003 and 2011.
A Lancashire Police spokesman said: "A 55-year-old man from Pendleton in Lancashire has today answered his bail following his arrest in May on suspicion of rape and sexual assault.
"He has subsequently been further arrested on suspicion of three further offences of indecent assault. He will be interviewed about these allegations at a police station in Lancashire during the course of the day." He added: "We take all allegations of a sexual nature extremely seriously and understand how difficult it can be for victims to have the confidence to come forward.
"As a constabulary, we are committed to investigating sexual offences sensitively but robustly, recognising the impact that these types of crimes have on victims."
Mr Evans spoke to the media as he left Preston police station on Wednesday afternoon after being released on police bail until 10 September.
He said: "Clearly we want closure of this as soon as possible and I carry on assisting this inquiry fully and openly. "I continue to refute all allegations and in the meantime can I say that I'm extremely grateful for the huge amount of support and love I've received from my family, my friends and my constituents and indeed people throughout the country who have contacted me. So thanks very much, thank you."
Last month Mr Evans dismissed the original allegations against him as "completely false", and said they had been made by two people he had "regarded as friends". Elected as one of three Commons Deputy Speakers in 2010, he has stepped aside from his duties in that role since his arrest, but has continued to work as an MP. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | June 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
Former President of Peru Alberto Fujimori is sentenced to six years in jail for corruption by a court in Lima. | Ex-Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has been sentenced to six years in jail for corruption by a court in Lima.
Fujimori, who is already serving prison sentences for crimes including ordering killings by security forces, was in court for a fourth and final trial. The charges relate to a scandal which brought down his government in 2000. During the trial, Fujimori, 71, admitted that he had illegally tapped the phones of journalists, businessmen and opposition politicians. Fujimori, who led Peru from 1990 to 2000, returned from exile in late 2007 to face a number of charges. Abuse of power
In April this year, he was sentenced to 25 years in jail for ordering the security forces to carry out killings and kidnappings. In July he was sentenced to a further seven-and-a-half years for embezzlement after being convicted by Peru's Supreme Court of giving $15m (£9.3m) in state funds to his spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. He was already serving a six-year term after being found guilty in 2007 on separate charges of abuse of power. In the latest case, Fujimori admitted to charges that through Montesinos he bugged and bribed opposition politicians, journalists and businessmen. A series of videos leaked in 2000, showing Montesinos handing over piles of cash to prominent opposition leaders and media figures, prompted him and Fujimori to flee the country. Fujimori escaped to Japan, where his parents were born, and lived in exile there for seven years. Montesinos is currently in jail, convicted on dozens of charges including drug-trafficking and selling guns to Colombian rebels. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | September 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
The trial of Levi Bellfield begins for the murder of Amanda Dowler. | Teenager Milly Dowler vanished "in the blink of an eye" on her way home from school, the trial of her alleged murderer has been told.
Levi Bellfield, 42, formerly of West Drayton, west London, denies murder and kidnapping the 13-year-old in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, on 21 March 2002.
Her remains were found six months later in woods in Yateley Heath, Hampshire.
Bellfield went on to murder two other women and tried to murder a third, the Old Bailey jury heard.
Brian Altman, QC, also said Bellfield and his family had rented a flat "literally just yards away from the spot where Milly was last seen alive".
He said the day before Milly went missing, a man the prosecution allege was Bellfield had tried to abduct another schoolgirl in uniform a few miles away.
Rachel Cowles, 11, was approached by a man in a red car in Shepperton, Surrey, on 20 March that year.
Mr Altman said a man resembling Bellfield offered the schoolgirl a lift but she declined and he drove off.
He said there was "no doubt that Levi Bellfield was responsible for both".
"He has been proven to be a predatory and violent offender towards women," he said.
Amanda Dowler, who was known as Milly, disappeared as she walked home from a railway station after school.
She had just called her father to say she was on her way home.
Mr Altman told the jury Milly had "vanished" and was "gone in the blink of an eye". He said: "Milly had simply disappeared in a flash from a street in a suburban town in broad daylight.
"This was of course every parent's worst nightmare."
CCTV showed a red car Bellfield was using at the time leaving the area within 22 minutes of Milly's abduction, prosecutors said.
At the time of Milly's disappearance, Bellfield was living with his partner Emma Mills and their two children in a rented ground-floor flat.
Mr Altman said Ms Mills and their two children had been away on the day Milly disappeared. The following day, Bellfield had decided to move them with "indecent haste".
The jury was told Milly had had an ordinary day at school in Weybridge, taken a train with friends and spent time with them in the station cafe at Walton-on-Thames.
Then she began to walk home along Station Avenue, the jury heard.
Mr Altman said Milly had been popular among her friends and "was an ordinary girl developing into a fine young woman."
She lived in Walton Park with her parents Robert and Sally and older sister Gemma.
For six months, the family waited for news before Milly's remains were eventually found by mushroom pickers in undergrowth about 25 miles (40km) from where she was last seen.
Milly was identified by dental records but the cause of death could not be determined due to the length of time that had passed.
Bellfield, a former wheelclamper, was convicted at the Old Bailey in 2008 of attacks on women in west London over a period of just over two years.
He killed Marsha McDonnell, 19, in February 2003 and Amelie Delagrange, 22, in August 2004, by striking them on the head with a blunt instrument.
In May 2004, he attempted to murder Kate Sheedy, 18, by deliberately running her over in a car.
Mr Altman said the offences bore "similarity in many respects" to Milly's murder and Rachel's attempted abduction.
The trial, which is expected to last two months, has been adjourned until Wednesday.
Diversion that cost Milly's life
HM Courts Service
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | May 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Zimbabwe's top court rules that the general election should be held on July 31 despite an appeal by President Robert Mugabe and his main rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. | Elections to choose a new government in Zimbabwe will go ahead on July 31, the country's top court has ruled.
The disputed date had originally been set by President Robert Mugabe.
The court dismissed appeals by both Mugabe and his nemesis Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, to have the date postponed following pressure from regional leaders.
"Elections should proceed on the 31st of July 2013 in terms of the proclamation by the president in compliance with the order of this court," chief justice Godfrey Chidyausiku ruled.
The presidential vote will be held on the same day as parliamentary elections and will choose a government to replace an uneasy power-sharing deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai in place since 2009.
Mugabe had lodged an application to shift by two weeks the date that he had himself set, after regional bloc the Southern African Development Community (SADC) asked him to allow more time for preparations.
Tsvangirai, who accuses Mugabe and his allies of failing to implement promised reforms ahead of the vote, had wanted an even longer extension to allow time for the overhauls, and lodged a separate petition.
But "after perusing the papers, and hearing counsel in this matter, the court unanimously concludes that the applications should be and are hereby dismissed," said Chidyausiku.
Reasons for the judgment, which was reached after a day-long hearing, will be released at a later, still-unspecified date.
Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party dismissed the ruling as "a political decision not a legal one." | Government Job change - Election | July 2013 | ['(AFP via Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
Mark Selby wins the 2016 World Snooker Championship. | Last updated on 2 May 20162 May 2016.From the section Snooker
England's world number one Mark Selby beat China's Ding Junhui 18-14 to win his second World Championship title.
Selby, the 2014 winner from Leicester, led throughout Sunday and went into Monday's final session leading 14-11.
Ding, who was bidding to become the first Asian player to win the world title, claimed three frames in a row.
But Selby dug deep to seal a brilliant double for the city of Leicester, whose football team became Premier League champions 13 minutes earlier.
"It is fantastic," Selby told BBC TV. "It was very special to win it two years ago, but I felt under a lot more pressure now than I did two years ago.
"In the first to 18, a 6-0 lead is not a huge one, especially against someone like Ding. He played fantastically earlier today and I had to just hang on to him. "I'm just over the moon. I saved my best performance for the final and I only had two good sessions in the tournament. Luckily my 'B' game is pretty good.
And on Leicester City's incredible Premier League title success, he added: "To be Premier League champions is a fantastic achievement and I want to say well done to Claudio Ranieri and the boys."
Selby joined snooker's greats by becoming only the sixth multiple world champion in the Crucible era.
The 32-year-old, who pulled out of the previous two ranking events in preparation for the season-ending showpiece, had not played his best snooker in the tournament and came in for criticism over his often slow and meticulous style of play.
But breaks of 120, 91 and 76 put him 6-0 ahead on Sunday, a lead which he never relinquished. Having played the longest frame ever at the Crucible against Marco Fu in the semi-finals, Selby was involved in further drawn-out tactical battles with play ending at 00:24 BST on the first day.
However, Selby - who has remarkable mental toughness and never-say-die attitude - showed his experience to close out the match and the seventh ranking title victory of his career keeps him top of the world rankings for a fifth straight year. China's Ding fell short in his bid to become only the fourth player from outside Britain to win the title and only the third qualifier to lift the trophy.
The 29-year-old previously failed to deliver his best at the tournament as two semi-finals were his best showing, but with less pressure of not being one of the favourites this time, he managed to showcase his talent with his renowned heavy scoring. His 15 tournament centuries was only one short of Stephen Hendry's all-time record.
They included seven tons in the semi-final win over Alan McManus, a record for a single Crucible match, but he was then overcome by nerves during the opening exchanges against Selby. Although Ding, who moves up to ninth in the world, got to within one frame at stages in the final, Selby displayed his trademark grit and resolve to pull away again, leaving Ding frustrated.
1991 world champion John Parrott: "Mark Selby is made of granite. He is a tremendous competitor, his B game gives headaches to others, and he doesn't waste a shot. When he gets his scoring boots on he becomes very difficult to play against, and when he's not scoring every shot has a purpose.
"The way he went over the winning line is the sign of a true champion, that final break was one of pure class."
Six-time world champion Steve Davis: "Ding Junhui has inspired another generation of players in China. When they have seen the character he has shown, it is not a failure. There will be a Chinese champion somewhere down the line. It's been a fascinating tournament. It's great to see there is strength in depth within the players." | Sports Competition | May 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
Insurgency in the North Caucasus: Clashes occur between the Russian forces and Islamist militants in the Vedensky District, Chechnya, with reportedly 8 killed and 16 wounded. | MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia will officially withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty on 18 December, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday, adding that Moscow has notified the signatories of the agreement about its withdrawal.
While Biden presented Putin with a pair of shades and a crystal sculpture of a Bison, the Russian president reciprocated by offering a decorated stationery set.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson earlier alleged Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) operatives helped organise, coordinate and orchestrate 6 January capitol riots, as he cited court documents referencing over a dozen ‘unindicted co-conspirators’.
Eyewitnesses captured the consequences of an incident at London's best-known international airport involving a plane which had arrived from Moscow. | Famous Person - Give a speech | January 2012 | ['(RIA)'] |
Dr Mohamed Haneef, the Indian doctor freed in Australia of supporting terrorism, indicates that he would like to return to India as soon as possible. He later received clearance from the Australian Government to leave tonight. | Mohamed Haneef is at Brisbane International Airport ready to fly back home to India tonight, after the Immigration Department returned his passport.
Dr Haneef was freed yesterday after almost four weeks in custody on a terrorism-related charge that was dropped yesterday.
The doctor, who was working at the Gold Coast Hospital before his arrest, says he is homesick and anxious to be reunited with his family.
Dr Haneef is scheduled to fly out just after midnight via Bangkok, accompanied by a relative and his lawyer, Peter Russo.
Mr Russo says his client has not been deported but has chosen to return.
"He had a choice of either staying until the hearing was concluded or going back to be with his wife and child on a voluntary basis and he chose to go back voluntarily," he said.
Mr Russo says immigration authorities helping Dr Haneef return to India have banned him from speaking to the media before he leaves.
"Unfortunately I wasn't able to facilitate him publicly being able to thank the Australian public and the Australian media," he said.
Some journalists are planning to be on the same plane as Dr Haneef and his lawyer, arriving in Bangalore on Monday.
Although Dr Haneef's passport has been returned to him, his Australian work visa was not.
He has vowed to keep fighting to have the visa reinstated.
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews says the cancellation of Dr Haneef's visa means he needs to leave Australia.
Mr Andrews says the Federal Government will resist appeals in the Federal Court to reinstate Dr Haneef's visa.
He says even with the charges being dropped he still could have come to the same conclusion and cancelled the visa.
"Accordingly I do not propose to change my decision and that the Commonwealth will continue to resist this appeal in the Federal Court," he said.
Despite criticism of the decision, Mr Andrews says the solicitor-general has indicated the move to cancel the doctor's visa was open to him, on the evidence he was presented.
"He believes, that's his advice as the solicitor-general, that the proceedings to appeal my decision will ultimately fail in the Federal Court," he said.
"But he's gone further than that and said even if I made that decision now, at a time when the charge had been withdrawn having reviewed all the material, it was still open to me to come to the conclusion which I did."
Mr Andrews has confirmed Dr Haneef's lawyers contacted his department last night, asking if their client could leave Australia as soon as possible.
Mr Andrews says he now hopes to release the information that led to his decision to cancel Dr Haneef's visa.
He says he believes some of the information provided to him was different or more detailed than that given to the magistrate.
"There's always been the question that releasing information which could in some way jeopardise an ongoing investigation has to be taken seriously into account," he said.
"Now all I'm saying is if there's no reason now why that information should remain protected, then it would be my intention to be able to release that information."
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) | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | July 2007 | ['(Reuters)', '(ABC News Australia)'] |
Protestors and police clash in Chile due to the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. | Protesters and police have clashed in Chile ahead of the anniversary of the coup led by Gen Augusto Pinochet.
Police said they had arrested dozens of people for erecting barricades and throwing stones and petrol bombs.
A bus was set alight in the capital, Santiago, where 8,000 officers have been deployed to prevent any violence.
The 1973 coup deposed the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, and led to 17 years of military rule. Past anniversaries have regularly been marked by demonstrations, some of which turned violent. Interior Minister Andres Chadwick said on Wednesday that "up to this moment the reports have been very positive compared to what we were expecting".
He said that "major troublemakers were trying to take advantage of the occasion", but assured Santiago residents that the city was functioning normally.
Protesters have erected burning barricades in two Santiago neighbourhoods, police reported. Speaking after a religious ceremony, centre-right President Sebastian Pinera called for national reconciliation.
He said that the current generation of Chileans had no right to pass the hatreds of the past down to their children and grandchildren.
"I'm certain that the great majority of Chilean feels that peace and reconciliation are necessary, and that after 40 years the time has come not to forget, but to overcome the traumas of the past," he said.
The official ceremony marking the anniversary was already held on Monday at the presidential palace. There, President Pinera criticised the "violent coup that started a 17-year period of military rule".
But he also said it was "the predictable outcome" after "repeated violations of the rule of law" under the government of socialist President Salvador Allende.
A former president and candidate in the forthcoming presidential election, Michelle Bachelet, boycotted the ceremony.
Tuesday saw Ms Bachelet visit Villa Grimaldi, a former detention centre in Santiago where both she and her mother were held and tortured.
The site, where prisoners routinely received electric shocks and severe beatings, has been turned into a memorial park for the victims of the military regime. Holding photographs of left-wing activists who died or disappeared during the 17 years of Gen Pinochet's rule, Ms Bachelet and her mother stood in front of the stone memorial bearing the names of hundreds of victims. Ms Bachelet and her mother were detained there in 1975 before going into exile. Her father, a general loyal to President Allende, died after being tortured in detention.
Speaking at the event at Villa Grimaldi, Ms Bachelet said it was important to "build a country which is capable of going forward in a more just egalitarian and peaceful way".
She called for a truthful investigation into the crimes committed under military rule as "a dirty wound cannot heal".
Some 40,000 people suffered human rights abuses in Chile from 1973 to 1990. More than 3,000 were killed or forcibly disappeared, their bodies buried in unmarked graves or dumped at sea. And more than 1,000 human rights cases are still ongoing in Chilean courts. Burned alive for protesting
| Protest_Online Condemnation | September 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
Europe's Rosetta space probe reaches the distant 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko to orbit it and eventually land. | Europe's Rosetta probe has arrived at a comet after a 10-year chase. In a first for space exploration, the satellite was manoeuvred alongside a speeding body to begin mapping its surface in detail. The spacecraft fired its thrusters for six and a half minutes to finally catch up with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
"We're at the comet!" said Sylvain Lodiot from the European Space Agency (Esa) operations centre in Germany.
"After 10 years, five months and four days travelling towards our destination, looping around the Sun five times and clocking up 6.4 billion km, we are delighted to announce finally 'we are here'," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of Esa.
Launched on board an Ariane rocket in March 2004, Rosetta has taken a long route around our Solar System to catch up with comet 67P.
In a series of fly-pasts, the probe used the gravity of the Earth and Mars to increase its speed during the six billion km chase. Analysis by David Shukman, BBC Science Editor
You could almost feel the sense of relief in the corridors that, after managing a 10-year trek through space with extraordinary accuracy, and after investing more than one billion euros, all has gone so well.
The signal took nearly 23 minutes to reach us and, when it came, it was a dip in a line on a graph.
But this showed that the final burn to reach the comet had finished and this key moment was the trigger for a wave of pride rather than jubilation.
Getting a spacecraft to match the speed of a comet and effectively ride alongside it is a landmark in space exploration.
But the hard work starts now.
Read more from David here
To save energy, controllers at Esa's centre in Darmstadt, Germany, put Rosetta into hibernation for 31 months.
In January they successfully woke the craft from its slumber as it began the final leg of the daring encounter. For the past two months, Rosetta has been carrying out a series of manoeuvres to slow the probe down relative to its quarry.
The comet is travelling at 55,000km per hour (34,2000mph). The spacecraft's speed has been adjusted so that, in relative terms, it will be flying beside the comet at a slow walking pace of 1m/sec (2.2mph, 3.6kph).
At a distance of 400 million km from the Earth, messages are taking over 22 minutes to get to Rosetta. The distances involved are so great that the complex final command sequence for Wednesday's crucial thruster burn had to be issued on Monday night.
"This arrival phase in fact is the most complex and exotic trajectory that we have ever seen," said Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the French Space Agency Cnes.
Rosetta will have to continue to fire its thrusters every few days to maintain a hyberbolic orbit at 100km above the rotating "ice mountain". The craft will then travel alongside the comet for the next 15 months, studying it with a range of instruments.
Rosetta has been taking increasingly detailed photographs of 67P as it gets closer. The mysterious comet has been dubbed the "rubber duck", as some images seem to show the familiar shape as it twirls in space. Project scientist, Dr Matt Taylor, said: "For me this is the sexiest, most fantastic mission there's ever been. It's ticking a number of boxes in terms of fascination, exploration, technology and science - predominantly science."
As it moves towards the Sun, 67P will warm up and its trailing halo of gas and dust - known as the coma - will increase, offering the orbiter the chance to do some detailed scientific work. "We've seen evidence of the out-gassing of the coma, the outer atmosphere of the comet. This is made of dust and gas," said Dr Taylor.
"We have instruments on board that will start sniffing for this gas and taste it. We will also be collecting some of this dust and touching the coma itself. Hopefully, that will occur sometime this week."
The mission gets even more ambitious in November when, after moving Rosetta closer to 67P, mission controllers will attempt to put the Philae lander on the surface. The lander will use harpoons to anchor itself and will carry out a series of experiments, including drilling into the material that makes up the comet. The mission aims to add to knowledge of comets and their role in possibly ferrying the building blocks of life around the early Solar System. | New achievements in aerospace | August 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
Ukrainian government forces recapture control of the city of Vuhlehirsk, Donetsk Oblast, from pro-Russian insurgents. | Ukrainian military men on Aug. 12 liberated the town of Vuhlehirsk in Donetsk region from the terrorists, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko reported.
“Today our army liberated the town of Vuhlehirsk from the terrorists. Glory to Ukraine!,” the president said in Twitter.
| Armed Conflict | August 2014 | ['(Kyiv Post)'] |
T–Mobile US and Sprint agree to merge in a deal valued at US$146 billion. The merger is subject to approval from regulators. | T-Mobile and Sprint are combining in a deal that would create a bigger No. 3 cellular carrier in the U.S., but could also signal the end of an era of aggressive competition for customers.
The merger, an all-stock deal announced Sunday after years of on-again-off-again courting, would create a company using the name T-Mobile. It would value Sprint at $59 billion and the combined companies at $146 billion, including debt. Excluding debt, the deal would value Sprint at about $26 billion.
T-Mobile and Sprint say their merger, if approved by regulators, would mean lower customer prices, greater innovation, more jobs and better wireless service, especially in the rural U.S. They also tout the deal as a way to best position the companies to compete in the forthcoming 5G race for faster mobile Internet. But critics worry that the merger will curb competition and result in job losses.
T-Mobile's stock price fell 6.22% Monday, and Sprint's slid13.69%, as worries about the deal's approval bubbled up on Wall Street.
Angelo Zino, an analyst with CFRA Research, puts the odds of regulatory approval at 50%, "at best," because "it will be difficult to prove fewer carriers will be good for consumers."
More:T-Mobile and Sprint merger could cool cell-phone wars, which have benefited customers
The new company, which would have more than 90 million retail wireless subscribers, still trails the top two carriers, with AT&T reaching 93 million subscribers, and Verizon 116 million.
"It's a very simple rule of business. Both companies need each other," said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure told investors on a conference call Sunday. "The reason why this is going to work is that T-Mobile cannot do the 5G strategy without Sprint and Sprint cannot do it without T-Mobile."
An AT&T spokesperson declined to comment on the deal; Verizon did not respond to a similar USA TODAY request for comment.
The executives said the merger will result in thousands of new jobs right away, with the potential to create "tens of thousands" later. The merged company's plans to invest up to $40 billion in its new network and business in the first three years alone is a massive capital outlay that could fuel job growth across related sectors, too.
But analysts say job cuts are inevitable with so many business-function redundancies between T-Mobile and Sprint. These could number in the tens of thousands and call centers could take the heaviest brunt. The two companies employ more than 80,000 people.
The new company is expected to achieve $6 billion in synergies — redundancies between the two corporations, like sales, marketing, back office functions and customer service — says Roger Entner of Boston-based research firm Recon Analytics. But 93% of that figure is operating expenses and the majority of those operating expenses are people.
"Will they be able to (offset) these job losses with new hiring? How much will regulators hold their feet to the fire?" he said.
Lay-offs may become a focal point for opposition. Trump won the White House with a campaign steeped in promises to make life better for the American worker, and he twinned his sweeping 2017 tax cuts with vows of job creation.
Telecommunications workers aren't likely to allow the bigger company to cut jobs or reduce full time positions without a fight. Unions have been pressuring companies like AT&T to return some of that tax windfall to workers in the form of jobs returned to the U.S. from offshore centers and higher wages.
The deal also risks toning down the cycle of price cuts and improved features the wireless companies have engaged in for the last five years.
Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, said the deal will mean fewer choices for customers and could prompt the three remaining companies to “act in concert.”
“Consumers will be the losers if T-Mobile and Sprint are allowed to merge,” said Sohn, who served as counselor to former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler.
“Both companies have been feisty competitors to the two biggest national mobile wireless carriers, Verizon and AT&T," she said..
But Recon's Entner said worries about higher prices are over-blown.
"They’re really intense competitors. Prices will continue to decrease, but how soon will they decrease?"
The two companies executives argue that it's short-sighted to view the competition for customers as fight between phone companies. Cable and broadband companies like Comcast have rolled out their own wireless plans.
"Convergence between mobile broadband and cable isn't just a hypothetical. It's a reality of our business on a day to day basis," said T-Mobile CEO John Legere.
Should the companies merge, Sprint subscribers might see some new pricing arrangements available and could become eligible for T-Mobile promotions such as free Netflix subscriptions.
Those on T-Mobile might get Hulu or Tidal subscriptions in return, which Sprint has been promoting under some of its plans.
More:T-Mobile and Sprint merger could cool cell-phone wars, which have benefited customers
More:T-Mobile CEO: More competition in wireless and beyond in 2018
More:Justice Dept. investigating if AT&T, Verizon make it too hard to switch wireless carriers
The deal still requires regulatory approval and that step is far from assured.
The nation's No. 3 and No. 4 wireless carriers had tried to join forces before. In 2014, they considered merging but eventually called off talks because it was believed the hurdles under the Obama administration were too high.
T-Mobile's growth since then may factor against the new deal. Opponents are likely to argue that halting a merger of the two companies four years ago resulted in a stronger T-Mobile, with more benefits to customers.
Legere, who has aggressively promoted the T-Mobile brand on social media and television — frequently taking swings at rivals — has overseen a more than doubling of T-Mobile's subscriber base since joining the company in 2012. The company dropped a practice of requiring smartphone customers to sign on to onerous two-year contracts and was at the forefront of a return to unlimited data plans.
Sprint's owners have tried to clear the way. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son was one of the first technology leaders to throw his support behind Trump, meeting with the then-President-elect in December 2016 at Trump Tower. Trump then announced SoftBank Group planned to invest $50 billion into the U.S. economy and add 50,000 jobs.
The meeting rekindled speculation that SoftBank would renew talks between Sprint and T-Mobile efforts under a Republican administration. But a year later, negotiations between the two companies hit a wall. In early November, both companies said they officially ended merger plans saying they couldn't agree on terms.
If the third time proves a charm, Legere will remain CEO of the new T-Mobile. Marcelo Claure, who co-founded wireless company Brightstar and who was named Sprint CEO in 2014, will become a member of T-Mobile's board.
Mike Sievert, T-Mobile's current chief operating officer, will become president and COO of the new T-Mobile.
T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, would own 42% of the combined company. Sprint's parent, Japanese telecom titan SoftBank Group, run by Sprint chairman Son, would own 27% while the remaining ownership would be public. | Organization Merge | April 2018 | ['(USA Today)'] |
American writer and producer Sam Simon, co–creator of the longest running animated sitcom, The Simpsons, dies at the age of 59 after a 3–year battle with terminal colorectal cancer. | Simon won seven Emmy awards for his work as a writer, director and executive producer for the longest-running sitcom on American television.
The Simpsons, which chronicles the life of a clumsy father and his dysfunctional family, first aired in 1989.
Simon led the show's writing staff and is credited with developing the characters that feature in the show.
He left the show after four seasons, but continued to receive between $20m (£13.2m) and $30m (£19.9m) each year after striking a deal that gave him a part of the show's future earnings.
After his diagnosis, he said he wanted to donate all of his fortune to charity.
Simon gave much of his money to social causes, especially those working on animal welfare issues.
In 2002 he founded the non-profit Sam Simon Foundation, which is devoted to rescuing dogs from shelters and training them to assist the disabled.
"I have a desire to help animals," Simon said in an interview with Reuters in 2014.
"It's my money and I get to do what I want with it. It's an expensive hobby I picked up at the end of my life."
"It is with much sadness that we must let you know that Sam Simon has passed over," the organisation announced on its Facebook page.
Fellow Simpsons producer Al Jean tweeted "a great man; I owe him everything" from his verified account in response to the news.
Simon also worked as a writer for a number of hit sitcoms, including Taxi and Cheers. | Famous Person - Death | March 2015 | ['(BBC)'] |
The United States Senate votes 51–40 to confirm U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior, thereby making her the first Native American to head the department and the first to be confirmed to a Cabinet post. Haaland is an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo. | The Senate on Monday voted to confirm Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., as President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Department of the Interior, making the second-term Democrat the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history.
The vote was 51-40, with four Republicans joining Democrats in favor.
Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, earned bipartisan support to run the Interior department, which has a staff of 70,000 employees and is charged with overseeing the country’s natural resources. The agency manages nearly 500 million acres of land, or one-fifth of the surface area of the United States.
Haaland’s confirmation fills one of the few remaining vacancies in Biden’s Cabinet, nearly two months after he was sworn in. With most of the major posts now occupied, the outstanding positions include United States trade representative, Labor secretary, and Health and Human Services secretary.
“We’ve now made history twice in the last few minutes,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said after the vote, noting that Haaland was the first Native American Interior secretary as well as the first Native American Cabinet secretary.
The confirmation marks a victory for progressives who championed Haaland’s nomination, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Haaland, a supporter of the Green New Deal, was one of the co-chairs of Warren’s 2020 campaign for president.
Republicans sought to wield Haaland’s progressive stances against her during her confirmation hearings last month. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., pressed Haaland on her support for the Green New Deal and the declining number of jobs available in the fossil fuel industry.
“I believe there are millions of jobs in a clean energy future,” Haaland responded, in line with past statements from Biden. “If we can all work together I think we can do it all. I think we can protect our public lands and create jobs.”
Asked about her opposition to fracking on public lands, Haaland responded that if confirmed she would be supporting Biden’s agenda, not necessarily her own.
“President Biden does not support a ban on fracking, is my understanding,” she said.
During the hearing, Haaland emphasized her bipartisan credentials. In her first year in Congress, Haaland introduced more bills with a co-sponsor from another party than any other House freshman, according to GovTrack, which also rates her the 10th most politically left member of Congress.
The Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted earlier in March to advance Haaland’s nomination by a vote of 11-9, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, joining 10 Democrats in favor of her confirmation.
In a somewhat unusual maneuver, Haaland also touted the support of Rep. Don Young, another Alaska Republican, who introduced her to the committee.
“I have had her reach across the aisle to talk to me about Alaska. She’s bipartisan,” Young told lawmakers.
Murkowski, though she voted to advance Haaland’s nomination, was one of the apparent skeptics on the committee.
“I am going to place my trust in Representative Haaland and her team despite some very real misgivings,” Murkowski said.
The four Republicans to vote in favor of Haaland’s confirmation on Monday were Murkowski, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
Sen. Joe Manchin, the influential and closely watched moderate Democrat from West Virginia, also lent his approval. Manchin cited Young’s endorsement and said it was “long past time to give a Native American woman a seat on the Cabinet table.”
Haaland pledged at the hearing to work on repairing the U.S. federal government’s relationship with Native American tribes if confirmed. She pointed to her own story as an inspiration.
“If an Indigenous woman from humble beginnings can be confirmed as secretary of the Interior, our country holds promise for everyone,” she said.
Haaland is one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress, alongside fellow Democrat Sharice Davids of Kansas, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation.
Subscribe to CNBC Pro for the TV livestream, deep insights and analysis on how to invest during the new presidential term. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | March 2021 | ['(CNBC)', '(Indian Country Today)'] |
The Cook Islands secretary of health, Josephine Herman, says that the country is holding and containing the latest outbreak of Dengue, which has killed 22 people and infected another 28. | The Cook Islands secretary of health, Josephine Herman, said the country is holding and containing the latest outbreak of dengue.
She saids to date there are 50 cases of type 1 dengue in the Cooks.
Of these, 22 people have had the virus confirmed after analysis in New Zealand, and the remaining 28 have been identified as likely to have dengue after clinical diagnosis, Dr Herman said.
She also said that while health authorities anticipate more victims, extensive efforts are being made to ensure the spread is minimised.
The Cook Islands Ministry of Health is concerned dengue fever may have spread to the northern island of Aitutaki.
The number of confirmed cases of dengue fever in the Cook Islands has risen to 18.
There are now ten confirmed dengue cases in the Cook Islands, with the country still on alert.
The Cook Islands government says a recent visitor to the country was infected with the dengue virus when he arrived in the capital, Rarotonga.
The Ministry of Health in the Cook Islands has declared a dengue outbreak, following the confirmation of seven dengue cases in Rarotonga in February. | Disease Outbreaks | May 2019 | ['(Radio New Zealand)'] |
The G20 meets in Horsham, West Sussex, England, to discuss the global financial crisis. | Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Tim Geitner says there is a broad global consensus.
Finance ministers from the G20 group of rich and emerging nations have pledged to make a "sustained effort" to pull the world economy out of recession.
"We are committed to deliver the scale of sustained effort necessary to restore growth," they said in a joint statement after their talks in the UK. UK Chancellor Alistair Darling said they agreed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should be given more money. The talks were held amid reports of rifts over the best way forward. BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders said that the outline agreements represented "cheap talk", and differences remain. The outline agreements will now provide the basis for more concrete pledges at next month's meeting of G20 leaders in London. 'Decisive action'
Speaking after the gathering of finance ministers in Horsham, West Sussex, Mr Darling, said the G20 recognised the "sense of emergency" surrounding the world economy. "We have taken decisive and comprehensive action to boost demand and jobs," he said. "We are prepared to take whatever action is necessary." The outline agreements released in the joint communique include a commitment to fighting all forms of protectionism, and the restoration of bank lending. The finance ministers have also pledged to continue with economic stimulus packages and low interest rates, and to increase IMF funding. Our correspondent said the key two agreements were the pledge to increase the funds to the IMF, and the commitment to guard against protectionism. "Agreeing to an absolute standstill on all trade and capital barriers - so that countries could not raise tariffs or other constraints from their current levels, even where permitted under WTO [World Trade Organisation] rules - would have meant something." 'Consensus'
While the US and UK finance ministers have led the call for further public spending on stimulus packages to help lift economies, some of their European counterparts have urged caution. Led by Germany's Peer Steinbruck, they are concerned about all the billions being added to governments' debt, and have said it would be best to see if the current stimulus schemes start to work before more money is dedicated. Following the meeting, both Mr Darling and US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner played down talk of any disagreement at the talks. Mr Darling said there had been a "significant amount of progress, a great deal of consensus". Mr Geithner added that "we have a very broad consensus globally on the need to act aggressively to restore growth to the global economy". Yet Mr Steinbrueck again indicated that Germany was concerned about the expense of further stimulus packages. "Public debt is a heavy burden for our children and grandchildren and there will have to be an exit strategy," he said. At a separate meeting on Saturday, UK Prime Minister held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Both said they were confident that concrete agreement could be reached at next month's meeting of G20 leaders in London. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | March 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
Václav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia and President of the Czech Republic, dies. | Vaclav Havel, the Czech Republic's first president after the Velvet Revolution against communist rule, has died at the age of 75.
The former dissident playwright, who suffered from prolonged ill-health, died on Sunday morning, his secretary Sabina Tancecova said.
As president, he presided over Czechoslovakia's transition to democracy and a free-market economy.
He oversaw its peaceful 1993 split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Havel first came to international fame as a dissident playwright in the 1970s through his involvement with the human rights manifesto Charter 77.
A black flag has been flying over Prague Castle, the presidential seat, and people have been gathering in Wenceslas Square, scene of anti-communist protests in 1989, to light candles in honour of Havel.
The Czech cabinet is to meet for a special session on Monday to consider arrangements for national mourning.
Tributes have been pouring in for the man many consider a driving force in the overthrow of communist rule in eastern Europe.
"His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology, and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon," said US President Barack Obama.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed Havel as a "great European" in a letter of condolence to Czech President Vaclav Klaus.
"His fight for freedom and democracy was as unforgettable as his great humanity," wrote Mrs Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany.
"We Germans in particular have much for which we are grateful to him. We mourn this loss of a great European with you," she wrote.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "deeply saddened" and that Europe owed Havel a "profound debt".
"Havel devoted his life to the cause of human freedom. For years, Communism tried to crush him, and to extinguish his voice. But Havel could not be silenced.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote on Twitter: "Vaclav Havel was one of the greatest Europeans of our age. His voice for freedom paved way for a Europe whole and free."
Havel died at his country home north-east of Prague.
In his final moments, he was comforted by his wife Dagmar and several nuns, his secretary was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.
Havel had looked thin and drawn during recent public appearances.
A former heavy smoker, Havel had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating back to his years in communist prisons.
He had part of a lung removed during surgery for cancer in the 1990s.
He was taken to hospital in Prague on 12 January 2009, with an unspecified inflammation, and developed breathing difficulties after undergoing minor throat surgery.
Havel began co-writing plays during his military service in the 1950s and his first solo play, The Garden Party, was staged in 1963.
His plays satirised the absurdities of life under communist rule, but his work was banned after the reformist Prague Spring of 1968 was crushed by a Soviet-led invasion.
After that his plays were banned and he was imprisoned several times.
By the late 1970s he had become Czechoslovakia's best-known dissident. He helped found the Charter 77 movement for democratic change.
When communist rule unravelled in late 1989, he was elected president by the interim coalition cabinet. He resigned in 1992 after Slovak nationalists successfully campaigned for the break-up of Czechoslovakia.
He was elected first president of the Czech Republic in January 1993, serving until 2003 when he resigned as his health deteriorated. | Famous Person - Death | December 2011 | ['(The Telegraph)', '(BBC)'] |
Vladimir Putin makes a rare trip to Israel and discusses Iran's nuclear program and the uprising in Syria. | Israel has urged visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin to take a stronger line on curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Mr Putin is on his first Middle East tour in seven years, aiming to bolster Russia's diplomatic presence.
He said he had discussed Iran and Syria in great detail and negotiations on both were the only solution.
Mr Putin unveiled a World War II monument in Netanya and on Tuesday will travel to the West Bank.
Israel and Russia have strong cultural ties, with Israel home to more than a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
But politically relations have often been strained, correspondents say.
After his meeting with Mr Putin on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "We agree that nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran pose a grave danger, first for Israel but also for the region and the whole world."
Calling for all uranium enrichment in Iran to cease, he said: "Two things need to be done now: we need to bolster the sanctions and bolster the demands."
Iran says its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful, but Western countries suspect it trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Mr Netanyahu also said "the killing and horrible suffering of the Syrian people" must stop.
Mr Putin said the pair had discussed Iran and Syria and that he saw negotiations as the only solution, adding that it was "unacceptable to think of mutual destruction".
He added: "From the very beginning of the so-called Arab Spring, Russia has been persuading its partners that democratic changes should take place in a civilised manner and without external intervention."
Mr Putin had begun his visit by inaugurating a Soviet Red Army memorial in Netanya to pay tribute to fallen soldiers of World War II.
Later Israeli President Shimon Peres stepped up the pressure on Mr Putin, making a "personal request that you make your voice heard against a nuclear Iran" and warning of a "real danger that Syrian chemical weapons will reach the hands of Hezbollah and al-Qaeda".
Mr Peres said: "I am confident that Russia, which defeated fascism, will not allow today's threats to continue. Not the Iranian threat. Not the bloodshed in Syria."
Mr Putin said Russia had a "national interest" in a peaceful Israel.
On Tuesday, Mr Putin will meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
Mr Netanyahu asked Mr Putin to deliver a message to Mr Abbas urging the Palestinian leader to resume peace talks stalled since 2010.
But BBC West Bank correspondent Jon Donnison says such an outcome is unlikely as Mr Abbas is demanding that Israel halt its expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Mr Putin will later head to Jordan, where he will meet King Abdullah.
| Diplomatic Visit | June 2012 | ['(BBC)', '(Al Jazeera)'] |
A U.S. court martial hears allegations by the lead criminal investigator that Iraqi prisoners were abused 'for fun' at Abu Ghraib. | FORT BRAGG, North Carolina (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers who abused Iraqi prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison did it for fun, a military investigator has testified at the start of a hearing in the case of a female soldier.
A military court at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, convened on Tuesday to decide whether Private Lynndie England, photographed holding a naked Iraqi on a leash, will be tried for the prisoner abuse that outraged the Arab world and embarrassed the Bush administration as it sought to stabilise Iraq.
Chief Warrant Officer Paul Arthur, the lead criminal investigator into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, was the first witness to take the stand in a red-brick judge advocate's building in Fort Bragg, where the pregnant England has been stationed since her return from Iraq.
Arthur told the military court that England said in a sworn statement in January that one of her superiors, Specialist Charles Graner, told her to pose for the infamous photograph of the naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash, one of a series of pictures.
U.S. media reports have said Graner, who has also been charged, is the father of England's child.
"(She said) Graner suggested she pose in a photograph with him (the prisoner). And pose for the picture as if she was dragging him," Arthur said, repeating several times that England and other soldiers said they were just joking around.
Asked if he had determined why the U.S. soldiers had abused the prisoners, Arthur said: "Basically it was just for fun ... and to vent their frustration."
England, dressed in camouflage uniform, black boots and beret, entered the courthouse moments before the hearing began, ignoring dozens of media cameras and reporters.
Inside the courtroom, she answered "Yes Ma'am" and "No Ma'am" to a series of simple questions from Colonel Denise Arn, the investigating officer, about the charges she faces.
POLICE RESERVISTS
England, 21, was charged along with six other U.S. military police reservists in a scandal that prompted an apology from U.S. President George W. Bush, who placed the blame on a small group of soldiers.
England has said she was following orders when she appeared in the pictures, which also included one in which she pointed at a prisoner's genitals, a cigarette dangling from her lips.
Addressing that, Special Agent Warren Worth, a military crimes investigator, said he found no evidence that orders came from further up the chain of command than Graner and Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, another of the seven soldiers charged.
"If we're talking about persons higher ... I had no indication that anybody knew," Worth told the court.
The hearing is called an Article 32 investigation. Arn will decide whether the case should go to trial. It has been delayed since June as the military filed new charges and England's defenders made changes to their legal team.
She is charged with conspiracy to mistreat Iraqi prisoners, assaulting prisoners, committing acts prejudicial to good order, committing indecent acts, disobeying an order and creating and possessing sexually explicit photographs. Some of the charges were not related to prisoner abuse.
Maximum penalties include a dishonourable discharge and up to 38 years in prison if convicted.
England's lawyers, who have called their client a "poster child" for flawed U.S. war policies, will be allowed to call witnesses at the hearing. But their request to call U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the witness stand was denied, the lawyers said.
England, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, returned to the United States from Iraq after becoming pregnant.
Lawyers for some of the accused say intelligence officers told them to soften up prisoners for questioning. The Pentagon has denied sanctioning rough treatment to make inmates talk. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | August 2004 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Spanish Minister of Culture and Sport Màxim Huerta resigns after tax issues, becoming the minister with the shortest time in office in Spain. | MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s culture minister resigned on Wednesday from a week-old government following local media reports that he had avoided paying taxes while working as a TV journalist 10 years ago.
Maxim Huerta, who was named to the cabinet of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez last week, said he had paid a fine related to his declared income in 2006 and 2008, and was “absolutely innocent”.
“I have paid the fine twice, at the time and now, here,” he told a news conference in Madrid, saying the penalty had resulted from a change in the tax authority’s criteria.
Huerta added that he was fully up to date with his tax payments.
Sanchez toppled his predecessor, Mariano Rajoy, in a confidence vote over a long-running corruption scandal.
El Confidencial newspaper had reported that Huerta had been found to have avoided paying tax amounting to more than 200,000 euros ($235,700).
Spaniards have been enthusiastic so far in their reception of Sanchez’s Socialist government, which broke with six years of right-wing domination and contains more women than men in ministerial posts for the first time in the country’s history.
His party rebounded in opinion polls after taking power, overtaking rivals which had poached its voters in recent years, including market-friendly Ciudadanos and anti-austerity Podemos.
Despite these encouraging signs, Sanchez will have his work cut out to make any major policy changes, as he controls less than a quarter of the seats in parliament. ($1 = 0.8485 euros)
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | June 2018 | ['(Reuters)'] |
A court in Pakistan sentences three people to death and a college teacher to 10 years in prison for blasphemy. Those convicted can now appeal to higher courts and ask for clemency from the President. Human rights groups say that the law persecutes religious minorities including Shias and the Ahmadiya. | Fourth accused, a college teacher, sentenced to 10 years in jail for ‘blasphemous’ lecture he delivered in the classroom.
An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan has handed death sentences to three people for social media posts deemed insulting to Prophet Muhammad under the country’s blasphemy laws.
A fourth accused, a college teacher, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for a “blasphemous” lecture he had delivered in the classroom, court official Istifamul Haq told DPA news agency on Friday.
Judge Raja Jawad announced the decision in the capital Islamabad on the charges filed in 2017, Haq said.
The convicted people can appeal in two higher courts to overturn their conviction or ask for mercy from the president.
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, a colonial legacy made more stringent by former military ruler Ziaul Haq in the 1980s, envisage death as the maximum punishment for insulting the Prophet.
Rights activists say laws have been used against the followers of other religions and minority Muslim faiths such as Shia and Ahmadiya in the Sunni-majority country.
Since the 1980s, nearly 80 people have been killed by individuals or angry mobs even before their trials were concluded in courts.
Between 2011 and 2015, the latest period for which consolidated data is available, there were more than 1,296 blasphemy cases filed in Pakistan.
The laws are now treated as sacred, but experts say there is no clear definition of “blasphemy” in Islamic jurisprudence, nor is there agreement on the punishment for it.
There has been a renewed focus on the laws after the United States urged Pakistan to revisit them following the murder of a Pakistani-American man inside a courtroom during his trial for blasphemy last July.
Pakistan has dozens of convicts on death row or serving life imprisonment for committing blasphemy, according to the US Commission for International Religious Freedom.
The story of a man who spent 19 years awaiting execution reveals the power of a false blasphemy claim to destroy a life.
Blasphemy is not a crime, said Macron, defending a teenage girl who offended Muslims in a social media tirade.
Many people have been arrested in connection with the destruction of the temple in remote northwestern town of Karak.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | January 2021 | ['(Al Jazeera)'] |
A magnitude 5.8 earthquake hits Sichuan, China, killing 13 people and injuring 199 others. | Thirteen people died and nearly 200 were injured as of around 4 p.m. Tuesday after a 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit southwest China's Sichuan Province Monday night, local authorities said at a press conference.
Rescuers search for trapped people in Shuanghe Town in Changning County of Yibin City, southwest China's Sichuan Province, June 18, 2019. [Photo: Xinhua]
The earthquake hit Changning County of Yibin City at 10:55 p.m. Monday (Beijing Time). The epicenter, with a depth of 16 km, was monitored at 28.34 degrees north latitude and 104.90 degrees east longitude, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.
Nine people died in Changning and four more in neighboring Gongxian County, Li Tinggen, secretary-general of the municipal government of Yibin, said at the press conference.
As of Tuesday afternoon, nearly 200 people were injured. Among them, six are in critical conditions and another 16 are severely injured.
At around 6:30 p.m., a severely injured victim was transported by a helicopter to the Sichuan provincial people's hospital for further treatment.
Nie Taimin, deputy director of the municipal bureau of emergency management, said the number of injured has increased as the conditions of some remote areas with poor communications were updated during the day.
The quake affected more than 140,000 people and damaged over 12,700 houses. Some 8,447 residents have been evacuated in quake-hit areas so far.
Moible photo taken on June 18, 2019 shows rescuers transfering a wounded person in Shuanghe Town in Changning County of Yibin City, southwest China's Sichuan Province. [Photo: Xinhua]
RESCUE CONTINUES AMID AFTERSHOCKS
In a temporary shelter in Shuanghe Township, dozens of relief tents had been set up. Each tent was about 12 square meters, with five simple beds inside and two dry powder fire extinguishers outside.
Outside the tents, people were provided with free water, instant noodles, bread and other food, and power workers were offering charging services.
Luo Lian, 30, was still shaken when she recalled last night's earthquake. "We were scared to death and rushed out having no shoes on. Our legs were shaking even after we were safe," Luo said.
On Monday evening, Luo stayed on the third floor with her two children when the quake struck. At the beginning, she thought the shake was just an illusion. However, a stronger tremor was felt soon, as the whole house clanged and the kids began to cry.
When Luo realized it was a quake, the electricity was cut off at her home. The mother had to run downstairs with her children in the dark.
Luo was grateful that the workers in the shelter took good care of her and her children. "Now we don't worry about the food supply. We're just afraid of the aftershocks and can't go home."
As of 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, a total of 17 aftershocks measuring 3-magnitude or above have been recorded in the areas.
Statistics showed that more than 3,000 people joined the rescue work.
People distribute relief materials at Shuanghe Town High School in Changning County of Yibin City, southwest China's Sichuan Province, June 18, 2019. [Photo: Xinhua]
The Ministry of Emergency Management has activated an emergency response and sent a working team to the stricken areas to provide guidance in rescue and disaster relief.
The ministry and the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration have dispatched 5,000 tents, 10,000 folding beds and 20,000 quilts to the quake-hit areas.
Li said 15 medical teams with about 60 members from Yibin's hospitals have reached the quake-hit areas.
China's armed police forces were also dispatched for rescue soon after the earthquake. Meanwhile, more than 1,800 militia members have been mobilized overnight to offer emergency relief, including on-the-spot rescue, disaster detection, and duties of vigilance, in the quake-stricken areas.
Seven main roads connecting Changning and Gongxian counties with the epicenter have been cleared and reopened by Tuesday afternoon, according to Li.
As of 4 p.m. Tuesday, State Grid Sichuan Electric Power Company has mobilized 294 emergency rescue personnel and 70 vehicles to the quake areas for the power repair and temporary power supply. More than 24,000 households have regained power.
Photo taken on June 18, 2019 shows a store damaged during an earthquake in Shuanghe Town in Changning County of Yibin City, southwest China's Sichuan Province. [Photo: Xinhua]
EARLY WARNING SYSTEM
On Monday night, Yibin residents received alarms 10 seconds before the quake hit, while citizens in the provincial capital Chengdu, more than 200 km away from the epicenter, got alarms about a minute before the seismic waves hit the city.
Early warnings were issued through a variety of channels, including public broadcasting system, local television stations, mobile apps and the Internet.
The early warning system was jointly built by the Institute of Care-Life, an organization that studies earthquakes in Chengdu, and local emergency management authorities.
Preliminary statistics showed that 79 county-level areas in 13 cities and prefectures issued early warnings via television stations. A total of 212 schools in several cities and 101 residential communities in Chengdu received alarms in advance.
"The system was not designed to predict earthquakes," said Wang Tun, director of Care-Life. "It uses the theory that radio waves travel faster than seismic waves and provides automatic warnings seconds before quake waves arrive."
Earthquake research has found that being aware of an earthquake three seconds beforehand can save 14 percent of casualties, 10 seconds can save 39 percent of casualties and 20 seconds can save 63 percent of casualties.
The early warning system has covered an area of 2.2 million square km, providing services to about 90 percent of the population in China's quake-prone regions, according to Wang.
Learn through News Takeaway Chinese New Insights through Revision Chinese Studio China-US US News Trending US-World Recommended | Earthquakes | June 2019 | ['(China Plus)'] |
The opposition Anguilla United Movement, led by former Chief Minister Hubert Hughes, wins a majority of seats in the 2010 general election, defeating the governing Anguilla United Front. | (The Valley, Anguilla) The Island of Anguilla, having suffered a serious economic crunch under the Anguilla United Front, under the leadership of former Chief Minister Osbourne Fleming and former Minister of Finance Victor Banks, on February 15, completely rejected the party. The Anguilla United Movement (AUM) lead by former Chief Minister Hubert Hughes secured a comprehensive victory winning four of the five districts they competed in, namely districts, 4, 5, 6 and 7.
The AUF managed to retain Districts 1 and 3 but even where there was victory, there was much less than overwhelming support. In District 1, Mr. Othlyn Vanterpool secured just over 33% of voters, assisted ably by the other votes being split between four other candidates. In District 3, incumbant Mr. Evans McNeil Rogers won his AUF seat by a mere 25 votes over Sutcliffe Hodge.
District two, the seat held previously by former Chief Minister, Osbourne Fleming, was lost by Cora Richardson Hodge to Jerome Roberts, the lone successful candidate for the Anguilla Progressive Party.
The next Chief Minister based on the February 15 results, will be the Hon. Hubert Hughes.
Mr. Hughes inherits a government struggling to meet payroll, in an island badly battered by mismanagement leading into the Global Economic Crisis.
Analysis of the AUF could reveal a badly fractured political party ripped apart by competing heads. | Government Job change - Election | February 2010 | ['(Anguilla News)'] |
Australian author Harry Nicolaides is jailed for three years in Thailand for insulting the ruling Chakri Dynasty. | Harry Nicolaides says his jailing "feels like a bad dream"
Australian writer Harry Nicolaides has been sentenced to three years in a Thai jail for insulting the monarchy.
Nicolaides wrote a novel four years ago, which contained a brief passage referring to an unnamed crown prince. It sold just seven copies.
He admitted the charge of insulting the royal family, but said he was unaware he was committing an offence.
Thailand's monarchy is sheltered from public debate by some of the world's most stringent "lese-majeste" laws.
A 'bad dream'
Harry Nicolaides was arrested as he was leaving the country last August.
His self-published book, called Verisimilitude, was hardly well-received; in fact the only copy which is still known to exist sits on the shelf of the Thai National Library, freely available to the public.
Shackled in leg irons, and wearing standard-issue prison pyjamas, Nicolaides pleaded guilty to the charges against him at Bangkok's Criminal Court on Monday.
The court initially sentenced him to six years in jail, but reduced the term because of his guilty plea.
Before the trial Nicolaides had seemed stunned by what was happening to him, describing it is like a ''bad dream''.
But he is just one of a growing number of people being investigated and charged under Thailand's draconian "lese-majeste" law, as the police and army try to suppress what they fear is a rising tide of anti-monarchy sentiment.
More than 3,000 websites have now been blocked, and one political activist was jailed for six years in November for an anti-monarchy speech she made just a stone's throw from the old royal palace last July.
Several other people are now awaiting trial.
As a repentant foreigner, Harry Nicolaides does at least have a good chance of being pardoned by the king, according to the BBC correspondent in Bangkok, Jonathan Head.
The king did the same for a Swiss man given a 10-year sentence two years ago for defacing his portrait. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | January 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
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