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Ali Abu Hassan, a Hebron University student from Palestine, is convicted of planning a terror attack against light rail in Jerusalem using pipe bombs containing nails coated in rat poison. He is found guilty of attempted murder, manufacturing weapons, and an immigration offence. | A Hebron University student who was caught trying to board the Jerusalem light rail while carrying three pipe bombs, explosives and knives was convicted on Thursday of attempted murder, manufacturing weapons and entering Israel illegally.
In its ruling, the Jerusalem District Court said that 20-year-old Ali Abu Hassan“planned to carry out a mass terror attack.”
In July 2016, Abu Hassan entered West Jerusalem through a valley outside the eastern Sur Baher neighborhood, with the intention of carrying out an attack in the capital as a form of “revenge for visits by tourists and Israeli Jews to the Temple Mount,” police said in a statement at the time.
On July 17, he took a bus to the center of the capital and walked along Jerusalem’s bustling Jaffa Road to find a target for his bombing, armed with three pipe bombs he had linked together into one large explosive and covered with nails and screws he had dipped in rat poison. In his bag police also found two knives and a cellphone.
He originally intended to attack a restaurant on Jaffa Road and scoped out the area to prepare for his assault. However, when he noticed the large number of passengers boarding the light rail that runs through downtown, he changed his target. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | April 2018 | ['(The Times of Israel)'] |
Clara Ponsatí i Obiols, fugitive ex-Minister of Education of Catalonia, hands herself over to Police Scotland. She appears before court and is released on bail. | Clara Ponsatí’s lawyer says she will fight attempt to return her to Spain to face rebellion charge First published on Wed 28 Mar 2018 12.06 BST
Clara Ponsatí, the Catalan academic facing extradition from Scotland to Spain for alleged sedition, has been granted bail by a court in Edinburgh pending a full hearing later this spring.
Ponsatí appeared in the dock at the city’s sheriff court flanked by custody officers after she was formally arrested at a police station in Edinburgh on Wednesday and served with a European arrest warrant issued by judges in Madrid.
Her lawyer, Claire Mitchell, told the court Ponsatí faced charges of rebellion and misusing €1.6m in public funds for her role in the Catalan regional government, which organised an illegal independence referendum last year.
The 18-page arrest warrant listed 56 specific claims, with 34 additional pages of supporting legal material. It blames her in part for violence against 6,000 Spanish police officers as security forces fought to close down polling stations.
Mitchell said Ponsatí would “robustly” resist the extradition, but her bail application was unopposed by Scottish prosecutors representing the Spanish courts. There will be further proceedings in April, with the full case due to take place later.
Before the case began, about 150 Catalan and Scottish independence supporters, some waving Catalan flags, had gathered outside the court. By Wednesday afternoon, a crowdfunding campaign launched that morning to pay Ponsatí’s legal costs had reached more than £166,000.
Mitchell added there were significant questions about whether the warrant was valid and whether the offences listed in it were valid in Scots law. They may argue that the extradition was disproportionate and incompatible with Postaní’s rights under the European convention on human rights.
Speaking alongside Postaní after her release on bail, her solicitor, Aamer Anwar, said she faced 25 years in jail for sedition and up to eight years for misusing public funds.
“She can’t believe she is being held responsible for the violence which took place on the day of the referendum,” he said. “She believes that the Catalan people tried to express a democratic right to decide their own destiny.” The Scottish government has stopped short of supporting Catalonia’s independence but insists that the region be allowed to conduct a referendum, which is illegal under Spain’s constitution.
Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish government’s external affairs secretary, wrote to Spain’s ambassador to the UK, Carlos Bastarreche Sagües, on Tuesday, protesting at the use of a European arrest warrant in a political dispute.
Ponsatí has been named by the Spanish courts as a fugitive from justice after briefly serving as an education minister under Carles Puigdemont in the regional Catalan government. She is one of five senior figures in Puigdemont’s team who fled Spain after his government was removed from office.
Highly regarded at St Andrews University, she had just finished a three-year term as head of the its school of economics when Puigdemont recalled her to Barcelona to be his new education minister – a job she held for just four months.
Ponsatí is little known in Catalonia and few had heard of her until she fled to Brussels with Puigdemont last October.
Her predecessor, Meritxell Ruiz, was one of three ministers purged from Puigdemont’s cabinet because they were unwilling to back the proposed referendum. Officially the three left for personal reasons.
At least five Scottish National party MSPs took part in the protest outside the court, along with Tricia Marwick, the former presiding officer of the Scottish parliament. Marwick, who had been in Barcelona as an observer during last year’s unofficial referendum, said: “Jailing elected politicians is beyond the norms of democracy.
“I think Clara will certainly be inspired, not just today with all these people, but with the crowdfunding crashing through the £100,000 barrier in just four hours.”
Two police officers and an academic who were accompanying Puigdemont at the weekend when he was detained in Germany as he travelled by car from Helsinki to Brussels were arrested on their return to Spain on Wednesday.
Spain’s national court has opened an investigation into whether Carlos de Pedro López and Xabier Goicoeche, both serving members of the Catalan police force, are guilty of concealment or of assisting Puigdemont in evading arrest. The detained academic was Josep Luis Alay Rodríguez.
Puigdemont was detained under the European arrest warrant in the northern German province of Schleswig-Holstein. The German authorities have 60 days in which to reach a decision on the extradition request, which Puigdemont opposed during a hearing on Monday. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | March 2018 | ['(The Guardian)', '(BBC)'] |
In South Africa, former Deputy President Jacob Zuma pleads not guilty of rape as his trial starts. | people in the past. Zuma entered Court 4E in the building shortly before 10am on Monday.
He was wearing a fawn coloured suit and was flanked by at least
seven body guards.
People entering the court had to pass three security checks and
police lined the outside passages an inside, also prohibited
reporters from sending SMS messages.
Supporters
Both sides' legal teams were present and the first two rows of
the gallery was taken up with supporters of the former deputy
president, and the woman who laid the charge against him.
He is alleged to have raped a close family friend at his home in Forest Town in Johannesburg in November last year.
Liesl Gerntholtz, speaking at the 'One in Nine' campaign earlier
said that rape cases usually start with testimony from the
complainant and then she can choose whether the trial is held in an open court or not.
Scuffle outside court
Earlier, police moved a combi blaring out pro-Jacob Zuma music outside the Johannesburg High Court, saying it was disturbing proceedings inside.
A Sapa reporter at the scene said the vehicle was moved down
Kruis Street, outside the building's main entrance after a brief
scuffle with Zuma supporters.
The scuffle took place in parallel with a row that was brewing
among supporters of Zuma's accuser.
The group said it was not fair they had to protest at the end of the street while supporters of the former deputy president stand
opposite the Johannesburg High Court building.
Protest 'restricted' Speaking ahead of the launch of the 'One in Nine' campaign,
Carrie Shelver of People Opposing Women Abuse said that their
protest was restricted to a cordon on the corner of Von Brandis and Pritchard streets in central Johannesburg.
The group, along with rights group Women Opposing Woman Abuse,
plan to launch the 'One in Nine' campaign later in the day.
The name is taken from a Medical Research Council study that
found that only one in nine cases of rape are reported in South
Africa.
"We had to negotiate to be allowed to go closer (to the court
entrance)," said Shelver.
Zuma supporters By contrast, Zuma supporters had a direct view of the court's
entrance. She said they were told this was for their own protection because they had complained of intimidation from Zuma supporters
when Zuma first appeared in court on February 13.
Dawn Cavanagh, one of the spokesperson for the 'One in Nine' campaign said: "This is completely unacceptable. We have been made | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | March 2006 | ['(1999–2005)', '(Iafrica)', '(BBC)'] |
Militants launch two attacks on the Indian Army in Indianadministered Kashmir, resulting in two soldiers killed and 19 injured. | SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir (CNN) -- Two Indian soldiers were killed and three others were wounded Friday when suspected militants threw a grenade into the Central Reserve Police Force camp in Mehama, police said.
Mehama is located about 45 miles (70 km) south of Srinagar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir
In an earlier attack, at least 16 Indian soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded next to their convoy in central Srinagar early Friday, a senior police official said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The attack took place outside the prestigious Girls Presentation Convent High School in the Rajbagh section of the capital, although classes were not yet in session. Authorities closed the school for the day.
Just a day earlier, three Indian paramilitary troops were wounded in another roadside bombing in the northern Kashmiri town of Sopore.
Militants fighting for Kashmir's separation from India have been carrying out attacks against the Indian security forces in Kashmir for 18 years.
While Kashmiri authorities estimate that 42,000 people have died during the separatist violence, various human rights groups and other organizations have put the number at over 80,000.
. | Armed Conflict | June 2007 | ['(CNN)'] |
Two kindergarteners are poisoned to death by the owner of a rival school in northern China. | Two girls in northern China have died after eating yogurt that was poisoned by the head of a rival school, the BBC reports.
A rival kindergarten owner reportedly admitted to the crime, telling authorities that she injected rat poison into the yogurt and asked a man to place the concoctions on a local roadside atop notebooks.
The girls’ grandmother discovered the tainted yogurt on a roadside near their school in Pingshan county and gave it to them when they came home. They began convulsing and foaming at the mouth shortly after consuming the poison on April 24, according to Xinhua News Agency.
Hebei province police said that they believed the incident stemmed from two schools competing to boost enrollment.
This is the latest in a recent series of disturbing crimes in which tainted food and medicine were given to children. One of the worst scandals happened in 2008 when six children died and thousands became ill after ingesting baby milk formula contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical contained in plastics. The chemical had allegedly been added illegally to increase the appearance of the formula’s protein content.
BBC's Beijing correspondent Damian Grammaticas said in a report that the string of incidents has resulted in backlash from consumers worried that the state prioritizes profits over health.
Hebei police detained the school owner and the man she claimed had been her accomplice, the Associated Press reports. | Famous Person - Death | May 2013 | ['(International Business Times)'] |
One person is killed and two others are injured in alleged Israeli tank shelling in the Gaza Strip, though the Israel Defense Forces denied they attacked and estimated that the blast was a failed rocket launch. | Palestinian medics said Saturday that one person was killed and three others were wounded during an Israeli strike on Gaza City's Zeitun neighborhood.
The injured Palestinians were evacuated to Gaza's Shifa Hospital.
The IDF denied carrying out an attack on the Hamas-ruled territory. Army officials estimated that the blast was the result of a failed attempt by Islamic Jihad terrorists to launch a rocket towards Israel.
According to some reports from Gaza, the four were hit by IDF artillery fire while sifting through rubble for steel and cement to recycle, but other reports said a dud caused the explosion. | Armed Conflict | January 2011 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(Ynet)'] |
At least 40 FDLR members are killed in airstrikes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. | At least 40 Rwandan Hutu rebels have been killed in air strikes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to military officials.
The air raids, in the east of the country, came during a joint offensive by the Congolese and Rwandan armies.
A rebel commander, Edmond Ngarambe, is reported to have surrendered along with other rebel fighters.
The Congolese government has allowed Rwandan troops into its territory to pursue Rwandan rebels based there.
The numbers killed in the air raids - 75km west of the provincial capital Goma - make them the deadliest since the arrival of Rwandan forces in January.
One air strike was directed specifically at a meeting of rebel commanders belonging to the Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), some of whose leaders are accused of involvement in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
Civilian casualties
In a separate development, campaign group Human Rights Watch has reported an increasing number of civilian deaths since Rwandan forces moved over the border into DR Congo's eastern provinces.
More than 100 civilians have been killed in the past three weeks, according to Human Rights Watch.
The group says Hutu rebels abducted some civilians to use as human shields, while others were hacked to death.
The report also says that FDLR fighters have raped more than a dozen women whom they accused of having joined the government side against them.
Human Rights Watch has again urged combatants not to attack civilians caught up in the latest fighting.
The presence of the FDLR in DR Congo is one of the factors in some 15 years of conflict in the region.
Rwanda has twice invaded its larger neighbour, saying it wants to stop the FDLR staging attacks from Congolese territory.
It had accused DR Congo of supporting the FDLR, before the two countries agreed to work together against all rebel groups in the area. | Armed Conflict | February 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
An American man is sentenced to between five and ten years in prison for the murder of Irish tourist Nicola Furlong in Japan. | Nicola Furlong’s father Andrew Furlong (left), his wife Angela and his daughter Andrea speaking to media after the verdict today. Photograph: Issei Kato/Reuters
Wexford student Nicola Furlong died in a Tokyo hotel room Andrew, Andrea and Angela Furlong speak at their hotel after today’s verdict Photograph: Robert Gilhooly
The Keio Plaza Hotel, where Nicola Furlong was strangled last May in Tokyo. Photographer: Robert Gilhooly
File picture of Richard Hinds, who was convicted of the Nicola Furlong’s murder.
The Tokyo District Court has sentenced US musician Richard Hinds (19) to a maximum of 10 years for strangling Irish exchange student Nicola Furlong. Delivering the guilty verdict, a nine-member panel of judges called the murder last May 24th "atrocious and vicious in nature" and said Hinds’s account of what happened was "not credible."
"The defendant has continually given irrational explanations in his defence that have dishonoured the victim," said the lead judge Masaharu Ashizawa, delivering a verdict of "not less than five and no more than 10 years," with labour.
The sentence was the maximum allowed under Japan ese law because Hinds is a minor. "The tendency of sentencing in juvenile crimes (means) we cannot choose the death penalty or life sentence," said the judge, acknowledging that the Furlong family’s demand for harsher sentencing was "very understandable."
Hinds did not react when the verdict was read out but turned to smile and acknowledge his family as he walked out of the court.
Ms Furlong’s mother Angela appeared to cry and shake during the long explanation for sentencing. Afterwards she called the decision "a travesty."
"It’s not enough, given the pain he caused Nicola," she said. "We’re not leaving here believing we have justice. We still don’t know the truth of what happened in that hotel room."
Her daughter Andrea said she was "disgusted" by the sentencing. "I just want to leave Japan, go home and never return," she said. Nicola’s father Andrew told reporters he "never wanted to hear" the name Richard Hinds again.
Hinds argued throughout the two-week trial that Ms Furlong (21), from Co Wexford, had voluntarily gone to the Keio Plaza Hotel with the defendant and willingly engaged in "rough sex". His defence said that a "synergistic combination" of alcohol and a prescription drug found in her bloodstream could have caused her death.
But today’s verdict said the concentration of Alprazolam, the active ingredient in the anxiety suppressant Xanax, was "well below" the normal prescription range and could not have been a factor in Ms Furlong’s death.
"The victim was still breathing and her heart was still beating at the time she was being choked," it said. "Death was caused by suffocation after strangulation by a towel or ligature. This is certain, based on common sense."
The verdict accepted that Hinds had tried to help Ms Furlong after the strangulation but said this was "only natural" and "did not mitigate" the fact that he intended to murder her.
"The defendant knew that what he was doing was highly dangerous and could lead to death. [He] also knew what the results of his actions would be. It can be concluded that he intended to kill the victim."
Hinds’s friend, James Blackston (23) was sentenced last week to three years with labour for assaulting Ms Furlong’s Irish friend on the night of the murder. He is an adult under Japanese law.
Hinds will likely serve out his time in a Japanese prison, working in a small factory for about 5,000 yen (€40) a month. His sentencing leaves open the possibility that with good behaviour he could be released in five years. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | March 2013 | ['(The Irish Times)', '(Irish Independent)'] |
Twenty-one organizers for the Eurovision Song Contest in Kiev, Ukraine, resign en masse after claiming they were completely blocked from making decisions about the show. Despite the setback, the European Broadcasting Union insists that the event must go on. | The Eurovision Song Contest has hit a major road bump, after 21 top level staff organising the event resigned.
The Ukrainian Eurovision team say they were stripped of major responsibilities in December, when a new boss was appointed to the organising committee.
According to their resignation letter, they were "completely blocked" from making decisions about the show.
The EBU, which founded Eurovision, told Ukraine's public broadcaster to "stick to the timeline" despite the upheaval.
It insisted the event would go ahead as planned in Kiev this May.
Among the team members who resigned were two executive producers of this year's show. All the staff were appointed by the Ukraine Public Broadcaster (UA:PBC), which is organising the contest after Ukrainian singer Jamala won last year's event with the song 1944.
In an open letter published by Strana, the team said: "Hereby we, the Eurovision team, for whom this contest has become not only part of our work but also part of our life, officially inform that we are resigning and stopping work on preparations for the organisation of the contest."
Putting on the Eurovision Song Contest is a huge undertaking. In 2010, Norwegian broadcaster NRK had to ditch the World Cup because it couldn't afford to pay Fifa and foot the bill for Eurovision at the same time.
In Ukraine, the task has proved even more problematic. The decision over which city would host the show was delayed three times and there were even rumours the contest would be moved to Russia.
Now, with just three months to go, the core team has quit. They've been at loggerheads with their boss, who they claim has been blocking all of their decisions. They also say there have been problems finalising contracts with subcontractors. At worst, that could include the teams who build the stage.
The show must go on - and the EBU, which has organised the contest since 1956, has the financial and political muscle to make sure it does. But it will be interesting to see how close to the wire it gets.
They said preparations "stopped for almost two months" after the appointment of Eurovision co-ordinator Pavlo Hrytsak last year, adding, "the work of our team was completely blocked".
They also said a decision to increase the event's budget to 29m euro (£24.5m), up from 22m euro (£18.6m) would deprive Ukraine's state broadcaster of millions in profit.
The EBU said it could not comment on the staffing matters raised in the letter, but thanked the team for their hard work.
In a statement, it added: "We have reiterated to UA:PBC the importance of a speedy and efficient implementation of plans already agreed, despite staff changes and that we stick to the timeline and milestones that have been established and approved by the Reference Group to ensure a successful Contest in May."
This year's Eurovision Song Contest final is due to take place in Kiev on 13 May. Britain will be represented by former X Factor contestant Lucie Jones in this year's competition. The Welsh singer was chosen by a public vote after performing her ballad, Never Give Up On You, on BBC Two's Eurovision: You Decide.
The song was co-written by Danish star Emmelie de Forest, who won the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 with the song Only Teardrops.
There has already been controversy over the decision to hold the Eurovision opening ceremony in the Saint Sophia complex, a well-known religious landmark which dates back to the 17th Century.
The use of the venue was called "blasphemy" by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchy.
"From all viewpoints, this is a very bad decision," Andrei Kurayev, a prominent deacon of the Russian Orthodox Church, was quoted as saying by Mosokovski Komsomolets. "Now, on the tombstone of [Mstislav I of Kiev], there will be dances."
Later, Zurab Alasania, head of Ukraine's national TV and radio company, resigned amidst reports that the country was having troubles financing the song contest.
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | February 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
Yannis Stournaras is appointed as Greece's new finance minister. | ATHENS (Reuters) - Yannis Stournaras, a well-respected liberal economist, was appointed Greece’s new finance minister on Tuesday after the sudden resignation of the first choice for the job at a crucial moment for the debt-laden country.
The new conservative-led government scrambled to make a quick decision on the post after banker Vassilis Rapanos quit on Monday on the advice of doctors after spending four days in hospital with dizziness and abdominal pains.
His sudden resignation threw the government into confusion at a time when it faces the daunting task of trying to persuade skeptical international lenders to ease the harsh terms of a bailout that has enraged the population. � With Greece weeks away from running out of cash and in desperate need of a minister to lead negotiations with lenders, party officials said the three ruling coalition leaders quickly agreed on Samaras’s choice of Stournaras, 55, who is nicknamed “Mr. Euro” in Greece.
He faces a difficult juggling act - pushing for more time and money from skeptical foreign lenders while coaxing reluctant officials at home to push through unpopular reforms.
“Stournaras is a serious, respected person who will inspire some confidence in the markets. But he is entering a bad government, where many old-style, spendthrift politicians are occupying key positions,” said political analyst John Loulis.
“He will have to wage a hard battle against them. He is entering the wolf’s lair and he won’t survive without the prime minister’s solid support.”
The Samaras government has been in place less than a week but already looks accident prone after deputy Shipping Minister George Vernikos also resigned on Tuesday. He had been attacked by the media and opposition for using offshore companies.
Ministers are banned from using such companies, which are a common tactic by wealthy Greeks to avoid taxes.
Stournaras is an economics professor at the University of Athens and the head of the influential IOBE think-tank. Most recently he was development minister in the caretaker government that led Greece to elections on June 17.
Described by colleagues as affable, he is considered an ardent supporter of structural reforms to make the economy more competitive - ideas that are likely to win him favor with international lenders exasperated with the slow pace of reform.
He was part of the team that negotiated Greece’s entry to the euro in 2001, as chief economic adviser to former Prime Minister Costas Simitis. He later became CEO of Emporiki Bank, where he initiated its gradual sale to France’s Credit Agricole.
That experience has opened him to opposition criticism. The anti-bailout Independent Greeks party said both he and his predecessor’s experience was “stained by the scandalous era” of euro-zone entry.
People who have worked closely with Stournaras say he is well qualified to take on a role that is often dubbed the world’s toughest job.
Stelina Hatzichristou, a researcher at IOBE, said Stournaras was adept at managing people and had a strong understanding and knowledge of the Greek economy, which has been ravaged by five years of crisis.
In a speech in April, he blamed Greece’s “inefficient, one-size-fits-all, party-dominated and badly-managed public sector” for the country’s woes together with tax evasion, social security fraud, high defense spending and bureaucracy.
He criticized the economic policy pursued by the previous Socialist government, saying it cut spending in the wrong way, while failing to slash red tape and boost competition.
“Laws were passed but not implemented,” he said. He also complained about unjustifiable delays in privatizations.
It was unclear whether Stournaras would be ready for a European summit on Thursday and Friday, where Greece’s demand to renegotiate the bailout and its off-track reform programme are likely to come into focus.
Samaras, who emerged from hospital on Monday with a bandage over one eye following eye surgery, will miss the meeting.
A government official said Samaras had spoken to German Chancellor Angela Merkel by phone to discuss the new government and he would embark on a European tour, including Berlin, to seek a softening of the bailout deal as soon as he recovered.
Samaras also spoke by phone to Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, the official said.
Stournaras’s biggest challenge in the days ahead will be to handle talks with the “troika” of EU, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund lenders, who postponed a scheduled trip to Athens this week because of the illnesses of Samaras and Rapanos.
Greece needs its next tranche of aid to keep the state functioning beyond July, but the money is unlikely to be granted without a showdown with lenders angry that Athens wants to renege on austerity measures agreed in exchange for the rescue.
The bailout has prevented Greece from going bankrupt and suffering a humiliating exit from the euro zone, but it has also deepened a recession now in its fifth year, left one out of five Greeks jobless and caused violent protests in Athens.
Samaras’s New Democracy party narrowly won the June 17 election against the radical leftist Syriza bloc which wants to tear up the bailout agreement. (Additional reporting by George Georgiopoulos, Greg Roumeliotis, Harry Papachristou and Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Barry Moody and Peter Graff)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | June 2012 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Following a January 18 airstrike against a Hezbollah convoy, Hezbollah targets an Israeli military convoy near the Lebanon border at the Shebaa farms area, killing two and wounding another seven. While the Israeli military responds with artillery fire upon several South Lebanon border villages and Shebaa Farms, Hezbollah responds with mortar shells. Cross fire fighting kills a Spanish UN peacekeeper in the town of Ghajar. | Two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish UN peacekeeper have been killed as Hezbollah militants traded fire with Israeli forces on the Lebanese border.
After Israeli forces were hit by missile fire, they responded by firing shells into southern Lebanon.
The UN Security Council is to discuss the fighting at an emergency meeting called by France in New York.
A senior UN official on the ground in Lebanon urged "maximum restraint to prevent an escalation". Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held an emergency security meeting and said the attackers would "pay the full price".
The cross-border violence erupted when Israeli military vehicles were struck by anti-tank missiles at about 11:35 (09:35 GMT) near Mt Dov, in the Shebaa Farms area, a tract of land between the borders of Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
Two soldiers died in the attack. Hezbollah said it was retaliation for an Israeli air strike that killed six of its fighters and an Iranian Revolutionary Guards general in the Syrian Golan Heights 10 days ago. Seven other Israeli soldiers were injured, two of them moderately. Just over an hour later, mortars hit an Israeli military position on Mt Hermon, prompting troops to close the site and evacuate civilians from a ski resort in the area.
Israel struck back with combined aerial and ground strikes on Hezbollah operational positions along the border, the military said.
At least 50 artillery shells were fired at the villages of Majidiyeh, Abbasiyeh and Kfar Chouba, according to Lebanese officials.
Later, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon announced that one of its peacekeepers had been killed close to the Shebaa Farms area.
The defence ministry in Madrid identified the dead man as a Spanish soldier who had been at a position near the village of Ghajar.
The UN special co-ordinator for Lebanon, Sigrid Kaag, expressed "deep concern over the serious deterioration of the security situation" and "urgently called on all parties to refrain from any actions that could destabilise the situation further".
Edmond Mulet, assistant secretary-general for UN peacekeeping operations, is to brief the Security Council in closed consultations.
After Israel's surprise air strike inside Syria on 18 January, it was clear that Hezbollah and its Iranian backers would feel obliged to respond. The question now is whether the two sides will regard honour as satisfied by their responses so far.
Everyone is mindful of the Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006, which lasted a month and caused death, destruction and disruption on both sides of the border without either side clearly winning. The feeling is that neither Hezbollah nor Israel has much interest in an escalation to that point. Hezbollah is already heavily embroiled in the war in Syria.
Israel's leaders face general elections in March. They could benefit if a robust response was seen to punish Hezbollah without repercussions, but a disruptive war could backfire at the polls. Mr Netanyahu said Israel was "prepared to act powerfully on all fronts", adding, "Security comes before everything else."
His office accused Iran, Hezbollah's main backer, of being behind a "criminal terror attack" by the Shia Islamist movement.
In a statement, Hezbollah said the attack had been carried out by a cell calling itself the "heroic martyrs of Quneitra", an apparent reference to an area of the Syrian Golan Heights where the Israeli air strike took place on 18 January.
Sources in Israel say that attack was aimed at stopping an attack on Israeli soil.
The Israeli military boosted its air defences and stepped up surveillance along its northern frontiers after Hezbollah and Iran vowed to seek revenge.
Earlier on Wednesday, Israeli aircraft bombed Syrian army artillery positions in response to two rockets that were fired the previous day into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israeli medics said up to seven people were lightly injured by the rocket fire.
| Armed Conflict | January 2015 | ['(CNN)', '(BBC)', '(Reuters)'] |
Major fishing nations meet in Paris to discuss quota limits for fishing of the critically endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna; many nations are urging that lower fishing rates are needed. | PARIS (Reuters) - Fishing nations came under fresh pressure on Friday to cut Atlantic bluefin tuna quotas as negotiators got into the thick of annual wrangling over limits at talks in Paris.
Freshly-harvested Bluefin tunas are uploaded from a "tuna farm", off the Calabrian coast in southern Italy, November 20, 2009. REUTERS/Tony Gentile
With widespread uncertainty over how many fish are left to be caught, the United States urged a lower quota than last year and Japan called for a crackdown on unreported fishing which environmental groups say is rampant.
“When there is uncertainty in science we believe that it is important to err on the side of caution,” U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere Jane Lubchenco told Reuters at the meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) in Paris.
“We believe that it is appropriate therefore to seek lower TACs (total allowable catches) for bluefin tuna for both sides of the Atlantic,” she said.
The 48-member ICCAT, based in Madrid, meets every year to fix annual quotas for the giant fish popular with sushi-lovers. Talks started on Wednesday but were focused mainly on technical issues.
The European Union’s position on quotas this year is unclear after EU ambassadors for Mediterranean fishing nations successfully pushed at a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday to shoot down an EU proposal on measures to protect the fish.
Prized by fishermen, Atlantic bluefin can grow to the size of a horse and fetch as much as $100,000 in markets like Japan, but their stocks have plunged by more than 80 percent since 1970s, according to western scientists.
ICCAT set an overall quota for 2010 of 13,500 tonnes of fish, which its scientific advisors said offered at least a 60 percent probability of rebuilding stocks by 2022.
ICCAT chairman Fabio Hazin said on Friday that in light of uncertainty over the size of stocks, due in part to illegal fishing, members should “apply the precautionary approach by setting a TAC that would take these factors into full account.”
The warm-blooded bluefin tuna can weigh up to 650 kg (1,433 lb) and is found in the north Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean, where captured fish are fattened in enclosures.
France, Italy and Spain catch most of the Atlantic bluefin consumed in the world and 80 percent of the haul goes to Japan.
Before EU members rejected its conservation plan, the European Commission had said a limit of 6,000 tonnes was needed for 2011 to give the fish a real chance of recovery, but it acknowledged that would be tough for fishermen.
“The decisions we have to take can sometimes be very hard for the fishing industry to accept,” the head of the EU delegation, Pierre Amilhat, told the ICCAT conference.
Japan’s delegation proposed that fishermen be forced to come up with plans for respecting quotas and that that they would have to get ICCAT’s backing before they could fish.
Conservation groups are out in force at the talks, which end on November 27. Greenpeace parked a car with a giant fake tuna on its roof near the venue where the talks are being held with “Save me” written along the side of the vehicle.
Editing by Jon Boyle
| Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | November 2010 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Two people are killed and four injured in a mass shooting outside Russia's Federal Security Service headquarters on Moscow's Lubyanka Square. The shooter is also killed. | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian investigators on Friday named the man who opened fire on the headquarters of the FSB security service in Moscow as Yevgeny Manyurov, a 39-year-old former security guard from just outside the capital.
FSB attack suspect a 'quiet' gun enthusiast: neighbors
01:12
Manyurov killed one FSB employee outright and wounded five other people outside the agency’s main building, the former headquarters of the Soviet-era KGB, on Thursday evening, before he was himself shot dead.
A second FSB employee who had been seriously wounded later died from his wounds in hospital, bringing the death toll to two, excluding the gunman, investigators said on Friday.
Authorities searched Manyurov’s home in the early hours of Friday morning and questioned his neighbours.
It remains unclear what Manyurov’s motive was. Neighbours at the rundown Soviet-era apartment block where he lived with his mother in the town of Podolsk outside Moscow told Reuters on Friday that he was a quiet gun enthusiast who kept to himself.
“He had a homely look about him, I never saw him hanging out with friends or drinking,” said Natalya Fedorovna, a pensioner who lives in the same building.
Another neighbour, Vladimir Poruntsev, said: “He wasn’t very talkative, he was a little closed as a person.”
Dmitry Tsaryev, another resident, described Manyurov as a normal guy, who had once asked him to join him at a local shooting range, but that he had declined.
Neighbours said investigators had woken them up in the early hours of Friday morning when they searched Manyurov’s flat. Police had cordoned off the building at one stage while they questioned people and checked their documents, they said.
Manyurov was unmarried, had no children and appeared to have few friends, neighbours said.
Thursday’s attack happened shortly after President Vladimir Putin’s annual news conference while he was attending a Kremlin event to celebrate the work of the security services.
The FSB suspected the attack may have been planned to coincide with Putin’s speech at the event, a source close to the FSB told Reuters on Thursday.
Some Muscovites laid flowers outside the FSB’s headquarters on Friday and examined damage to the famous building. A Reuters reporter saw a toughened glass window pockmarked with bullet holes near its main entrance.
| Armed Conflict | December 2019 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Rosatom, Russia's nuclear energy corporation announces that it will start loading fuel for the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant Iran's first nuclear power plant from August 21. | In this photo released by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), the reactor building of Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant is seen just outside the port city of Bushehr. File Photo: AP
| Photo Credit: Mehdi Ghasemi Iran is set to acquire its first civilian nuclear power plant following Russia’s announcement on Friday that atomic fuel will be loaded in the facility from August 21.
Sergei Novikov, the spokesman for the Russian atomic energy corporation, Rosatom, said that loading of fuel would be a key step for starting the reactor.
The entire process of feeding fuel rods in the reactor is expected to be completed in 2-3 weeks.
“This will be an irreversible step,” Mr. Novikov was quoted as saying. “At that moment, the Bushehr nuclear power plant will be certified as a nuclear energy installation,” he added. “That means the period of testing is over and the period of the physical start-up has begun, but this period takes about two and a half months.” The first fissile reaction is expected in October.
Iran’s atomic energy agency head, Ali Akbar Salehi, said that a formal inauguration of the facility would be held in late September or early October when the fuel is moved “to the heart of the reactor”. Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Mr. Salehi as saying that the reactor would be linked to the Iran’s electricity grid when it is powered to a 50 per cent level.
Analysts see Russia’s willingness to go ahead with Bushehr as a sign of Moscow’s assertion against isolating Iran through sanctions which do not have the approval of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
However, the reactor does not pose proliferation risks as its activities would be fully monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Besides all the spent fuel generated by the plant would be shipped to Russia. Russia’s Interfax reported that fuel for the first reactor in Bushehr was delivered in January 2008.
Russia took over the plant in 1995, after the German power engineering firm Kraftwerk Union withdrew from the project, begun in the 1970s, following Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979. Earlier in March, the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin had said that Russia planned to start the Bushehr reactor in the summer of 2010. | Famous Person - Give a speech | August 2010 | ['(The Hindu)', '(Aljazeera)'] |
The U.S. House of Representatives elects Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as the 62nd Speaker of the House replacing John Boehner of Ohio. | WASHINGTON — Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin was elected the 54th speaker of the House on Thursday, taking the gavel that he never sought to wield from John A. Boehner, who gave it up under fire.
Mr. Ryan received a comfortable margin of victory that included several of the hard-line conservatives who had worked to oust Mr. Boehner. In his address to Congress after the vote, he implored members who had been fighting so bitterly to find a way to work together. “Let’s be frank: The House is broken,” Mr. Ryan said. “We are not settling scores,” he added. “We are wiping the slate clean.”
Since passing the Budget Control Act, Congress has made adjustments each year to raise federal spending caps. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | October 2015 | ['(New York Times)'] |
Eva Rausing, wife of Tetra Pak heir Hans Kristian Rausing, is found dead in west London and a man arrested in connection to her death. | The body of US national Eva Rausing, 48, a member of the family behind the Tetra-Pak cartons empire, was found at Cadogan Place, Belgravia.
The death is being treated as unexplained, Scotland Yard said.
However, police have refused to comment on reports that a 49-year-old man arrested in connection with the death and on suspicion of possession of drugs is her husband Hans Kristian Rausing.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said the man was no longer at a police station and was currently receiving medical attention.
In a statement, her family described her as a "devoted wife for 20 years and mother of four much loved and wonderful children".
Her parents Tom - a wealthy Pepsi executive - and Nancy Kemeny said they were "deeply saddened by the death of their beloved daughter".
"During her short lifetime she made a huge philanthropic impact, supporting a large number of charitable causes, not only financially, but using her own personal experiences," they said. "She bravely fought her health issues for many years. The family is devastated at her death and asks to be given privacy at this difficult time."
Her parents-in-law, Hans and Marit Rausing, said they were "deeply shocked and saddened". A post-mortem examination at Westminster Mortuary did not establish how Mrs Rausing died and further tests are being carried out.
The Met said officers from its Homicide and Serious Crime Command were investigating her death.
Police said they searched the address and found the body after making the drugs arrest on Monday.
Officers could be seen guarding the front door of the Cadogan Place home, which was taped off. The large terraced house is in one of London's most expensive areas just off Sloane Street, between Knightsbridge and Chelsea.
In 2008 Mrs Rausing and her husband Hans Kristian Rausing faced drug charges after crack, heroin and 52g of cocaine were found in their home.
Mrs Rausing had been arrested after she allegedly tried to smuggle small amounts of crack cocaine and heroin into the US embassy in London. Charges were then dropped and a caution issued instead.
In 2010 Forbes ranked Mr Rausing's father, Hans Rausing Senior, as the 64th richest man in the world, worth an estimated $10bn (£6.45bn).
The family made their fortune from the Tetra Laval milk carton, patented by Ruben Rausing in the 1960s.
Profile of Eva Rausing
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| Famous Person - Death | July 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Several explosions are reported near a Christian service at Bayero University Kano in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, with at least 16 people killed. | MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) Witnesses say gunmen shot dead at least five people attending a church worship service in northeast Nigeria, including the pastor. That comes as gunmen killed at least 16 in a separate attack.
Witnesses say the gunmen attacked a Church of Christ in Nigeria church Sunday in Maiduguri, the spiritual home of the radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram. The witnesses declined to be named for fear of reprisals.
Police spokesman Samuel Tizhe confirmed the attack took place.
Meanwhile Sunday, the Nigerian Red Cross said at least 16 people were killed in an attack on church services at the campus of Bayero University in the northern city of Kano.
No group has claimed the attacks, though they mirror others carried out by Boko Haram.
KANO, Nigeria (AP) Gunmen attacked church services on a university campus Sunday in northern Nigeria, using small explosives to draw out and gun down panicking worshippers in an assault that killed at least 16 people, officials said.
The attackers targeted an old section of Bayero University's campus where religious groups use a theater and other areas to hold worship services, Kano state police spokesman Ibrahim Idris said. The assault left many others seriously wounded, Idris said.
"By the time we responded, they entered (their) motorcycles and disappeared into the neighborhood," the commissioner said.
After the attack, police and soldiers cordoned off the campus as gunfire echoed in the surrounding streets. Abubakar Jibril, a spokesman for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency, said security forces refused to allow rescuers to enter the campus. Soldiers also turned away journalists from the university.
Andronicus Adeyemo, an official with the Nigerian Red Cross, said a canvas of local hospitals and morgues showed the attack killed at least 16 people. A number of people suffered injuries, though the aid agency did not immediately have an exact figure, Adeyemo said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility. However, Idris said the attackers used small explosives packed inside of aluminum soda cans for the assault, a method previously used by a radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram.
Boko Haram is waging a growing sectarian battle with Nigeria's weak central government, using suicide car bombs and assault rifles in attacks across the country's predominantly Muslim north and around its capital Abuja. Those killed have included Christians, Muslims and government officials. The sect has been blamed for killing more than 450 people this year alone, according to an Associated Press count.
Diplomats and military officials say Boko Haram has links with two other al-Qaida-aligned terrorist groups in Africa. Members of the sect also reportedly have been spotted in northern Mali which Tuareg rebels and hardline Islamists seized control of over the past month.
In January, a coordinated assault on government buildings and other sites in Kano by Boko Haram killed at least 185 people. In the time since, the sect has been blamed for attacking police stations and carrying out smaller assaults in the city.
On Thursday, the sect carried out a suicide car bombing at the Abuja offices of the influential newspaper ThisDay and a bombing at an office building it shared with other publications in the city of Kaduna. At least seven people were killed in those attacks. Late Thursday night, gunmen also bombed a building at the campus of Gombe State University, though authorities said no one was injured in the attack.
Boko Haram has rejected efforts to begin indirect peace talks with Nigeria's government. Its demands include the introduction of strict Shariah law across the country, even in its Christian south, and the release of all imprisoned followers.
Churches also have been increasingly targeted by Boko Haram. A Christmas Day suicide bombing of a Catholic church in Madalla near Nigeria's capital killed at least 44 people. | Armed Conflict | April 2012 | ['(AP via Google News)', '(AP)'] |
The New Orleans Pelicans became the first No. 6 seed to sweep its first-round series since the NBA switched from its best-of-five format in 2003 after their 131–123 game 4 win over the Portland Trail Blazers. Anthony Davis scored 47 points and Jrue Holiday 41 points during the win. | When C.J. McCollum made a recent visit on USA TODAY Sports’ NBA A to Z podcast, the fifth-year Portland guard made a valid point about the lack of accountability in sports media.
“I don’t like…the fact that everyone’s not always held accountable for predictions that go wrong,” said McCollum, who graduated from Lehigh University with a degree in journalism. “There’s just that dynamic that I don’t always like, because I think we should all be held accountable for what we say.”
Little did he know at the time how ironic his words would be. As it turns out, we were dead wrong about these Blazers.
The third-seeded Trail Blazers were swept by sixth-seeded New Orleans in their first-round playoff series on Saturday at the Smoothie King Center, where they fell 131-123 in Game 4 and thus proved seemingly every prognosticator wrong in the process. Not only did all four of USA TODAY Sports’ experts pick Portland, but all 22 of ESPN’s writers and all six from CBS Sports did as well. The Washington Post and The Action Network, however, got it right.
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The Pelicans, who are likely headed toward a second-round matchup with the defending champion Golden State Warriors (they’re up 3-0 on San Antonio), were carried by Anthony Davis (47 points on 15 of 24 shooting, 11 rebounds) and Jrue Holiday (41 points on 15 of 23 shooting, eight assists) and Rajon Rondo (16 assists). What’s more, they made plenty of history along the way.
McCollum did his part on the offensive end, scoring 38 points on 15 of 22 shooting. But fellow backcourt mate Damian Lillard, it’s safe to say, will face all sorts of scrutiny for the way his season came to an end. In the four games, Lillard averaged 18.5 points (35.2% shooting overall, 30% from three-point range) to go with 4.8 assists, 4.5 rebounds and four turnovers.
The Pelicans, who lost DeMarcus Cousins to a season-ending Achilles tendon injury in late January, led 58-56 at halftime but pulled away with a 42-point third quarter that included Davis scoring 19 points. The sixth-year big man was spectacular in the series, averaging 33 points (57% shooting), 12 rebounds, 2.8 blocks and 1.8 steals. Holiday, who has been one of the under-the-radar standouts so far, was right there with him (27.8 points points per on 56.8% shooting to go with 6.5 assists, four rebounds and 1.3 steals). | Sports Competition | April 2018 | ['(or lower)', '(USA Today)', '(UPRX)'] |
The Indian government's Income Tax Department raids the residences of the founders of Phantom Films due to allegations of tax evasion. Those being interrogated include Anurag Kashyap, Taapsee Pannu, Vikas Bahl, Vikramaditya Motwane, and Madhu Mantena. The incident prompts the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance and Rahul Gandhi to support the film stars who are being interrogated, saying the Bharatiya Janata Party is using all the arms of the government to stifle the voices of those who support the Indian farmers' protest. | The Income Tax Department on Wednesday began searches at the homes and offices of Ms Pannu and Mr Kashyap and his partners who launched the now-defunct production house Phantom Films.
The searches, part of a tax evasion probe against Phantom Films and carried out across 28 locations in Mumbai and Pune, also covered Reliance Entertainment group CEO Shibhasish Sarkar and some executives of celebrity and talent management companies KWAN and Exceed.
WhatsApp chat logs, emails, documents and computer peripherals were seized from various locations. Ms Pannu, 33, and Mr Kashyap, 48, who were shooting in Pune, have been questioned by the tax officers.
The others searched include some employees of Phantom, which was dissolved in 2018, and its other promoters director-producer Vikramaditya Motwane, producer Vikas Bahl and producer-distributor Madhu Mantena.
"During the search, evidence of huge suppression of income by the leading film production house compared to the actual box office collections has been unearthed. The company officials have not been able to explain discrepancy of around 300 crore," the Income Tax Department said in a news release.
"Evidence related to manipulation and under-valuation of share transactions of the production house amongst the film directors and shareholders, having tax implication of about 350 crore has been found and is being further investigated," it said.
"Evidence of cash receipts by the leading actress amounting to 5 crore has been recovered. Further investigation is going on," the department said, without naming Ms Pannu.
"Apart from this, non-genuine/bogus expenditure to related concerns by the leading producers/director having tax implication of about 20 crore has been detected. Similar findings have been made in the case of the leading actress also," it added.
Both Anurag Kashyap and Taapsee Pannu are outspoken critics of the government and have lent their voice to various causes, including the ongoing farmer protests and last year's protests against the controversial citizenship law that challenged PM Modi.
A string of opposition leaders have criticised the raids since Wednesday. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi used three popular Hindi idioms on Thursday to hit out at the government and the hashtag "ModiRaidsProFarmers". | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | March 2021 | ['(NDTV)', '(NDTV2)'] |
Two teenage girl suicide bombers kill more than 40 people in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state in northeastern Nigeria. | BAUCHI, Nigeria — The teenage girls entered the busy marketplace separately Tuesday, their vests of explosives hidden beneath their full hijabs.
The first detonated her bomb, killing an unknown number. As rescuers rushed in, the second girl screamed and set off her explosives, killing dozens more, according to witnesses and authorities.
More than 40 people died in the double suicide bombing in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state in northeastern Nigeria, according to Haruna Issa, a hospital volunteer in the city.
Suspicion immediately fell on the insurgents from the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, which controls a large part of northeastern Nigeria and is blamed for the deaths this year of at least 1,500 people in Africa’s most populous country.
In its campaign of violence, Boko Haram has used car bombs and men wearing explosive vests. It also has begun using women who can cover the explosives with their hijabs, and the recruits appear to have gotten younger, with several instances of teenage attackers this year.
The militants attracted international attention with their April kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok, about 78 miles southwest of Maiduguri. The schoolgirls are still missing and their plight has aroused international concern and prompted the social media campaign, #BringBackOurGirls.
On Oct. 17, the parents of the schoolgirls were encouraged when the Nigerian military announced a cease-fire with Boko Haram and said negotiations had begun for the release of the captives.
Those hopes were quickly dashed when Boko Haram fighters continued attacks and seized several cities and towns across the northeast. In a video statement, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau denied the cease-fire and scoffed at claims of negotiations to release the schoolgirls.
It was not known whether Tuesday’s attackers were connected with the April abduction. A worker with a non-governmental organization said young women in northern Nigeria are especially vulnerable to recruitment by the extremist group. The worker spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety.
The bombings by the two girls took place as the marketplace was crowded with shoppers, said Abba Aji Kalli, coordinator of the Civilian Joint Task Force in Borno state.
The first girl set off her explosives, while the second apparently waited until the rescuers rushed in to help before detonating her bomb, killing dozens of others, Kalli said.
| Riot | November 2014 | ['(AP via Washington Post)'] |
A 6.8 magnitude earthquake hits south of Puerto Quetzal, on Guatemala's Pacific Coast. | But officials said there were no immediate reports of major damage or injuries from the 6.8 magnitude quake that struck Wednesday afternoon southwest of Guatemala City.
Aid workers across Guatemala reported only minor damage to homes in a couple of rural communities, according to Francois de la Roche, Latin America's director for humanitarian and emergency affairs for the aid organization World Vision.
"I didn't notice it at first but then felt this long, swaying motion back and forward," de la Roche said in a telephone interview from Antigua, Guatemala.
The quake struck at 1:29 p.m. local time and was centered 70 miles southwest of Guatemala City off the Pacific coast, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Guatemala's seismology institute said the quake lasted 49 seconds.
In Guatemala City, people fled buildings into the streets following the quake, throwing traffic into chaos in the sprawling capital city.
"It rattled a lot of nerves," said Benedicto Giron, spokesman for the National Disaster Reduction Center.
Outside the capital, landslides were reported in the southwest province of Escuintla, but they apparently caused no casualties, Giron said. He added, however, that phone service was knocked out in some areas and information was only trickling in slowly.
The quake was felt strongly in neighboring El Salvador, where people ran into the streets in the capital of San Salvador, but the Red Cross there said it had no reports of damage or injury. It was also felt in the Mexican city of Tapachula along the Guatemalan border.
The Geological Survey said the earthquake could have caused damage due to its location and size.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center based in Hawaii said no tsunami was expected from the quake.
The region is prone to earthquakes. One of Guatemala's most devastating quakes was in 1976 when nearly 23,000 people died. | Earthquakes | June 2007 | ['(USA Today)'] |
After a tense standoff, Burkina Faso's military crushed the elite presidential guard and seized the coup's abandoned headquarters. The former head of the guard, Gen. Gilbert Diendéré, had called on his men to lay down their weapons to avoid a bloodbath. Diendéré told Agence France-Presse he feared “many deaths and injuries” in the operation. It is unclear whether there are casualties. | The short-lived putsch by supporters of former president Blaise Compaoré has ended after their stronghold was reportedly shelled by the military
Soldiers who staged a short-lived coup in Burkina Faso have abandoned their barracks in Ouagadougou after a tense standoff with loyalist troops, the military said, as authorities battled to regain control of the crisis-hit country.
General Gilbert Diendere, the leader of the coup, told AFP he feared there had been many deaths from the assault on the barracks near the presidential palace.
The army “fired artillery” on the barracks, he said, adding that there had been families and a clinic inside the barracks. “There must have been many deaths and injuries.”
It was not immediately clear how many people died.
The army launched an assault on the barracks of the presidential guard (RSP) after the putschists refused to give up their weapons in line with a peace deal mediated by regional powers.
After the army fired on the barracks with heavy weapons, and as their leader pleaded with his men to lay down their arms to “avoid a bloodbath”, the troops behind the 17 September coup stood down, the military said.
“The situation is calm. An assault was carried out; there was no confrontation,” said General Pingrenoma Zagre, the Burkinabe army’s chief of staff.
Military sources said troops were continuing to comb the barracks into the night.
The government issued a statement hailing the “liberation” of RSP camps by “our valiant defence and security forces”, urging the public to now work together to boost national unity. The military had warned earlier that it was giving the coup plotters “a last chance to surrender.” Heavy weapons fire sent dust rising into the sky above the barracks.
Diendere had urged his men to stand down, with Omega radio quoting him as saying: “I am asking elements of the RSP to lay down their arms to avoid a bloodbath.” In an interview, the general said he was ready to face justice, saying he was “at the disposal of my country’s judiciary.” The coup leader added that he was no longer at the barracks, without giving details.
Ouagadougou airport was closed as troops locked down the area around the barracks of the RSP, ratcheting up the pressure on them to stand down.
Troops had deployed around the barracks with armoured cars and pickup trucks on Tuesday morning as tensions escalated, with soldiers equipped with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades stationed at several intersections.
The rebel troops support former presidentBlaise Compaoré, who was deposed last October after afailed bid to extend his 27-year rule. | Armed Conflict | September 2015 | ['(AFP)', '(The New York Times)', '(BBC)', '(The Guardian)'] |
In Australia, the New South Wales Police charge the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, with allegedly covering up a child sexual abuse crime committed by another priest, James Fletcher, in the 1970s. | The charges relate to Hunter region paedophile priest Jim Fletcher, who worked with the Archbishop in NSW in the 1970s.
Wilson announced in a statement he would take leave from his position after being notified of the charges filed against him by NSW Police.
NSW Police said its operation, Strike Force Lantle, launched in 2010, investigated allegations of concealment of serious offences related to child abuse by clergy "formerly and currently attached to the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese of the Catholic Church".
They alleged that Wilson, 64, concealed a serious offence.
He is due to appear in the Newcastle Local Court on April 30.
Wilson is a former Bishop of Wollongong, where he was known as a "healing bishop" for his handling of child-abuse scandals.
Wilson issued a statement acknowledging the charges filed against him by police.
"The suggestion appears to be that I failed to bring to the attention of police a conversation I am alleged to have had in 1976, when I was a junior priest, that a now deceased priest had abused a child," he said.
The statement said that the allegation was first brought to his attention last year and he "completely denied" it.
"I intend to vigorously defend my innocence through the judicial system and I have retained senior counsel, Mr Ian Temby AO, who will represent me in respect of it," Wilson said in a statement.
In the statement he referred to his participation at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in NSW and SA and said his evidence at the hearings was indicative of his efforts to "best-practice child protection measures".
"I would like to take this opportunity to reaffirm my commitment to dealing proactively with the issue of child sexual abuse and the implementation of best-practice child protection measures which I have pioneered since becoming a bishop," he said.
A victim of Fletcher, Peter Gogarty, said he felt overwhelming relief that a police investigation had resulted in charges against the Catholic Archbishop.
"I think it's a very, very important day for Australia, that we've now had someone in such a high position charged," Mr Gogarty said.
"I hasten to add, everyone in this country is entitled to the presumption of innocence, but...the fact that our legal system has decided to charge someone this senior is enormously significant."
Pat Feenan's son Daniel was abused by Fletcher and said it had been a "long and hard journey" for him.
"I'm just very proud of my son and I'm proud of all the victims who have had the courage to stand up," Ms Feenan said.
"The fight's not over, the journey's not over, I'll keep working to support victims."
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | March 2015 | ['(ABC)'] |
Former Iranian VicePresident Hossein Marashi is jailed after being accused of spreading propaganda. | A leading Iranian reformist has been jailed after an appeals court upheld his one-year prison term.
Former Vice-President Hossein Marashi, 51, had been sentenced for spreading propaganda against the authorities after last year's disputed elections. He had backed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in his election campaign against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - the eventual poll winner. Mr Mousavi, meanwhile, said the fight for reforms must continue. In a statement to mark the Persian new year, he said a "retreat would be treason to Islam, the nation and to the blood of the martyrs". Opposition supporters staged large street protests following the June election, saying the poll was rigged to ensure Mr Ahmadinejad's election. The government denies the charge. At least 30 protesters have been killed in clashes since the poll, although the opposition says more than 70 have died. Thousands have been detained and some 200 activists remain behind bars. Political ban
Hossein Marashi was taken into custody on Thursday, his close relative and an opposition website said. At the centre of his case was last year's interview, where he encouraged people to gather outside Tehran's Evin prison to protest against the detention of political activists, the Associated Press news agency reports. The appeals court also upheld a ban on political activity for Mr Marashi. It was not immediately clear how long the ban would last. He was a member of the government of former pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami. Mr Marashi is also reportedly a close ally of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, another former president, who currently leads the influential Assembly of Experts. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | March 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(TIME)', '(FOX News)', '(MSNBC)'] |
Six people are wounded during a driveby shooting outside a McDonald's restaurant in East Palo Alto, California, United States. | Six people were shot and injured in East Palo Alto on Sunday afternoon near a McDonald's on University Avenue, according to a fire official.
The incident was reported shortly after 2:45 p.m. at the McDonald'sat 2401 University Ave., according to Menlo Park Fire Department Chief HaroldShapelhouman.
Firefighters arriving on the scene found six people with gunshotwounds, four inside the restaurant and two outside, but it is unclear wherethey were shot, Schapelhouman said.
One person, an adult male in his 20s, had seriousinjuries and was immediately taken by ambulance to Stanford Medical Centerfor treatment.
Five others, ranging from an apparently elderly woman to a childsomewhere around age six, received less serious injuries, mostly to the lowerextremities, Schapelhouman said.
All victims were taken to Stanford Medical Center for treatment.East Palo Alto Police, including Chief Ronald Davis, were on thescene, Schapelhouman said.
| Armed Conflict | May 2013 | ['(Huffington Post)', '(San Francisco Chronicle)'] |
The runoff election for the 2008 presidential election between the President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change is set for June 27. | The second-round run-off in Zimbabwe's disputed presidential election will be held on 27 June, the government says. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round, but not by enough to avoid a run-off. President Robert Mugabe said the poll was "disastrous". Mr Tsvangirai says he will contest the second round, after originally threatening to boycott it. He has accused Mr Mugabe's party of vote-rigging and a campaign of violence against opposition activists. His Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says ruling party militias and soldiers have beaten and tortured MDC supporters in an attempt to either keep them away from the polls or intimidate them into voting for the ruling party. Mr Tsvangirai said on Friday that "violence has to cease for an election to be conducted or that election will not be legitimate". However, he told the BBC that Mr Mugabe had lost control of the country and that the army was now in charge. "Mugabe may be the figurehead but the people who have taken over are the military," he told the BBC's Orla Guerin. Zimbabwe has been in political crisis since parliamentary and presidential elections on 29 March. Axe attack
The US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, told the BBC's Newsnight programme he had found evidence of state-sponsored political violence, including a hatchet assault on an elderly woman. "Her two grand-sons were activists with the MDC party," he said. "They were beaten up and then the people who beat them up found their grandmother and hit this 80-year-old woman in the head with an axe." Mr McGee, who has been accused by state-owned media of trying to demonise Zimbabwe, said fair elections were "not possible" in the current political climate. But Zanu-PF spokesman Bright Matonga told the BBC that the ruling party was not involved in the violence.
"Let me make it very clear that the Zimbabwe government does not support any violence - whether by MDC or Zanu-PF," he said.
Mr Mugabe told a party meeting on Friday that it should have been more prepared for the election. "Although the presidential result did not yield an outright winner, it was indeed disastrous," he said. "Fundamentally we went to the election completely unprepared, unorganised... Our structures went to sleep, were in deep slumber in circumstances of an all-out war." Mr Mugabe also accused opposition followers of terrorising Zanu-PF supporters, warning that they were "playing a dangerous game". Poll 'plot'
Despite accusing the ruling party of attacks, Mr Tsvangirai told the BBC that exploratory contacts were under way between the two sides. Mr Tsvangirai said Zanu-PF had made "overtures" to the MDC about the possibility of a national unity government. The BBC's Orla Guerin interviews Morgan Tsvangirai
"Nothing concrete has been put in place, but on the sidelines there may be: 'Can we talk?' at a very minimum stage," he said. Mr Tsvangirai has been out of Zimbabwe since the first-round vote because of alleged threats to his life. But the MDC says he will return to address a rally in Bulawayo on Sunday. The MDC says 35 people have been killed since the relatively peaceful first round and thousands displaced and tortured. The run-off was due to be held by 23 May - 21 days after the results of the first round were announced - but the government then issued an emergency law allowing it 90 days to organise the new poll. | Government Job change - Election | May 2008 | ['(BBC News)', '(AP via Yahoo! News)'] |
A group of international diplomats begins a two-day tour given by Iran as a gesture of goodwill and transparency in response to foreign concerns over its nuclear program. The European Union, Russia, and the People's Republic of China refuses its invitation. | A group of foreign diplomats is touring some of Iran's nuclear sites, as Tehran seeks to build support for its controversial nuclear programme.
Iran said it was a gesture of goodwill and transparency, but the US was not invited - while China, Russia and the EU refused the invitation.
Tehran said its uranium enrichment programme was progressing "strongly".
It was responding to US claims that the programme was being hit by international sanctions.
On Saturday, ambassadors from Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, Oman, Syria, Venezuela and the Arab League visited an unfinished heavy water reactor at Arak.
On Sunday, the diplomats are expected to tour an enrichment facility at Natanz. "No country in the world will show its nuclear installations to others, and this is a sign that Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful," said Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation.
But Mr Salehi also stressed that "the recent sanctions did not create any problems for our nuclear activities".
"Our activities, especially in (uranium) enrichment, are also continuing very strongly. The production of enriched uranium is growing," he said.
Mr Salehi was responding to a recent comment by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Iran's nuclear programme was being hampered by the international sanctions.
The tour of Iran's nuclear sites comes ahead of the resumption of UN talks about Iran's controversial nuclear programme.
But the EU earlier said the tour could not replace visits by nuclear inspectors.
Russia and China indicated their diplomats would not be taking part while the EU said it was up to officials from the International Atomic Energy Organisation Agency (IAEA) to inspect the facilities.
The US called the tour a ploy.
The BBC's Iran correspondent James Reynolds says it is unlikely that the event will change many people's minds about the nature of Iran's nuclear programme. Western nations suspect that Iran is attempting to build nuclear weapons, but Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful civilian purposes.
Diplomats who are not nuclear scientists or weapons inspectors will be unable to give a definitive answer one way or the other, our correspondent adds.
| Diplomatic Visit | January 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(Al Jazeera)'] |
The Israeli military disciplines four officers involved in two clashes with West Bank protesters in which four Palestinian civilians were killed. | The Israeli military has disciplined four officers involved in two clashes with West Bank protesters in which four Palestinians civilians were killed.
The events leading up to the shootings, less than 24 hours apart, "could have ended differently", a military statement said. Three officers have been reprimanded by military chiefs and one officer involved has been demoted. But an Israeli rights group says the army inquiry does not go far enough. Btselem is waiting for the results of a military police investigation into one of the incidents and pressing for another criminal investigation to be opened, a spokeswoman for the organisation said. "The process that has been completed by the Israeli Defence Force is an internal operational debrief. The question we're raising is if these people were killed unlawfully, the proper avenue is a criminal investigation," said Sarit Michaeli of Btselem. 'Rebuke'
The investigation into the incidents near the Palestinian villages of Iraq Burin on 20 March and in Awarta the day after was carried out by Israel's top military officer, Chief of General Staff General Gabi Ashkenazi. He has reprimanded the two commanding officers of the units involved. One was was identified as Colonel Itzik Bar of the Shomeron Regional Brigade. The other was only identified only as the "commander of the Nachshon Battalion". The demoted officer involved in the Awarta killings was only identified by his former rank of first sergeant. A deputy company commander also faced a "rebuke" for his role in the incident at the Awarta checkpoint, the statement said. "The chief of the general staff determined that the events could have ended differently from a professional standpoint and the difficult results could have been prevented," the statement said. Latest statement
The Israel Defense Forces troops were deployed to Iraq Burin to prevent demonstrators getting to the Israeli settlement of Bracha.
The IDF said in its latest statement that the squad had been cleared to use rubber-coated bullets against the protesters, who had, according to the IDF, thrown fire bombs at the unit. Later, brothers Mohammed and Osayed Qadus died from wounds they sustained from shots fired by the IDF. The Qadus family told the BBC in the days after the deaths that both youths were on their way home from college, and were not taking part in the protests, when they were shot. An x-ray of what was said to be 15-year-old Mohammed Qadus' skull, released by human rights group Btselem, showed what appeared to be a bullet lodged in his brain. But the IDF statement said they could not establish the veracity of the x-ray. "The IDF could not verify the autopsy and could therefore not confirm that the rioters were in fact hit by live rounds," the statement from the IDF said. They said a military police investigation had been opened and is continuing. "The investigation shows that the incident could have ended differently and with better results and seemingly could have avoided harm to civilians," the statement said. 'In danger'
In Awarta the next day, the IDF statement said, soldiers opened fire on two Palestinian men who had "begun acting suspiciously" at a checkpoint. One then attacked soldiers with a bottle.
"According to the general officer commanding's investigation, one of the soldiers felt his life was in danger and fired at the Palestinian." A second man raised what was described as "a sharp object" and was also shot dead by the soldiers, the army investigation said. It is not clear what the "sharp object" was. "While the soldier, believing his life was at risk, acted subjectively, the chief of the general staff holds the officers responsible for training their soldiers to act in difficult operational situations." In the aftermath of the incident, local Palestinians told the BBC the two men were arrested before they were killed, on the basis of a phone call a village elder says he received from the military saying they were being held, before later hearing that they had been shot dead. The military has demoted one of the soldiers manning the checkpoint, but a criminal investigation by military police has not been launched into the events at Awarta. Btselem said that the military "operational debrief" which led to the disciplinary action might harm prospects for a criminal prosecution in the case of Iraq Burin. "The internal investigation becomes a forum for them to corroborate their testimonies. If indeed they acted unlawfully then talking amongst themselves is not the right way," said Ms Michaeli said. | Armed Conflict | April 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
China says it has foiled a possible terrorist attack in Xinjiang, detaining six people. | BEIJING - POLICE in China's restive Xinjiang have detained six people suspected of plotting 'terrorist' attacks, two months after deadly ethnic unrest rocked the northwest region, officials said Wednesday.
Earlier this month, the city was again on a knife's edge as five people were killed in mass demonstrations carried out by mainly Han protesters over a spate of hundreds of mysterious syringe attacks.
The six members of the 'terror gang' were detained on Aug 26 in the suburbs of the city of Aksu, 675 kilometres (420 miles) south-west of Urumqi, the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement on its website.
A 'large quantity' of materials and tools needed to make explosive devices was seized, the ministry said.
An initial investigation revealed the group had built more than 20 devices in three Aksu workshops after the July 5 unrest in Urumqi and 'planned to carry out terrorist' attacks using motorbike, car and suicide bombs, it added.
It named the ringleaders as Seyitamut Obul and Tasin Mehmut. The statement did not mention their ethnicity, but the names appeared to indicate they were Uighurs. -- AFP | Armed Conflict | September 2009 | ['(Xinhua)', '(The Straits Times)', '(UPI)'] |
The Supreme Court of the United States accepts a petition by five people from American Samoa arguing that people born in this U.S. territory are entitled to U.S citizenship under the United States Constitution. The State Department currently opposes this idea. | The United States Supreme Court will next week consider a petition from five American Samoans arguing they are entitled to US citizenship.
The plaintiffs, who include a California-based Samoan organisation led by Leneuoti Tuaua, say their case 'undisputedly presents a constitutional question of tremendous importance.'
Currently, American Samoans are considered US residents, not citizens, which denies the territory and its people several constitutional rights and provisions.
But the plaintiffs say that since they were born in American Samoa, they are entitled to birthright citizenship under the Constitution of the United States.
However, the State Department, along with the American Samoa Government and the territory's Congresswoman Aumua Amata, oppose it.
They say a lower court ruling, which was upheld by the appeals court, correctly stated that only the US Congress has authority to grant citizenship to outlying territories, such as American Samoa.A case which argues the US Congress cannot legislate an exception to the citizenship clause in the US Constitution to exclude people born in American Samoa has been filed in the US Supreme court.
A lawyer representing a group of five American Samoans hoping to take their case for United States citizenship to the Supreme Court says it's time for the territory to be treated fairly.
A group of five American Samoans are hoping to take their case for United States citizenship to the Supreme Court in Washington. | Government Policy Changes | June 2016 | ['(Radio New Zealand)'] |
Concerns grow that Portugal's banks may need another bailout after it is downgraded to "junk" status. | The agency said there was a growing risk the country would need a second bail-out before it was ready to borrow money from financial markets again.
Moody's was concerned that if there was a second bail-out, private lenders might have to contribute.
Portugal's government said Moody's had not taken into account the strong backing for austerity measures.
It said that the programme of economic measures announced last week was "the only way to reverse the course and restore confidence" in Portugal.
Discussions are under way about the possibility of banks that have lent money to Greece waiting longer to be repaid.
Moody's said that prospect would scare private investors and make it even harder for Portugal to borrow money commercially again. It said the talk of a private bail-out was "significant not only because it increases the economic risks facing current investors but also because it may discourage new private sector lending going forward".
Portugal, Greece and the Irish Republic were all given bail-out loans to give them time to repair their economies so they could borrow money normally again.
But Greece has already had to start negotiating a second bail-out.
The agency also said it was concerned that Portugal would not be able to achieve the deficit reduction targets set out as conditions for its first bail-out from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
It blamed this on "the formidable challenges the country is facing in reducing spending, increasing tax compliance, achieving economic growth and supporting the banking system".
Portugal was supposed to cut its deficit to 3% of its gross domestic product by 2013, from last year's 9.1%.
"The Portugal downgrade clearly is negative because as the downgrades spread from the weakest to the weaker, the market is now asking, 'if Portugal is downgraded, will Spain be next?'" said Cary Leahey, an economist at Decision Economics in New York.
"It's symptomatic of the contagion effects in the eurozone."
Moody's cut Portugal's rating by four notches from from Baa1 to Ba2. The other two major ratings agencies still list Portugal as BBB, which is above junk status.
Moody's last cut Portugal's rating in April, predicting the original bail-out loans of 78bn euros ($112bn; £70bn) from the EU and the IMF.
The country was bailed out in May, when it could no longer manage its debts.
It was the third country to be bailed out, after Greece and the Irish Republic.
Portugal got into trouble because low growth in the economy made it difficult for the government to fund its spending.
It gradually lost competitiveness as wages increased and tariffs on cheap exports from Asia were cut.
When the financial crisis came, Portugal had a great deal of debt, which was suddenly much more expensive to finance.
| Financial Aid | July 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Exiled Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante dies in London | Infante, who died of an infection in hospital after breaking a hip, had lived in London for 40 years.
He was best known for the 1967 book Three Trapped Tigers, which focused on the culture and nightlife of pre-revolutionary Havana.
In 1997, he was awarded the Cervantes Prize - considered the highest honour in Spanish-language literature.
Infante, who was born in Gibara, eastern Cuba, began his career in Cuba as a writer and cinema critic.
Disillusioned
He was initially a supporter of Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution, but became disillusioned when Castro's goverment began to embrace communism and censorship.
The changes prompted him to leave Cuba, and he moved to the UK in 1965.
Infante's other works include 1974's View of Dawn in the Tropics, 1979's Havana for a Dead Prince, and 1993's Mea Cuba, a series of essays criticising Castro's regime.
He also wrote the screenplay for the recent film The Lost City, which was based on Three Trapped Tigers and directed by Cuban-born actor Andy Garcia.
"He died far from his country but free of a master," said Infante's wife, actress Miriam Gomez. "He carried Cuba inside of him. His Cuba does not exist any more." | Famous Person - Death | February 2005 | ['(Reuters)', '(BBC)'] |
Denis Napthine is sworn in as the Premier of the Australian state of Victoria replacing Ted Baillieu. | Victoria's new Premier, Denis Napthine, was born March 6, 1952 in Geelong, Victoria, which means he became Premier on his 61st birthday.
He went to school at Winchelsea State School and Geelong's Chanel College, and studied veterinary science at university. In his 20s and early 30s he worked as a vet in Victoria's Department of Agriculture.
At 36 he was elected to Parliament. He was first elected to the seat of Portland. When that was abolished he won an overlapping seat, South-West Coast.
In Jeff Kennett's government he served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health, then Minister for Youth and Community Services.
After Mr Kennett lost the state election in October 1999, Dr Napthine became Victorian Opposition leader, and held on despite terrible opinion polls until August 2002.
He was defeated in a challenge by Robert Doyle – Melbourne's current lord mayor - not long before the 2002 Victorian election. He came within 1 per cent of losing his seat in that election but increased his margin in 2006 and again in 2010.
Before becoming premier, he was Ted Baillieu's minister for Racing, Ports, Major Projects and Regional Cities.
He owns a race horse called Spin The Bottle with Federal Liberal MP Dan Tehan.
Dr Napthine and his wife Peggy are parents to three children, including an autistic son they fostered in the 1980s.
"This wasn't what I expected when I had my Special K for breakfast this morning."
"The difference between my elevation and Julia Gillard's is that we have a united team. We don't have blood all over the floor, and we didn't stab in the back an incumbent Prime Minister against their wishes."
"I count Ted as a true friend. He's been a terrific servant of Victoria and the community and I'd like to acknowledge his service."
"The people of Victoria will understand what has happened and ... will make their own judgments over the next weeks and months."
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.
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | March 2013 | ['(ABC News Australia)'] |
A car bomb explodes near a hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi, killing at least nine people. | A car bomb explosion near a hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi has killed several people, officials say. The death toll is unclear. Local officials initially said nine people had been killed. A hospital spokesman later said three bodies had been found. The blast follows a string of bombings in the eastern city in recent days. Security remains precarious in Libya since the uprising against long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi, with protests by militias and attacks by Islamists.
The head of Jalaa hospital told AFP news agency that the hospital had received three bodies, as well as body parts that could belong to other victims.
He also said another nine people had been wounded, three of them critically.
The explosives were placed in a grey Toyota near the hospital, officials and eyewitnesses say.
Libyan Deputy Interior Minister Abdullah Massoud was quoted as saying that the bomb had "totally destroyed a restaurant and seriously damaged nearby buildings". So far no group has said it carried out Monday's attack in Benghazi, which is regarded as the cradle of the revolution that ousted Gaddafi in 2011. Angry crowds later gathered at the scene, blaming militants for the bombing and urging the authorities to drive them out of the city. Many demonstrators chanted "Rise, Benghazi!"
"This is the flesh of our sons, this is what the militias have given us," one of the protesters was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "All we need here are the police and the army."
| Armed Conflict | May 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
At the 11th National People's Congress, Hu Jintao is elected to a second term as the President of China, and Xi Jinping is elected Vice–President. (Xinhua via the People's Daily) | Hu Jintao, general-secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was reelected president of the country Saturday morning at the ongoing session of the 11th National People's Congress, China's top legislature.
Hu, born in 1942, had been China's president since March 2003.
Hu Jintao was reelected chairman of the Central Military Commission of China at the annual session.
Xi Jinping was elected vice-president of China at the ongoing session of the 11th National People's Congress Saturday morning.
Xi, born in 1953, is one of the nine members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and a member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | March 2008 | [] |
An Asiana Airlines Airbus A320 en route from South Korea to Japan skids off the runway at Hiroshima Airport injuring 20 of the 74 passengers. | Tokyo - An Asiana Airlines plane skidded off a runway on Tuesday after landing in western Japan, and about 20 people were injured slightly, officials said.
The Hiroshima airport reported that the aircraft's tail touched the runway while landing, causing some sparks, but there were no flames, the Mihara City fire department said.
The airport was closed after the accident, public broadcaster NHK said. It said the plane may have touched a structure at the airport before landing.
Officials said the Airbus 320 plane was carrying 74 passengers and eight crew from Seoul, South Korea. Fire department official Kyoichi Utsumi said about 20 people received minor injuries - mostly bruises and scratches - and no one was hurt seriously. All were evacuated using escape chutes, and it was not immediately clear if they were injured during the landing or the evacuation.
TV video showed the escape chutes projecting from the aircraft, with several fire engines standing by as a precaution.
The cause of the accident was not immediately known, and no other details were immediately available.
An Asiana Airlines flight crashed two years ago as it approached San Francisco's airport in an accident that killed three teenagers and injured nearly 200 others.
. | Air crash | April 2015 | ['(AP via News24)'] |
President Obama announces that U.S airstrikes broke the IS siege of Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of Yazidi refugees to escape, and declares plans for further airstrikes against IS forces. | President Barack Obama has paid tribute to US forces for an operation in northern Iraq that helped "break a siege" and rescue tens of thousands of displaced people.
Mr Obama said the situation on Mount Sinjar had greatly improved.
Many of those displaced had now left the mountain and further rescue operations were not envisaged, he said.
However, Mr Obama said the US would continue air strikes against the Islamic State (IS) rebel group.
Iraqi and Kurdish forces who were fighting IS would also continue to receive US military assistance, Mr Obama said.
The jihadist militants, formerly known as Isis, seized a large band of territory across northern Iraq and Syria this summer. The United Nations estimates that 1.2 million Iraqis have been internally displaced by the latest violence.
Speaking in the US, the president re-emphasised the need for Iraqis to find a political solution to the crisis, describing the prospect of a new and inclusive government, led by Haider al-Abadi, as an "enormous opportunity".
"He still has a challenging task in putting a government together, but we are modestly hopeful that the... situation is moving in the right direction," Mr Obama said.
Mr Abadi, a deputy speaker of parliament, has been asked by the Iraqi president to form a new government. Current Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, whose coalition won the most seats in April's election, had vowed to contest the move in court, describing it as a violation of the constitution. However, reports coming out of Baghdad on Thursday evening, and attributed to MPs, said Mr Maliki was to address the nation, announcing he would stand aside in favour of Mr Abadi.
Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Mr Maliki had no choice but to "accept the wishes of the majority of Iraqis".
Mr Zebari, who served under the prime minister until last month, also dismissed fears that Iraq could fall apart, saying the Kurdish leadership had "decided to be part of the new government".
Iraq's military response to a rapid advance by IS has been hampered by political chaos in Baghdad.
On 29 June, the militant group said it had created a caliphate, or Islamic state, stretching from Aleppo in Syria to the province of Diyala in Iraq.
It has declared Iraq a "Level 3 Emergency", its highest ranking of a crisis. The move should enable more resources to be directed in support of humanitarian efforts.
The UN had earlier estimated that tens of thousands of people, mostly from the Christian and Yazidi religious minorities, were besieged on the mountain after being forced to flee their homes.
But US forces sent to Mt Sinjar found fewer people than expected - partly because thousands had left the mountain each night over the past days.
Kurdish officials told the BBC's Frank Gardner that some 150,000 refugees had ended up in the northern city of Dohuk, where the local population was struggling to feed them. Hamad, a Yazidi who managed to escape with his family, told the BBC that his mother had died during the long journey to Dohuk.
"There was no food. We were exhausted after a lot of walking and climbing high, steep roads," he said, adding that his mother eventually said she could go no further.
"We refused to leave without her. After a few hours of thirst, hunger and exhaustion, she fell and passed away."
| Armed Conflict | August 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
Minister–President of the central German state of Thuringia, Thomas Kemmerich, resigns under national pressure after his controversial election to the position with the help of the far–right party Alternative for Germany. | A German state premier elected with the help of the far-right AfD says he is resigning to pave the way for fresh elections.
The election of liberal leader Thomas Kemmerich in the eastern state of Thuringia prompted national outrage.
"Resignation is unavoidable," he said. For years Germany's main parties have shunned Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Chancellor Angela Merkel - whose own party also backed Mr Kemmerich - called Wednesday's election "unforgivable".
The AfD has grown in popularity in recent years but has been condemned for its extreme views on immigration, freedom of speech and the press.
Wednesday's vote was described as a political earthquake as it was the first time the AfD had helped form a government in Germany, breaking a consensus among the main parties never to work with extremist parties.
Mr Kemmerich has now announced he will seek new elections in the state, "to remove the stain of the AfD's support for the office of the premiership".
He will need a two-thirds majority to dissolve the chamber and bring about a fresh vote.
Despite the AfD having broad support in Thuringia, the state election in October was won by the far-left Die Linke. And the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) had just 5% of the vote, barely scraping into the local parliament in the state capital, Erfurt.
But on Wednesday, in the secret vote to pick the leader of the government, Mr Kemmerich of the FDP beat Die Linke's leader Bodo Ramelow by 45 votes to 44 - thanks to votes from the AfD. Mr Kemmerich also got votes from local MPs in his FDP and Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), prompting outrage from critics, who said the two centre-right parties had apparently made a pact with the far right.
Mr Kemmerich insisted there had been no co-operation with the far right and accused the AfD of carrying out a "perfidious trick to harm democracy". However, there are now suggestions the FDP and AfD had discussed a pact in Thuringia before. A letter sent by AfD's Thuringia leader to Mr Kemmerich on 1 November has gone viral on Twitter, in which the regional AfD leader offered his party's support - either to form a technocratic government or a minority FDP-led government. It would break the long-standing red-red-green ruling coalition in Thuringia, he said. The letter, first reported by regional broadcaster MDR at the time, shows that the AfD was seeking a deal long before Wednesday's political shock. By Jenny Hill, BBC Berlin correspondent
Germany may have pledged "never again". But 90 years after the rise of the Nazi Party, the far right has once again played - albeit briefly - the role of kingmaker in a German state. The former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt was among those who took to social media in protest, circulating a photograph of a newly-elected Mr Kemmerich shaking hands with Thuringia's AfD leader Björn Höcke, and juxtaposing it with one of Hitler greeting the then-German President Paul von Hindenburg. Barely a week ago, this country reflected on the atrocities of World War Two, during commemorations to mark the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. That the far right has been able to wield such influence, that a mainstream political party accepted its support and that, knowingly or otherwise, Angela Merkel's CDU appeared to align with them is, for many, the source of great shame. There were immediate calls for Mr Kemmerich to resign. Speaking on a visit to South Africa, Chancellor Merkel said the Thuringia vote had to be reversed.
"It was a bad day for democracy, a day that broke with the long and proud tradition of the CDU's values. This is in no way in line with what the CDU thinks, how we have acted throughout our party's existence," she said.
CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer also said Mr Kemmerich should stand down, and her party's Social Democrat coalition partners in Berlin called on the CDU to distance themselves from the AfD. Both parties plan to hold crisis talks on Saturday.
Amid the growing pressure, Mr Kemmerich told reporters on Thursday that his FDP had decided to request the dissolution of the state parliament. FDP leader Christian Lindner had travelled to Erfurt on Thursday for talks with Mr Kemmerich ahead of the party's statement. After the resignation he called for a vote of confidence in the party's national leadership.
Some have compared the AfD's surprise move to the Nazis' rise to power and there were protests in several German cities after the election.
In 1930 a Nazi entered the Thuringia government, the party's first big breakthrough in the Weimar Republic, culminating in Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor in 1933. The Thuringia AfD is led by Björn Höcke, one of the AfD's most controversial figures.
He sparked an outcry when he condemned the decision to place the Holocaust memorial in the heart of Berlin, describing it as a "memorial of shame".
The anti-immigration and anti-Islam AfD has MPs in all 16 of Germany's state parliaments.
Nationally the AfD has 89 seats in the lower house of parliament (Bundestag), out of 709 in total, making it the largest opposition party. In a tweet (in German), the AfD hit back at people who compared them with the Nazi Party because of their extremist views.
"These Nazi comparisons, for example one by Peter Frey of @ZDF, really stink. We in the AfD stand FOR a law-based state, democracy, political pluralism and FOR Jewish life in our country. We are AGAINST all violence and censorship of opinion. Stop the incitement!" the tweet said.
Among the tweets comparing the AfD to the Nazis was one from Die Linke's Bodo Ramelow, who juxtaposed a photo of Hitler becoming chancellor with Wednesday's photo of Mr Höcke shaking hands with Mr Kemmerich.
The tweet included a quote from Hitler, who said in February 1930: "We achieved the greatest success in Thuringia. Today we really are the crucial party there... The parties in Thuringia, which up until now formed the government, cannot get a majority without our assistance."
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | February 2020 | ['(BBC)'] |
Kurdish human rights lawyer Ebru Timtik dies in hospital after spending 238–days on hunger strike in protest of her imprisonment after being found guilty of being a member of the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front. At the time of her death, she was reported to only weigh 65 pounds. | A Kurdish-Turkish human rights lawyer has died after a 238-day hunger strike demanding a fair trial for herself and others.
Ebru Timtik, 42, was one of a group of 18 lawyers known for representing clients critical of the Turkish government who were arrested in September 2017.
Timtik weighed only 65 pounds when she died in the hospital, where she and her colleague Aytac Unsal were transferred in July after going on hunger strike in Istanbul’s Silivri prison, Deutsche-Welle reported Friday.
Mourners who got near a cemetery where Timtik was being buried were tear-gassed by police, according to news reports.
Timtik’s “tragic” death demonstrated that Turkey needs to “credibly address” its human rights situation and the “serious shortcomings in the Turkish judiciary,” European Union foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano said.
International and local groups had called for the lawyers’ release, questioning the impartiality of courts under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule.
Timtik’s death, announced Thursday night, follows similar deaths of two left-wing folk musicians in April and May.
Her cousin said conditions for Timtik were worse in the hospital than prison, one outlet reported.
She said the light was deliberately left on at night and cold air was constantly blown into Timtik’s room.
Hospital staffers put Timtik under pressure to end her fast, waking her to offer her food and encouraging her to take medicine.
Last October, a Turkish appeals court had upheld lengthy jail terms imposed on the 18 lawyers, Timtik included, who face multiple charges over alleged links to an outlawed Marxist organization.
Initially detained in September 2018, Timtik was sentenced to 13 years and six months jail. Unsal was sentenced to more than 10 years.
In February, Timtik and Unsal started hunger strikes inside Silivri, consuming only liquids and vitamins.
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| Famous Person - Death | August 2020 | ['(New York Post)'] |
Government forces target al-Shaar neighborhood in eastern Aleppo city with surface-to-surface missiles, hitting a crowded public market, killing more than 30 civilians and dozens wounded. | A man reacts amidst damage from what activists said was an airstrike by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the al-Katerji district in Aleppo.
ALEPPOAt least 3o civilians were killed and dozens wounded in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo amid heavy bombardment by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, activistsreported on Monday.
Pro-Assad forces targeted al-Shaar neighborhood in eastern Aleppo with surface-to-surface missiles on Monday afternoon.
“The missiles hit a crowdedpublic market in al-Shaar, causing dozens of casualties,” media activist Wael Mahmoud told ARA News.
“More than 30 people were killed and many others wounded,” he said.
Mahmoud added that civil defense activists continued searching for survivors under the rubble until Monday evening.
“Assad militias intend to target populated areas in Aleppo. Hundreds die every weekdue to the barrel bombs and missiles that mostly hit residential buildings and public markets,” the activist added.
The city of Aleppo has beendivided into a regime-held west and opposition-held eastformore than a year. | Armed Conflict | September 2015 | ['(Ara News)'] |
The District Court for the District of Columbia releases John Hinckley Jr, U.S. President Ronald Reagan's March 1981 would–be assassin, from a psychiatric hospital after 35 years. | John Hinckley Jr, the man who tried to assassinate US President Ronald Reagan, has been released from a psychiatric hospital after 35 years.
Mr Reagan and three others were injured in the shooting outside a hotel in Washington in March 1981.
Mr Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity but was sent for treatment to a Washington hospital.
In July, a judge ruled that Mr Hinckley, now 61, was not a danger to himself or the public.
Mr Hinckley had already been spending 17 days a month at his mother's home in Virginia under strict conditions.
Associated Press reported that he had arrived at her home having been freed on Saturday.
Marking 30 years since Reagan's shooting
Life after shooting a US president
As part of his release he will:
The shooting, just weeks into Ronald Reagan's presidency, shocked the world.
Mr Reagan was shot in the lung, but recovered.
His press secretary James Brady was shot in the head, suffered brain damage and used a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
Mr Brady's death in 2014 at the age of 73 was ruled to be a homicide, but no further charges against Hinckley were brought.
Two law enforcement officers suffered less serious injuries in the shooting.
US District Judge Paul Friedman's judgement points to medical assessments which showed that Mr Hinckley had had "no symptoms of active mental illness" since 1983.
He had shot the president in an apparent bid to impress the actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had an obsession and whom he had subjected to what would now be termed stalking.
The court order and opinion available on the website of the US District Court for the District of Columbia spell out the terms of Mr Hinckley's release, and detail his psychiatric history and treatment:
1981: President Reagan is shot
Marking 30 years since shooting Reagan aide James Brady dies at 73
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | September 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
President Lenín Moreno orders curfew and the militarisation of the capital as civil unrest worsens. | The government has sent military troops to the streets to enforce a curfew as it fights for control of the capital. At least five people have died since the violent protests began 10 days ago.
The protests in Quito were triggered by the announcement that the government was cutting fuel subsidies, putting the fuel price up by 120%. The cut was part of an austerity package put together as part of a deal for Ecuador to obtain a $4.2 billion (€3.8 billion) loan from the International Monetary Fund. The protests have often descended into violence. This demonstrator is firing a homemade weapon during one rally. Six people have been killed and nearly 2,100 injured or detained. President Moreno has pledged to "restore order in all of Ecuador" with a round-the-clock curfew in Quito and increased security at power stations and hospitals.
In one incident, protesters broke into the building of the TV station Teleamazonas. "For about half an hour, we were under attack. They threw stones at us, forced open the doors and threw Molotov cocktails," said presenter Milton Perez. Twenty-five employees were evacuated, and none were hurt.
Some demonstrators ransacked and set fire to the building housing the comptroller general's office on Saturday. But CONAIE, the indigenous umbrella group leading the protests, said it had nothing to do with events there or at Teleamazonas.
Although CONAIE rejected previous offers for talks, it now says representatives will meet with Moreno to discuss "the repeal or revision" of the cut in fuel subsidies. The more expensive fuel is a particular burden to disadvantaged indigenous communities in the Amazon and the Andes. Moreno is considering changing some aspects of the austerity package but has remained firm on the fuel subsidy cuts.
The protests in Quito were triggered by the announcement that the government was cutting fuel subsidies, putting the fuel price up by 120%. The cut was part of an austerity package put together as part of a deal for Ecuador to obtain a $4.2 billion (€3.8 billion) loan from the International Monetary Fund. The protests have often descended into violence. This demonstrator is firing a homemade weapon during one rally. Six people have been killed and nearly 2,100 injured or detained. President Moreno has pledged to "restore order in all of Ecuador" with a round-the-clock curfew in Quito and increased security at power stations and hospitals.
In one incident, protesters broke into the building of the TV station Teleamazonas. "For about half an hour, we were under attack. They threw stones at us, forced open the doors and threw Molotov cocktails," said presenter Milton Perez. Twenty-five employees were evacuated, and none were hurt.
Some demonstrators ransacked and set fire to the building housing the comptroller general's office on Saturday. But CONAIE, the indigenous umbrella group leading the protests, said it had nothing to do with events there or at Teleamazonas.
Although CONAIE rejected previous offers for talks, it now says representatives will meet with Moreno to discuss "the repeal or revision" of the cut in fuel subsidies. The more expensive fuel is a particular burden to disadvantaged indigenous communities in the Amazon and the Andes. Moreno is considering changing some aspects of the austerity package but has remained firm on the fuel subsidy cuts.
The president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, declared a 24-hour curfew and "militarization" in the country's capital, Quito, on Saturday to help security forces quell ongoing protests sparked by austerity measures.
The order went into effect at 3 p.m. (20:00 UTC) and would "facilitate the work of public forces against intolerable outbreaks of violence," Moreno said on Twitter.
"We're going to restore order in all of Ecuador," Moreno said. "We're starting with the curfew in Quito."
Meanwhile, the Ecuadorian interior minister, Maria Paula Romo, asked citizens to "go to their homes," before adding: "This measure will be valid until further notice."
The new security measures came as access roads to Quito's airport were blockaded and TV channel Teleamazonas showed images of its own facilities in flames, as well as stones being thrown at office windows, though there were no reports of any employees being hurt.
By the evening on Saturday, the military had retaken control of streets leading to the National Assembly and the national comptroller's office. Protesters earlier had broken into the building and lit fires there.
Over a week of violent clashes
The announcement of the curfew came within 30 minutes of its implementation, meaning protesters, many of whom had traveled to the city from other provinces, did not return home.
As a result, violence continued in Quito even after indigenous leaders, who had instigated the protests over fuel price increases, changed tack and confirmed they had accepted a proposal for talks with President Moreno in order to find a solution.
The UN has said via Twitter that the first round of talks will take place on Sunday afternoon.
Read more: Ecuador protesters defy military to hold rallies
Protests in Quito have intensified over the course of the week
Deadly protests
Moreno later announced some potential amendments to the controversial economic package that had sparked the protests, but he did not go back on the decision to remove fuel subsidies, which particularly drew people to the streets. Moreno said only that he would assess the effects of the cut in subsidies.
Ecuador's indigenous people's federation, CONAIE, welcomed a government initiative to break the impasse but reiterated that it wanted Moreno to first restore the fuel subsidies he had previously taken away as part of an austerity plan.
In a statement, CONAIE leader Jaime Vargas said Moreno's call for discussions was a "positive" step, but the federation stopped short of calling off the protests altogether.
"There's no real dialogue without guarantees for the safety of indigenous leaders," CONAIE said.
"We'll carry out approaches to try to repeal the decree," the statement added, "but we will hold protest actions nationally ... exhorting the government to provide necessary guarantees."
More than a week of protests in the Ecuadorian capital have already resulted in at least five deaths and nearly 2,000 wounded or detained. | Government Policy Changes | October 2019 | ['(Deutsche Welle)'] |
The Liberal Democrats gain the Brecon and Radnorshire seat from the Conservatives. This marks the first time a seat has changed hands in a by-election triggered by a successful recall petition. The working majority of the Conservative government is reduced to one. | Jane Dodds beats outgoing Tory member Chris Davies, and says her first act will be to tell prime minister to rule out no-deal Brexit First published on Fri 2 Aug 2019 02.21 BST
Boris Johnson has suffered a major blow after the Conservatives were beaten by the Liberal Democrats in the Brecon and Radnorshire byelection.
The victory for Jane Dodds means the new prime minister’s working majority in the House of Commons has been cut to just one. It will be seized on as a sign voters are concerned by Boris Johnson’s pledge to leave the EU without a deal if he deems it necessary.
The Liberal Democrats won 13,826 votes with the Tories taking 12,401, a margin of 1,425 that overturned the Tories’ previous majority of more than 8,000. It was a sobering night for the Labour party (1,680 votes), which was beaten into fourth place by the Brexit party (3,331), and only just held on to its deposit. Ukip (242) came last behind the Monster Raving Loony party (334).
In her acceptance speech, Dodds said: “I am incredibly humbled by the support. From every walk of life and every political persuasion, people have chosen to believe in my positive liberal vision for something better.
“And by backing that liberal vision, people in Brecon and Radnorshire have sent a powerful message to Westminster: we demand better.”
She continued: “People are desperately crying out for a different kind of politics. There is no time for tribalism when our country is faced with a Boris Johnson government and the threat of a no-deal Brexit.
“My very first act as your MP when I arrive in Westminster will be to find Mr Boris Johnson, wherever he’s hiding, and tell him loud and clear: stop playing with the futures of our communities and rule out a no-deal Brexit.”
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, who visited the constituency four times in the run-up to the byelection, said the results showed that the country did not have to settle for Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn.
Brecon & Radnorshire, result:LDEM: 43.5% (+14.3)CON: 39.0% (-9.6)BREX: 10.5% (+10.5)LAB: 5.3% (-12.5)MRLP: 1.0% (+1.0)UKIP: 0.8% (-0.6)
“Boris Johnson’s shrinking majority makes it clear that he has no mandate to crash us out of the EU. As leader of the Liberal Democrats, I will do whatever it takes to stop Brexit and offer an alternative, positive vision for a richer, greener and safer future. Britain demands better than what the tired old parties can give.”
Swinson also thanked Plaid Cymru and the Green party for not contesting this byelection so as to avoid splitting the remain vote.
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem MP for Kingston and Surbiton, called it “a huge result”, adding: “The Brecon and Radnorshire byelection was the front line of the stop Brexit campaign. This is going to make Boris Johnson’s job that much more difficult, and for those of us who are desperate to stop Brexit it’s a crucial moment.”
The leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price, said: “The people of Brecon and Radnorshire have spoken. It’s now time that people throughout these islands are heard, too, in a final say referendum.
“But if the prime minister is intent on a general election, he should know that Plaid Cymru and the other pro-remain parties are committed to cooperating so that we beat Brexit once and for all.”
The byelection in mid-Wales was called following the ousting from parliament of the Tory MP Chris Davies after he was found guilty of submitting a false expenses claim. Despite the scandal, Davies was chosen to stand again.
After the result, Davies congratulated Dodds and wished her well for the future. He also paid tribute to his family, saying they had had “a difficult time over the past few months”. Earlier, he said his party had run a “clean and positive” campaign but added: “Sadly a few of our competitors have led a dirty campaign.”
Prof Roger Awan-Scully, the head of politics and international relations at Cardiff University, said the Tory vote held up reasonably well. “Until a few days ago people were talking seriously about the Brexit party pushing the Conservatives into third,” he said. “They’ve done well resisting the pressure from the Brexit party. It hasn’t quite been good enough this time round but whenever we get a general election, which might not be far away, this seat is very much in play for the Conservatives.”
Awan-Scully said it had been a dreadful night for Labour. “There’s lots of dissatisfaction with Jeremy Corbyn, lots of dissatisfaction with the direction of the party. In its ultimate historic bastion of Wales I think Labour is in some serious trouble.”
Tory grandees including the Commons leader, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove, toured the constituency during the campaign. Johnson also visited Brecon earlier this week but did not venture into the town centre, leaving onlookers who had waited for him in the rain angry and frustrated.
The election of Dodds brings the total number of Swinson’s party members in the Commons to 13.
During the campaign, farming became a key issue, with union officials warning that farmers could carry out acts of civil disobedience if the UK leaves the EU with no deal. Appropriately the count was held at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells.
Davies had represented the seat for the Conservatives since 2015. The Liberal Democrats held the constituency from 1997 to 2015. | Government Job change - Election | August 2019 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
United Nations Secretary–General Ban Ki–moon recalls his envoy and closes an office in Sri Lanka due to protests over a war crimes panel. | Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on the Sri Lankan Government to ensure that the United Nations can carry out its work in the country without disruption, after a cabinet minister announced he is staging a hunger strike outside its offices in Colombo which have been the scene of protests for several days.
“The Secretary-General finds it unacceptable that the Sri Lankan authorities have failed to prevent the disruption of the normal functioning of the United Nations offices in Colombo as a result of unruly protests organized and led by a cabinet minister of the Government,” a statement issued by his spokesperson said. The protests in the capital, in which hundreds of people took part, were led by Housing Minister Wimal Weerawansa, who reportedly said today he will not eat until the UN disbands the advisory panel it set up last month.
Mr. Ban set up the three-member panel to advise him on accountability issues relating to alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the conflict that ended last year between the Government and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). “The Secretary-General calls upon the Government of Sri Lanka to live up to its responsibilities towards the United Nations as host country, so as to ensure continuation of the vital work of the Organization to assist the people of Sri Lanka without any further hindrance,” said the statement. It added that in light of the evolving situation, Mr. Ban is recalling the UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka, Neil Buhne, to New York for consultations. He has also decided to close the Regional Centre in Colombo of the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
The United Nations said it is closely monitoring developments in Colombo following yesterday’s protests outside the world body’s offices, noting that it has received assurances of the safety and security of its staff from the Sri Lankan Government. | Protest_Online Condemnation | July 2010 | ['(UN News Centre)', '(Al Jazeera)', '(Times of India)'] |
German troops kill at least five Afghan soldiers in a friendly fire incident north of the capital Kabul. | German soldiers north of Kabul accidentally killed five Afghan government soldiers in a friendly fire incident early on Saturday.
The incident happened after a German armoured personnel carrier was sent to reinforce troops who had been engaged in a fierce battle with Taliban fighters since early in the day at Chahar Dara, near the city of Kunduz. The fighting had started with a Taliban ambush hours earlier in which three Bundeswehr troops died.
They opened fire at a civilian car which approached their patrol, killing five Afghan soldiers inside, German military officials said.
"They fired at the vehicle of the army and mistakenly killed six army soldiers," said Mohammad Omar, governor of Kunduz province in north Afghanistan, adding that the incident happened late on Friday night near Chardara district.
A spokesman for the Nato-led force in Kabul said: "There was an incident but we can't confirm any numbers right now."
Afghan defence ministry spokesman, General Mohammad Zahir Azimi confirmed the incident but said six soldiers lost their lives. A statement from the ministry condemned what it described as the incident.
"The incident is under investigation," General Azimi said. Eight German soldiers were wounded, four seriously, in the battle in which three died.
Most of northern Afghanistan is untroubled by Taliban fighters, but Kunduz, in the northeast, is a stronghold for the movement. The Taliban's support is strongest in southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan. Germany has the third-largest Nato contingent in the war with some 4,300 troops in Afghanistan, most of them based aruond Kunduz. | Armed Conflict | April 2010 | ['(Deutsche Welle)', '(The Daily Telegraph)', '(Taiwan News)'] |
Samoan police arrest Edwin Tamasese, an anti-vaccination campaigner, for incitement against a government order. | Samoan authorities have charged an alleged anti-vaxxer with incitement against the government, as the Pacific nation remains in a national shut-down over a measles outbreak which has killed more than 60 people. The shut-down is facilitating a mobile vaccination service, where citizens have been asked to place a red flag at the front of their homes to signal to roving vaccinators that someone requires immunisation. This has emptied the nation's streets, as businesses and schools have been shut to prevent contagion. People have also been told not to drive. In a statement released yesterday, the Samoan Government said an "alleged anti-vaxxer individual" was charged with incitement. Last month, the Samoan Cabinet declared a state of emergency which made vaccinations compulsory, while it also made it illegal to discourage people from getting immunised.
The government alleged that the unnamed suspect who local media have identified as Edwin Tamasese — a local businessman with no medical training — made the following public statement in reference to the immunisation efforts: "I'll be here to mop up your mess. Enjoy your killing spree". He previously made incorrect suggestions claiming that Vitamin A or D could be used as alternatives to the measles vaccine. TV1 Samoa
The suspect has not been allowed to apply for bail, whose statement was reported to Samoa's Attorney General from a member of the public which was then reported to the police. The AG's office also confirmed that the suspect had previously been warned by police about anti-vaccination claims. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | December 2019 | ['(ABC Australia)'] |
Debt negotiations between President of the United States Barack Obama and Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner collapse. | Debt-reduction negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner collapsed Friday, derailing an effort to reach a landmark agreement to cut spending, overhaul the tax code and avert a government default.
In subsequent statements, both sides blamed the other for an impasse that threatens to plunge the nation into a fiscal crisis if the government fails to meet a looming deadline to raise the federal debt ceiling.
“It’s hard to understand why Speaker Boehner would walk away from this kind of deal,” Obama said, but Boehner (R-Ohio) countered that it was the president who walked away from an agreement on revenue increases.
“The White House moved the goal posts,” Boehner said in a press conference, demanding “more money at the last minute — and the only way to get that extra revenue was to raise taxes.”
“The vast majority of the American people believe we should have a balanced approach” between revenues and cuts, Obama told reporters. He added that he had been willing to agree to a deal that was more generous to Republican interests than to those of his fellow Democrats.
Saying that “we have now run out of time,” Obama summoned Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to the White House at 11 a.m. Saturday.
“They’re going to have to explain to me how it is that we are going to avoid a default,” he said. He later said he was confident that a default could be avoided.
Boehner agreed with that last point at least, saying, “No one wants to default on the full faith and credit of the United States government, and I am convinced that we will not.” He added later, “We can work together here on Capitol Hill to forge an agreement, and I’m hopeful the president will work with us.”
Boehner and Obama had been negotiating over what the speaker called a “big deal” to try to save between $3 trillion and $4 trillion in the federal budget.
Obama told reporters Friday evening that he had offered Boehner more than $1 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending — both domestic and defense — and $650 billion in cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He said he had sought revenues that were less than those put forward in a bipartisan plan by the Senate’s “Gang of Six.” He said the $1.2 trillion in revenues could be accomplished without raising tax rates but by eliminating loopholes, tax breaks and deductions.
“This was an extraordinarily fair deal,” Obama said. “If it was unbalanced, it was unbalanced in the direction of not enough revenue.” Now that he has “been left at the altar a couple of times,” Obama said, the question for the Republicans is, “Can they say yes to the anything?”
About an hour later, Boehner told reporters that the two sides had agreed to $800 billion in additional revenues, but when the White House then demanded another $400 billion through tax increases, the Republican leader walked away.
“It’s not in the best interest of our country to raise taxes during this difficult economy,” Boehner said.
In a letter sent to the nearly 240 House Republicans, the speaker said that Obama was “simply not serious” about cutting entitlement spending unless large tax increases were a part of the deal. “For these reasons, I have decided to end discussions with the White House and begin conversations with the leaders of the Senate in an effort to find a path forward,” he wrote in the letter to the Republican Conference.
House leaders are now working with Senate leaders to craft an alternative plan to raise the federal debt limit, but so far they have not reached agreement on a way to meet an Aug. 2 deadline and avert a potentially major fiscal crisis.
Word of the collapse of the talks came hours after Obama publicly reiterated his insistence that any broad deficit-reduction plan must include new tax revenue in addition to large spending cuts. Earlier Friday, the Senate rejected a bill from the Republican-controlled House that would have required a balanced-budget amendment and massive cuts, but no tax hikes.
The Senate also set aside immediate plans to consider a bipartisan measure to raise the federal debt limit and avert a government default, leaving it to the House to approve such a plan first. The moves were made in the hope that the House could pass the so-called “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit and raise the debt ceiling next week. As Obama spoke, Senate Majority Leader Reid blamed the breakdown of the talks on Republican “ideological opposition” to eliminating tax loopholes for big business and corporate CEOs. “I applaud President Obama for insisting that any deal to reduce our deficit be balanced between cuts and revenues. We must avert a default at all costs, so it is time to reengage in bipartisan talks on an agreement that at least accomplishes that goal,” Reid said in a statement.
His counterpart, McConnell, blamed “the president’s call for higher taxes on American families and job creators,” and he urged that congressional leaders move something to the floor very quickly.
“As I’ve said before, it’s time now for the debate to move out of a room in the White House and onto the House and Senate floors where we can debate the best approach to reducing the nation’s unsustainable debt,” McConnell said. Earlier in the day, speaking at a town hall meeting at the University of Maryland in College Park, Obama told a largely supportive audience, “We can’t just close our deficit with spending cuts alone.” That would mean senior citizens would have to “pay a lot more for Medicare,” students would have trouble getting education loans, job training programs would be trimmed and there were be “devastating cuts” in medical and clean-energy research, he said.
“If we only did it with cuts, if we did not get any revenue to help close this gap . . . then a lot of ordinary people would be hurt, and the country as a whole would be hurt,” Obama said. “And that doesn’t make any sense. It’s not fair. And that’s why I’ve said, if we’re going to reduce our deficit, then the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations should do their part as well.” Obama and Boehner spoke a day after their talks on a far-reaching deficit-reduction plan ran into a revolt from Democrats furious that the accord appeared to include no immediate provision to raise taxes.
With 11 days left until the Treasury begins to run short of cash, Obama and Boehner were pursuing the most ambitious plan to restrain the national debt in at least 20 years. Talks focused on sharp cuts in agency spending and politically painful changes to cherished health and retirement programs aimed at saving roughly $3 trillion over the next decade. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | July 2011 | ['(Washington Post)'] |
2011 Syrian uprising: Syrian forces mass along the Turkish border near where thousands of refugees are camped. | Hundreds of Syrian refugees are fleeing across the border into Turkey to escape an assault by Syrian troops in the area, witnesses say.
Tanks and snipers have entered the village of Khirbet al-Jouz - a base for makeshift refugee camps.
One group of people broke through barbed wire to cross the border close to the Turkish village of Guvecci. More than 1,300 people are estimated to have been killed in the government crackdown on the popular uprising.
Thousands more protesters have been detained since the crackdown began in March, opposition activists say.
Several Syrian cities - including Homs and Hama - have declared a general strike after two days of deadly clashes with security forces and supporters of President Bashar al-Assad.
The recent military offensive in the north of the country has forced thousands of Syrians to flee towards Turkey. Many crossed the border, but a significant number opted to camp on the Syrian side of the border - preferring to remain on Syrian soil as long as possible.
One man said 2,130 people in his camp had fled Khirbet al-Jouz to avoid being attacked by the army, which was surrounding the numerous camps on the Syrian side of the border. "This is a way of terrorising people," the man told BBC Arabic.
"Our group here is informing the world of what is going on inside Syria. [The authorities] don't like it, so they want to either arrest or kill these people, so that there are no more people who can follow the news from inside Syria. It is just terror for everybody."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the increased presence of Syrian troops so close to the Turkish border as "very worrisome". She told reporters the move merely exacerbated the plight of Syrian refugees while increasing the risk of a frontier clash with Turkey.
Contrary to reports that thousands of Syrians were fleeing into Turkey, Damascus said on Thursday that more than 500 Syrians had returned to their homes; it says they had been forced to flee the country by armed gunmen. A BBC journalist who visited Khirbet al-Jouz at the weekend said the village was all but deserted by resident who anticipated the army moving in.
Troops moved into the village early on Thursday morning.
Tanks and soldiers were seen on the outskirts, snipers were spotted on roof tops, and one witness saw a machine gun position being established.
A watchtower which had been flying a Turkish flag - put there by Syrians grateful for Turkey's help - was now flying a Syrian flag, witnesses said. Villagers and journalists in Guvecci could see military activity across the border. Umit Bektas, a Reuters photographer positioned on a hillside on the Turkish side of the border, said he had seen armoured vehicles taking up positions on the Syrian hillside, apparently with the aim of preventing more fleeing Syrians from reaching the camps next to the border.
Earlier on Thursday, hundreds of people broke through barbed wire to cross into Turkey, while another group of several hundred people were spotted further down the same road.
They were taken in more than 30 buses to refugee camps in Turkey, Mr Bektas told the BBC Newshour programme.
Those fleeing were expected to join some 11,000 Syrians already taking refuge at tent cities erected by the Turkish Red Crescent in the border province of Hatay.
Turkish forces have mobilised along the border. The BBC's Jonathan Head in Istanbul says it is not clear how the Turkish government - which has been increasingly critical of Syria - will respond to seeing troops harrying refugees who had assumed they were under de facto Turkish protection.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Thursday called on Turkey to review its position, stressing that Ankara had always been a close ally of Damascus.
Syrian authorities also say they have eased restrictions to allow opposition figures to attend a conference in Damascus on Monday, says the BBC's Lina Sinjab in the capital.
However, only independents - those not affiliated to opposition groups - will be allowed to attend. Signatories of the 2005 Damascus Declaration - a joint call for reform by Syria's most well-known intellectuals and dissidents - are also barred. | Riot | June 2011 | ['(Reuters)', '(BBC)'] |
Two Russian Air Force Tu–160 bombers arrive in Venezuela to carry out training flights over a course of several days. | Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez says two Russian bombers have arrived in the country to carry out training flights.
The Russian Air Force said the bombers would be based in Venezuela for several days and fly over neutral waters.
Earlier this week Russia confirmed that it would send a Navy squadron and long- range patrol planes for joint exercises with Venezuela in November.
Mr Chavez has developed close relations with Moscow, including the purchase of Russian arms and co-operation on oil.
Hugo Chavez announced that two Tu-160 bombers would carry out manoeuvres, saying that it was part of a move towards a "multi-polar world".
"I'm going to fly one of those beasts," he joked.
"The Yankee hegemony is finished," he added.
A Russian defence ministry spokesman confirmed that the planes had flown to Venezuela, adding that they were escorted by Nato fighters as they flew across the Atlantic.
The planes are capable of carrying nuclear missiles, but the spokesman did not give any information about whether they were carrying arms during this mission.
President Chavez has backed Russia's military operations in Georgia, and said that he is interested in buying Russian submarines. What are these? | Military Exercise | September 2008 | ['(BBC News)'] |
The United Arab Emirates overhauls its legal system to loosen restrictions on alcohol consumption, permit cohabitation, and criminalize honor killings, among other changes. | DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates announced on Saturday a major overhaul of the country’s Islamic personal laws, allowing unmarried couples to cohabitate, loosening alcohol restrictions and criminalizing so-called “honor killings.”
The broadening of personal freedoms reflects the changing profile of a country that has sought to bill itself as a Westernized destination for tourists, fortune-seekers and businesses despite its Islamic legal code that has previously triggered court cases against foreigners and outrage in their home countries. The reforms aim to boost the country’s economic and social standing and “consolidate the UAE’s principles of tolerance,” said state-run WAM news agency, which offered only minimal details in the surprise weekend announcement. The government decrees behind the changes were outlined extensively in state-linked newspaper The National, which did not cite its source. The move follows a historic U.S.-brokered deal to normalize relations between the UAE and Israel, which is expected to bring an influx of Israeli tourists and investment. It also comes as skyscraper-studded Dubai gets ready to host the World Expo. The high-stakes event, expected to bring a flurry of commercial activity and some 25 million visitors to the country, was set for October but pushed back a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The changes, which The National said would take immediate effect, also reflect the efforts of the Emirates’ rulers to keep pace with a rapidly changing society at home. “I could not be happier for these new laws that are progressive and proactive,” said Emirati filmmaker Abdallah Al Kaabi, whose art has tackled taboo topics like homosexual love and gender identity.
“2020 has been a tough and transformative year for the UAE,” he added.
Changes include scrapping penalties for alcohol consumption, sales and possession for those 21 and over. Although liquor and beer is widely available in bars and clubs in the UAE’s luxuriant coastal cities, individuals needed a government-issued license to purchase, transport or have alcohol in their homes. The new rule would allow Muslims who have been barred from obtaining licenses to drink alcoholic beverages freely.
Another amendment allows for “cohabitation of unmarried couples,” which has long been a crime in the UAE. Authorities, especially in the more freewheeling financial hub of Dubai, often looked the other way when it came to foreigners, but the threat of punishment still lingered. Attempted suicide, forbidden in Islamic law, would also be decriminalized, The National reported. In a move to better “protect women’s rights,” the government said it would get rid of laws defending “honor crimes,” a widely criticized tribal custom in which a male relative may evade prosecution for assaulting a woman seen as dishonoring a family. The punishment for a crime committed to eradicate a woman’s “shame,” for promiscuity or disobeying religious and cultural strictures, will now be the same for any other kind of assault. In a country where expatriates outnumber citizens nearly nine to one, the amendments will permit foreigners to avoid Islamic Shariah courts on issues like marriage, divorce and inheritance. The announcement said nothing of other behavior deemed insulting to local customs that has landed foreigners in jail in the past, such as acts of homosexuality, cross-dressing and public displays of affection. Traditional Islamic values remain strong in the federation of seven desert sheikhdoms. Even so, Annelle Sheline, a Middle East research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote on Twitter that the drastic changes “can happen without too much popular resistance because the population of citizens, especially in the main cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, is so small.”
The roughly 1 million Emiratis in the UAE, a hereditarily ruled country long criticized for its suppression of dissent, closely toe the government line. Political parties and labor unions remain illegal. | Government Policy Changes | November 2020 | ['(AP)'] |
At least 30 people are killed as a result of heavy monsoon rain in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. | In Pakistan, flash floods triggered by the rainfall destroyed more than 50 homes in the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
At least 22 people died in the rains, including members of three families buried when their homes collapsed.
At least 20 people were killed in heavy rains in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan in the heaviest rainfall in more than 30 years.
Rescue workers said that they feared the death toll might rise as the floodwaters receded.
Some 20,000 people have been forced to leave their homes because of flooding, junior schools have been closed and rail and transport links disrupted, the BBC's Narayan Bareth in the state capital Jaipur reports.
The state's meteorological department said Jaipur was experiencing the heaviest rains since 1981, causing flooding in low-lying neighbourhoods and slum areas.
Indian officials said that the levels of rain in the desert state were almost 50% above average, Reuters reports.
At least 10 of the people killed in the state died in the city, some of them when their homes collapsed.
According to the Times of India, the neighbouring districts of Dholpur and Dausa were also affected by the rains.
In June, at least 27 people died and a million people were forced to leave their homes by floods as rains lashed the north-eastern state of Assam.
Across the border, in Pakistan, at least 22 people died in monsoon-triggered floods, AP reports.
A total of 13 people died in Pakistan-held Kashmir on Wednesday, nine of whom were members of three families buried alive when the roofs of their houses caved in.
Nine people also died in the north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. A spokesman for the country's National Disaster Management Authority said teams were still assessing the extent of the damage.
"The death toll may rise, we are assessing the damages. Rescue work is continuing and relief activities have started," Irshad Bhatti told Agence France Presse. | Floods | August 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Twelve Somali soldiers are killed when a suicide bomber and gunmen storm a military base in Lower Shabelle. The militants briefly capture the base before it is reclaimed. Al-Shabaab claim responsibility. | MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Islamist al Shabaab militants killed at least 12 Somali soldiers and briefly captured a military base southwest of the capital on Wednesday, officials said, underscoring the insurgents’ ability to launch attacks despite a government offensive.
A suicide bomber detonated at the El Salini base before gunmen stormed in and briefly occupied it, police said. The military recaptured the base after reinforcements arrived.
“They took the base and took weapons and ammunitions, this includes anti-aircraft guns fixed on pickups,” said Nur Ahmed, a police officer from Afgoye in Lower Shabelle region.
Military officer Ismail Ali said 12 soldiers were killed and the commander of the base was injured.
Al Shabaab claimed responsibility.
“We took the base. We took two pickups with anti-aircraft guns hooked on. We destroyed four other military vehicles,” Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military operation spokesman, told Reuters.
He said the attackers had killed 15 soldiers.
Al Shabaab has been fighting the U.N.-backed Somali government for more than a decade in a bid to impose their strict version of Islamic law.
The Horn of Africa nation has been in the midst of civil war since 1991, after warlords overthrew a dictator but then turned on each other.
| Armed Conflict | February 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The European Union Act 2020 is given royal assent in the United Kingdom, formally making the bill law. | The European Parliament must still give its approval next week, but it won’t be a hurdle to the UK’s end-of-month exit. Brexit is finally, officially happening — for real this time. The United Kingdom has passed the legislation to make the current Brexit deal with the European Union official UK law, paving the way for the country’s exit from the EU on January 31. The House of Commons — the lower, elected chamber once the source of endless Brexit drama — quietly and quickly approved the bill on January 9. The House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber, approved the legislation this week with amendments. But the House of Commons overturned the changes on Wednesday, and the House of Lords relented and agreed to accept the legislation without tweaks.
With Parliament agreed, the legislation received royal assent on Thursday, allowing the Queen to give formal approval to a British exit (after approving one of a different sort this month). Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s election victory in December, which delivered him an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons, turned the historic Brexit moment into something more humdrum, as the opposition lawmakers could make little resistance to the government’s plans. Even in the House of Lords, where Johnson doesn’t have a lot of support, peers were restrained from staging too much of a challenge, as it would be seen as stymieing the will of the electorate. But the moment is still monumental, as the UK prepares to end its EU membership and chart a new version of its relationship with the bloc. The European Parliament has to approve the Brexit deal on January 29, but this is largely a formality. Which means the UK and the EU will end their 40-year marriage by the end of this month. The EU-UK relationship won’t seem that different, at least at first. The UK and the EU are about to enter an 11-month transition period, during which the UK will continue to follow most EU rules but will not have any decision-making power in the body. During this period, the UK and the EU will figure out what the future will look like: how they’ll trade with each other, how they’ll regulate financial services, how they’ll work together on security — and quite a bit more.
The starting point for these negotiations will be something called the political declaration, which sets out broad principles (“establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation with a comprehensive and balanced Free Trade Agreement at its core” — you get the idea ) but lacks details on how, exactly, these goals will be achieved. Negotiations will begin in earnest in late February or early March, and the window to complete them — again, less than 11 months — is narrow and ambitious. Many EU officials have been pretty blunt and said that they do not believe this is enough time to settle all the details of this future EU-UK cooperation. After all, it took about three years just to get to this point. This next phase is likely to be even tougher.
But this is the way Johnson wants it. The Brexit deal allows the possibility of an extension to this period until the end of 2022. Johnson, however, campaigned on the promise that he would not extend the transition period, and he eliminated that possibility from the Brexit legislation that just became law. Laws can be amended, but as of now, the UK and EU must begin landmark talks on a supercharged schedule. Hardcore Brexiteers believe the tight time window will focus minds — in the UK, but just as importantly, in Brussels, where some see the EU eager to drag this out or keep trying to entrap the UK for fear of its leaving. In reality, the EU is plenty weary of Brexit; this is something the UK did to the EU, not the other way around. But leaders in the EU are likely to be firm on one key issue: making sure that if the UK wants to retain access to the EU’s market, it cannot diverge too much from the EU’s regulations. If “Irish backstop” was the defining phrase of the first part of Brexit negotiations, get ready for “level playing field” to be the defining phrase of the second part. The EU wants to guarantee a “level playing field” with the UK in any free-trade agreement, basically to prevent the UK from so drastically changing their economic regulations (such as giving huge tax breaks or subsidies to companies) or environmental or labor standards that it could undercut the EU. Some Brexiteers once declared that after Brexit, the UK would become “Singapore on Thames” — a shorthand for a low-tax, low-regulation economy. That’s exactly what the EU wants to avoid. Of course, a “level playing field” is not a new, Brexit-specific thing. This is usually part of any free-trade agreement negotiation. The US frequently insists on a level playing field in its deals because it wants to avoid undercutting US workers or businesses. (This is, at least partly, the Trump administration’s motivation for renegotiating NAFTA.)
If it turns out the UK doesn’t want to differ very much from EU rules, this could all go rather smoothly. That could also potentially give the UK less freedom to make its own regulations than it may have originally envisioned when it left the EU. But remember all those onerous regulations the pro-Leave crowd promised would disappear once Brexit happened? So far, Johnson’s government looks as if it does want to diverge from EU rules. If Johnson follows through on that promise, things could get messy — and the tradeoff could be the degree of access the UK has to EU market. Currently, the EU is the UK’s largest trading partner: 45 percent of all UK exports go to the EU. And more than 50 percent of the UK’s imports are from the EU. Though Johnson has promised ambitious trade deals with the rest of the world — including the United States — reorienting trade takes time, as does negotiating complex agreements. As of right now, if the UK and EU don’t reach some agreement by the end of 2020, it could threaten serious serious economic disruption on the continent.
Either way, though, the UK is breaking up with the EU on January 31, even if Big Ben doesn’t chime to mark the occasion. And then the UK, the EU, and the rest of the world will start discovering what “Brexit” actually means.
| Withdraw from an Organization | January 2020 | ['(Withdrawal Agreement)', '(Vox)'] |
At least 41 people are dead after an Argentine National Gendarmerie bus crashes near the city of Salta in north–west Argentina. , | At least 41 police officers were killed Monday when a bus in a convoy in northern Argentina went off the side of a bridge and fell 65 feet (20 meters).
The bus was one of three carrying police near Salta, a city about 932 miles (1,500 kilometers) north of Buenos Aires.
"For reasons that are still unknown, the bus lost control while entering the bridge and fell into the creek bed below," said a statement issued by the National Gendarmerie, a special police force typically charged with patrolling frontier regions.
Local television images showed rescue crews working around the overturned bus, which authorities said was carrying around 60 people.
Gustavo Diaz, head of a group of volunteer firefighters in the area, told Argentine state agency Telam that 20 police were severely injured and were being treated in area hospitals.
The group was heading to the province of Jujuy, the country's most northern region that borders Bolivia.
Roads in Argentina, a large country with a land mass about four times the U.S. state of Texas, are poorly maintained in many rural areas.
The government announced that Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and National Gendarmerie director Omar Ariel Kannemann were traveling to the scene.
The crash comes as President Mauricio Macri begins his first full week in office. He issued a statement offering condolences to the families of the victims.
"It's for this reason that we need to improve the roads so that this doesn't keep happening," the statement read. | Road Crash | December 2015 | ['(BBC)', '(AP via ABC News America)'] |
David Crane, the chief prosecutor of Sierra Leone's war crimes tribunal, will step down in July after three years | David Crane told the BBC that he had promised his wife he would only do the job for three years, which end in July.
Nine people are currently on trial, accused of bearing the greatest responsibility for the killing, maiming and rape of thousands of people.
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been indicted for his alleged role in the war and is fighting attempts to extradite him from Nigeria.
The rebel RUF's campaign of violence included hacking off the limbs of civilians as a trademark act of terror.
'Off the streets'
"I can assure you that justice will be done," Mr Crane told the BBC's Network Africa programme.
Justice on trial
Catalogue of horrors awaited
He said that those who bore the greatest responsibility had been "taken off the streets".
Apart from those on trial, other suspects have died.
Mr Crane said he was still working to have Mr Taylor put on trial.
He is accused of being the RUF paymaster.
He resigned last year as part of a deal to end fighting in Liberia.
Unlike the war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone is based where the alleged crimes occurred and draws on both national and international law. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | March 2005 | ['(Reuters AlertNet)', '(AllAfrica)', '(BBC)'] |
Mount Merapi in Java, Indonesia erupts, forcing the airport in Surakarta to close. | Indonesia's most active volcano, Mount Merapi, has erupted again, spewing ash 6,000m into the air and blanketing a nearby village.
A nearby airport in the city of Solo has been forced to close, and residents have been told to stay at least 3km (1.8 miles) away.
Lightning and ash as Indonesian volcano erupts. Video, 00:00:42Lightning and ash as Indonesian volcano erupts
Up Next. Volcanoes: Living in Mount Etna's shadow. Video, 00:02:44Volcanoes: Living in Mount Etna's shadow
Preparing for a volcano to stir. Video, 00:04:03Preparing for a volcano to stir
The Big Question: Why do volcanoes erupt? Video, 00:01:06The Big Question: Why do volcanoes erupt?
'I was beating the crocodile on its snout' Video, 00:02:43'I was beating the crocodile on its snout' | Volcano Eruption | March 2020 | ['(BBC)'] |
Former Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford wins a special election for South Carolina's 1st congressional district defeating Elizabeth Colbert Busch. | Updated 11:26pm ET
Voters in South Carolina’s 1st District chose to redeem Mark Sanford Tuesday by electing him to the House of Representatives in the hotly contested race with Elizabeth Colbert Busch.
"I had deficiencies that are well chronicled as a candidate," Sanford said in his victory speech. "And at the end of the day I was carried across the threshold, if you will, by an incredible team of volunteers."
"I just want to acknowledge a God not just of second chances," Sanford went on, "but of third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eight chances, because that is the reality of our shared humanity...I also want to single out my fiancée, she also had a 10-hour trip [to get here]...Thank you as well for being here, love." And he acknowledged, "I am one imperfect man."
The race for South Carolina's 1st district commanded national attention in recent months thanks to two notable candidates. Mark Sanford is the former governor of South Carolina, who notoriously disappeared from the state during his second term to visit a mistress in Argentina--a trip that resulted in a four ethics violations totaling $74,000, the largest such fine in the state's history. Businesswoman Elizabeth Colbert Busch's high profile comes at least partly from her brother, late night political satirist Stephen Colbert.
"The people have spoken and I respect their decision...This is the beauty of our country," Colbert said in her concession speech. "It's been a tremendous honor to represent you. You are the most beautiful people in the most beautiful district in the most beautiful nation, and I cannot thank you enough."
In a heavily Republican district, Democrat Colbert Busch had an uphill climb. She ran on a moderate, localized policy agenda, focusing on South Carolinians in her district rather than making broad party-based declarations. She received help from her brother, Stephen Colbert--in addition to aid of his name recognition--who hosted several fundraising events for her, including two $500-$10,000 per person dinners in New York City and Washington D.C.
Colbert also endorsed her on his Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, on which he plays the part of a Republican pundit (read: blowhard): “Yes, yes, she’s a Democrat," he said on April 3rd. "But she’s a business woman, a job creator, who, when raising three children on $14,000 a year, went back to school, built a 20-year career in international trade, and is now leading Mark Sanford in two consecutive polls. Are we ready to do this, nation?!”
The Democratic candidate also got some help from her opponent. Having apparently overcome his past to defeat 15 other GOP contenders, Sanford's personal indiscretions resurfaced at a crucial time in the general race; in April, the Associated Press obtained court documents showing that Sanford's ex-wife had filed suit against him for alleged trespassing on her property in February. A few days later, Jenny Sanford confirmed the report. In response, Sanford released a full-page ad in the Charleston Post and Courier that started with, "It's been a rough week." In fact, with the Marathon bombing, it had been a rough week for the nation and the city of Boston—but Sanford seemed to see only events that centered around him. The trespassing allegations cost Sanford the support of the Republican National Campaign Committee, which released a statement that they would "not be engaged in this special election" on the same day that the trespassing allegations came to light.
The bruised Republican candidate, who wanted to schedule more than one debate with Colbert Busch, debated a cardboard cutout of Nancy Pelosi on the sidewalk outside the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
Colbert Busch was polling 9 points ahead of Sanford going into their debate on April 29th. The debate saw a few fireworks from Colbert Busch who accused Sanford of using taxpayer funds "to leave the country for a personal purpose." Sanford seemed to treat his debate with Colbert Busch as an extension of his debate with the cardboard Pelosi, mentioning the former Speaker of the House over a dozen times in 75 minutes (to the audible annoyance of the live audience).
Despite Colbert's Busch's polling lead, Sanford crawled back to pull ahead of her by one point, 47 to 46, on the day before the special election. Even with his blunders, Sanford has the advantage of being a Republican in a district that voted Romney over Obama by 18 points in last November's presidential election. | Government Job change - Election | May 2013 | ['(MSNBC)'] |
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin claims that pro-Russian forces have fired on Ukrainian forces over 100 times in the past day. Separatists accuse Ukrainian troops of having violated the ceasefire. Fighting continues in the encirclement of the Battle of Debaltseve with separatist forces entering the city. | Kiev (AFP) - A two-day-old truce in Ukraine was at risk of collapsing Monday as fighting raged around a strategic railway hub and both sides said conditions were not met to start withdrawing heavy weapons from the frontline.
The European Union, which backed the French- and German-mediated truce eked out last week, pleaded that "the shooting needs to stop".
The bloc also imposed fresh sanctions on Russia, which it accuses of militarily backing the pro-Russian rebels fighting Ukraine's government troops.
Russia, which denies involvement in the conflict, vowed an "appropriate response" to the EU move.
Kiev officials and rebels accused each other of ongoing attacks that prevented them from pulling back tanks, rockets and artillery from the frontline in Ukraine's east.
The United States called on Russia and the separatists to "immediately" halt attacks in eastern Ukraine, expressing grave concern about the "deteriorating situation".
The withdrawal of heavy weapons was meant to begin Monday, at midnight (2200 GMT) by the latest, under the terms of the ceasefire.
But a senior Ukrainian government source told AFP there had been no such withdrawal by the deadline.
"The withdrawal could start on Tuesday if the necessary conditions are met," the source said on condition of anonymity.
- 'Intensifying' fighting -
The worst of the violence was around the town of Debaltseve, a key transport hub between the separatist-held cities of Donetsk and Lugansk, where thousands of government troops were mostly surrounded by heavily armed rebels.
The confrontation there was "intensifying" late Monday, a deputy police chief in the Kiev-controlled part of the region, Ilya Kiva, told Ukrainian television's Channel 5.
"Fighting is under way. There is mortar shelling, attacks with howitzers and Grad missile launchers of the centre of Debaltseve," he said.
Natalia Karabuta, a municipal official who fled the town, told AFP explosions were occurring "non-stop". She estimated 5,000 civilians were trapped there with little food and water.
An Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) team tasked with monitoring the ceasefire has been unable to enter Debaltseve because of the fighting.
A Ukrainian military spokesman, Vladyslav Seleznyov, said "there is no question at the moment of us withdrawing heavy weapons" from the frontline because of rebel attacks.
The rebels also rejected pulling back any heavy weapons on their side until a "full" ceasefire was in effect.
Both sides accused the other of renewing attacks in some other areas, including at rebel-held Donetsk airport and near the port city of Mariupol.
Ukraine's government said the rebels had launched more than 112 assaults on its troops' positions on Sunday, killing five soldiers and wounding 25.
Monday saw another 38 attacks, most of them by Grad multiple rocket launchers and mortars, the defence ministry said on its Facebook page. It claimed the separatists themselves had fired on Donetsk to blame the attack on government forces.
- EU urges 'full' ceasefire -
European Commission spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said that while the truce was seen as "largely" holding, "it is imperative the ceasefire is fully implemented... it means the shooting needs to stop".
German Chancellor Angela Merkel echoed that call while admitting "the situation is fragile".
"I always said that there was no guarantee that we would succeed in our efforts. It is an extremely difficult path," she said.
Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke by telephone late Monday and expressed concern at the continued fighting around Debaltseve. The leaders called for the OSCE monitors to have "free access".
The ultimate aim of the peace plan is to end the 10-month-old conflict that has killed more than 5,600 people, according to the UN.
A previous ceasefire agreed in September stalled within days and eventually disintegrated.
Europe and the US have dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin's denials of having a hand in Ukraine's eastern insurrection.
They have noted that he made similar protestations over Ukraine's Crimea peninsula before finally admitting he had ordered in Russian troops there ahead of annexing the territory last year.
On Monday, the EU added five Russians to its travel-ban and asset-freeze blacklist: two deputy defence ministers, two lawmakers and another citizen. Fourteen Ukrainian rebel military or political figures were also blacklisted, along with nine organisations.
Russia's foreign ministry lashed out at the latest EU sanctions as "inconsistent and illogical".
"Such decisions... will be followed by an appropriate response," it warned in a statement.
Russia has already banned European food imports in retaliation for previous sanctions.
| Armed Conflict | February 2015 | ['(AFP via Yahoo! News)'] |
In association football, Russia, recovering after Friday's abandoned Euro 2016 qualifier in Montenegro, press for UEFA to award them victory. Among the injured were goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev, knocked out of the game in the first minute, concussed and nursing a neck injury after a flare struck him in the head; Dmitri Kombarov, struck by another object; Alan Dzagoev, struck by projectiles while being treated for another injury. | Russia have demanded they be awarded a victory after Friday’s Euro 2016 qualifier in Montenegro was abandoned after attacks on their players.
The match in Podgorica was halted at 0-0 after 67 minutes after Russia’s Dmitri Kombarov was hit by an object, sparking a brawl between the players. The game had previously been suspended in the first minute when the Russia goalkeeper, Igor Akinfeev, was struck on the head by a flare. He was later treated in hospital for burns. A 25-year-old Montenegro fan suspected of hurling the flare and identified only by the initials LL turned himself in to the police on Saturday accompanied by his lawyer.
The Russian Football Union president, Nikolai Tolstykh, said that his organisation would file a protest to Uefa and that “in our view, it should be a technical defeat for Montenegro”. He added that the match should have been abandoned following the attack on Akinfeev, but that Uefa’s match delegate Barry Bright had overruled Russia’s objections. Tolstykh said: “Our team was forced to continue the game.”
In addition to the attacks on Akinfeev and Kombarov, the RFU said the midfielder Alan Dzagoev had been struck by coins thrown from the stands while receiving treatment for a thigh injury.
Akinfeev, who also sustained concussion and a neck injury, was treated in a hospital in the Montenegrin capital, but was later cleared to return home.
“I want to say thank you to everyone who’s been worrying about me. I feel fine,” Akinfeev said. “I hope that nothing similar ever happens again, neither in Montenegro nor in any other country.”The general secretary of Montenegro’s FA, Momir Durdevac, described the fans who forced the match to be abandoned as “hypocrites” and “barbarians”.
“These fans sing ‘Montenegro we love you’ but throw flares, insult rivals and cause all sorts of incidents every time,” he said. “We have left the impression of barbarians and this is a complete disaster. As far as I’m concerned the game should not have continued after the first-minute incident. We can only thank God that no one was seriously hurt.”
Durdevac also questioned whether players will accept future international call-ups amid such an atmosphere. “It’s a human catastrophe, the final straw. What can we do after this? We pay a fine, we say goodbye to a great competition. And then there is a new game, and again there are flares and again there are chants, everything that should not be. Sorry, but I had to say this. Who is going to come to play for the national team under these conditions?”
Uefa said it would not opening formal proceedings before receiving reports from the match delegate and referee.
It is not the first time a match has been abandoned in this campaign, with Serbia and Albania’s meeting in October called off after a brawl broke out when a drone was flown over the pitch.
The latest incident comes after the Uefa president, Michel Platini, warned of a return to the “dark days” of hooliganism, and a rising trend of “nationalism and extremism”. | Sports Competition | March 2015 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
South Sudan appoints Francis Deng as its first ambassador to the United Nations. | Juba - South Sudan has appointed its first ambassador to the United Nations, bolstering a small and inexperienced diplomatic corps which has been struggling to make the new nation's case in disputes with Sudan over oil and the shared border.
South Sudan seceded from its northern neighbour in July last year under a 2005 peace deal, and has been trying to build up state institutions after decades of devastating civil war.
Nearly a year after declaring independence, Juba had only managed to set up about half of the 22 embassies it set as its initial goal, the foreign minister told Reuters in June.
Francis Deng, a respected scholar and former special adviser to the U.N. Secretary General on the prevention of genocide, has been appointed South Sudan's permanent representative to the United Nations.
Deng told Reuters he would work to improve the South's “waning” image abroad, but that it would not be easy.
“South Sudan has gone from people being very sceptical about its independence to supporting it, to now feeling somewhat negative,” he said.
Having a UN ambassador could help South Sudan gain other nations' support in its disagreements with Sudan. The two countries have yet to work out a list of issues related to partition, and the disputes have at times turned violent.
In April, South Sudan occupied an oil-producing region long held by Sudan, provoking widespread condemnation. South Sudan said the land was disputed, but its poor diplomatic presence made that case harder to sell, diplomats said at the time.
South Sudan withdrew from the region under pressure, and tension has since eased.
Deng said he hoped for a breakthrough between the two sides at African Union-brokered talks resuming this week in Ethiopia.
“I believe that we have probably gone through the worst already, and that an agreement is in sight,” he said. “In fact the agreement has been reached, it's just that it's supposed to be a package and so the other elements have to be included.”
A deal between the two sides on border security could open the way to resuming oil exports, which the landlocked South shut down in January in a dispute with Khartoum over how much it should pay to send the crude through Sudan.
The move wiped out 98 percent of South Sudan's state revenues, and Deng said this would affect the funds available for diplomats representing the South.
“I'm quite impressed the South has been able to function this far with no revenues from oil,” he said. “I still don't fully understand how that's possible.”
South Sudan voted overwhelmingly to secede in a 2011 referendum promised by the peace deal that ended the civil war. Some 2 million people died in the conflict, fought over religion, ethnicity, oil and ideology. - Reuters | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | September 2012 | ['(IOL)'] |
The 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia, draw to a close with the Closing ceremony. Australia finishes with a record 84 gold medals, making this their best Games ever. Samaresh Jung is adjudged the Best Athlete of the 18th Commonwealth Games. The 2010 games will be hosted by New Delhi, India. | His Royal Highness Prince Edward has formally closed the Commonwealth Games, after a typically Melbourne Closing Ceremony.Aussie rockers Grinspoon started the Ceremony with a bang, the first of a line-up of Australian music greats gracing the MCG celebrations.Grinspoon performed centre-stage, surrounded by brightly costumed ballerinas wearing the colours of Australian Rules Football teams. Singer/songwriter Paul Kelly followed, performing his hit 'Leaps and Bounds' to an appreciative Melbourne crowd, before Ben Lee and BodyRockers took to the stage.Sarah Blasko performed the Crowded House hit 'Don't Dream It's Over' in a tribute to the thousands of Games Volunteers, as snowflakes fell across the stadium to represent Melbourne's infamously unpredictable 'four seasons in one day' weather - thankfully absent for the duration of the Games.This was the first time that volunteers have been invited to actively participate in a Closing Ceremony to receive their vote of thanks face-to-face.Then followed a curtain-call for the Flag-bearers of all the competing nations, finishing with the raising of the Australian flag as a giant upside-down globe floated above the stadium, showing Australia to be on top of the world.Melbourne 2006 Chairman Ron Walker addressed the crowd, saying the Closing Ceremony was a celebration of “the greatest coalition of Commonwealth nations ever seen”.
“We have all been united by the moment,” Mr Walker said. “Melbourne – we did it!”The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) flag was then lowered by a party representing Australia’s three emergency services, and handed to Suresh Kalmadi, Chairman of the Organising Committee for the 2010 Delhi Games, before 800 Indian performers marked the hand over of the Games with a Bollywood spectacular.Among the performers were 12 Bollywood superstars, including actress and former Miss Universe Aishwarya Rai, who played the lead in the recent film 'Bride and Prejudice'. Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) President, Mike Fennell, also named Indian Shooting athlete Samaresh Jung as the winner of the inaugural David Dixon Award.
Jung won an incredible seven medals at the Games, five gold, one silver and one bronze and set three new Games records along the way.
The CGF established the David Dixon Award, in memory of the man who served as its Honorary Secretary for 17 years, to honour the outstanding athlete at each Commonwealth Games.His Royal Highness Prince Edward then formally closed the Commonwealth Games, before Moonee Pond's most famous housewife, Dame Edna Everage, addressed the MCG via satellite - and introduced a stadium full of 1000 'Edna lookalikes'.Musical legend John Farnham started the finale of the unforgettable evening, performing as athletes spilled out onto the field to party under the stars.His closing song, 'You're The Voice', triggered an explosive city-wide pyrotechnics display - the final fireworks of Melbourne 2006.Ceremonies Artisitc Director and Executive Producer Andrew Walsh said, "If the opening Ceremony was about theatre, the Closing is distinctly Melbourne.". | Sports Competition | March 2006 | ['(M2006)', '(Rediff)'] |
2011 Spanish protests: More than 100,000 people, the "indignant", march on Madrid and other Spanish cities to protest government cuts, unemployment and the policies of the European Commission. |
Protests in Spain took on an anti-Brussels flavour on Sunday when tens of thousands of marchers converged on the centre of Madrid to protest against economic austerity measures backed by the European Commission and northern members of the eurozone.
Previous demonstrations – in a series that started five weeks ago and became known as the May 15 movement – claimed to be non-partisan and directed their criticism more towards Spain’s two main political parties and the country’s high level of youth unemployment.
On Sunday, however, some leftwing protesters specifically attacked a “pact for the euro”, agreed in March to strengthen economic co-ordination in the eurozone and to support budgetary austerity measures and other economic reforms being implemented in various eurozone countries.
One group opposed to the euro pact called on workers to prepare for a general strike. Its declarations were greeted with cries of “Long live the working class!”. Thousands also demonstrated in Barcelona and other cities. The mood was peaceful and relaxed and there were no reports of any violence by the afternoon.
Spain’s three-year-old economic crisis appears to be deepening the historic political divisions between left and right. In regional and local elections across Spain on May 22, both the rightwing opposition Popular party (PP) and the hard-left Izquierda Unida gained votes at the expense of the Socialist party, which runs the central government.
Rightwingers, including PP leaders, said recent street protests were organised by leftwing extremists. Leftwingers said some of the few violent incidents that had marred the demonstrations might be the work of extreme right “agents provocateurs”.
Neither the PP nor the Socialists of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the prime minister, are likely to benefit from the popular unrest now that it has begun to concentrate on economic austerity measures which are supported by the European Union.
Both the PP and the Socialists are determined to cut Spain’s budget deficit by curbing public spending, in order to restore Spain’s credibility in the international sovereign bond markets and avoid the need for a bail-out, following the rescues of Greece, Ireland and Portugal by the EU and the International Monetary Fund.
But after three years of economic recession and stagnation, many ordinary Spaniards said they have become tired of suffering a crisis which they believe to the fault of others, including governments, capitalists and the big banks.
“We’re not going to pay for this crisis” and “Nobody represents us” were common chant in Madrid on Sunday among the protesters, who have become known as “los indignados” or “the indignant ones”.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | June 2011 | ['(The Age)', '(The Financial Times)', '(Press TV)', '(Reuters Africa)', '(BBC)'] |
The Pakistani Taliban claims to have shot down a Pakistani Air Force F-16, and releases pictures of the wreckage. | Pakistan’s most dangerous militant group claimed that it shot down a Pakistani military F-16 with a surface-to-air missile Friday taking a number of pictures of the aircraft wreckage, most of which is marked in English and believed to have been sold by the United States to the Pakistani military, TheBlaze has learned.
The Tehreek-i-Taliban, known by its acronym TTP, also confirmed the death of Afghan Taliban commander Hasan Janaza, who they say was killed in a clash with Pakistani security forces in the lawless Federally Administered Tribal Agency(FATA) that borders Afghanistan.
Taliban fighters appear to be looking at an unexploded bomb from a downed Pakistani F-16 jet. The Taliban claimed they shot down the jet with a surface-to-air missile on Friday. Photo/TheBlaze
TheBlaze obtained dozens of photos from a Pakistani source of the funeral and of the wreckage of the jet, which appeared to still have unexploded bombs and munitions.
Pakistan’s most militant extremist group, TTP, claims it shot down a Pakistani military F-16 Friday with a manpad. The Blaze obtained dozens of photos, which appear to show the wreckage of an aircraft and what appears to be unexploded ordinance. Photo, obtained by TheBlaze
As the United States prepares to drawdown by the end of the year, violence continues to escalate and an election crisis, which has left Hamid Karzai acting as interim president, is still unresolved. This past week the Taliban has ramped up their attacks, claiming responsibility for a suicide bomb that left two American soldiers and another NATO soldier dead.
“It’s difficult to access what really happened with the jet,” said a U.S. official familiar with the region. “What we do know is that the Taliban is planning on continuing its attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan as we prepare to bring our troops home and this is going to be a very dangerous time. There is certainly reason for concern when the Taliban claims they have manpads. We’re just as concerned about groups in Syria and Iraq claiming to have these surface to air missiles because they are a threat to civilian aircraft, as we saw in Ukraine.”
The Taliban also claimed last month in a statement obtained by TheBlaze that it considers “ISIS [Islamic State] and every other mujahid group as our brothers.” The U.S. and France have been targeting IS militants with airstrikes over the past month. The terrorist organization has seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq in their attempt to rebuild a caliphate. They are responsible for gruesome acts of terror and have claimed responsibility for the beheading of two U.S. journalists and a U.N aid worker. They are also threatening to strike at the U.S. homeland.
The Taliban confirmed that one of its top commanders has been killed by the Pakistani military. This is a picture from the burial of Afghan Taliban commander Hasan Afghani Janaza, where a number of senior Taliban commanders attended Friday in the tribal belt. The Taliban also claimed it show down a Pakistani F-16 jet with a surface to air missile on Friday in retaliation for their commanders death. Photos/TheBlaze.
The Pakistani military has been conducting major campaigns against the Taliban in an area of the FATA, known as North Waziristan, according to the Pakistan Defense Agency.
A picture of Afghan Taliban leader Hasan Afghani Janaza. Taliban leadership claimed he was killed by Pakistani military on Sept. 18, 2014. He was being held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and then released earlier this year.
Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said in statement Saturday that Hasan Afghani Janaza, a commander of the outlawed group, was killed in a clash with security forces in the region’s Boya area two days ago, according to reports from the region. According to a statement from the TTP, which was obtained by TheBlaze, Hasan was from the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul. He was recently released and went back to join the militant fighters in Pakistan, according to the statement.
A top Taliban commander and religious leader, who is wanted by the United States as well, was at Hasan’s funeral, among a number of other militant fighters.
Pakistan’s most militant extremist group, TTP, claims it shot down a Pakistani military F-16 Friday with a manpad. The Blaze obtained dozens of photos, which appear to show the wreckage of an aircraft and what appears to be unexploded ordinance. Photos issued by TTP/TheBlaze
Pakistani Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah Ameer Sahib, along with an unidentified Taliban leader speaking at the funeral of an Afghan Taliban Commander Hasan Janaza believed to have been killed in a Pakistani military operation in Pakistan on Sept. 18, 2014. The commander is responsible for attacking and killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan and running terrorist operations in the region that has also led to the deaths of hundreds of civilians. | Armed Conflict | September 2014 | ['(The Blaze)'] |
Former Volkswagen engineer James Liang is sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Sean Cox to 40 months in prison and a $200,000 fine for his role in the decade-long scheme to cheat on federal emissions tests for diesel-powered cars sold in the United States. He is the first company employee sent to prison in the scandal. | DETROIT — A Volkswagen engineer was sentenced on Friday to 40 months in prison for his role in the German automaker’s decade-long scheme to cheat on federal emissions tests for diesel-powered cars sold in the United States.
The engineer, James Liang, is the first company employee sent to prison in the vast scandal that has tainted Volkswagen’s reputation and cost it more than $20 billion in fines and settlements with consumers.
In September 2015, Volkswagen was accused of evading emissions standards in the U.S. The scandal has hit the company hard.
Volkswagen admitted that 11 million of its vehicles were equipped with software that was used to cheat on emissions tests. This is how the technology works and what it now means for vehicle owners. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | August 2017 | ['(The New York Times)', '(Reuters)'] |
A Nigeria Police Force station in the northern city of Maiduguri is destroyed in an attack blamed on the Boko Haram Islamist group. | A police station in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri has been destroyed in an attack blamed on the Boko Haram Islamic sect.
One policeman was injured by gunmen who shot at the entrance before an explosion inside injured another policeman and woman.
At least 18 people, mostly police officers, have been killed in the city in the past two months.
Clashes between Boko Haram and the police in July 2009 left hundreds dead.
The BBC's Bilkisu Babangida in Maiduguri says the attack follows the killings on Saturday of an Islamic scholar, his follower and a policeman in separate attack.
The scholar was believed to have been preaching against the sect, which is opposed to Western education and accuses Nigeria's government of being corrupted by Western ideas.
Our correspondent says the attack on Monday night happened at about 2130 local time.
Police say a locally made Molotov cocktail exploded inside the police station, which is in the Gamboru suburb, near the former headquarters of Boko Haram.
Most of those killed in the recent assassinations have been shot by people riding motorbikes.
In a bid to reduce the killings, motorbikes have been banned at night but the shooting have continued.
Hundreds of people suspected of being Boko Haram members escaped from prison in September after gunmen attacked the jail where they were being held in the city.
Last year's violence started when Boko Haram members attacked a police station in Maiduguri before clashes spread to neighbouring areas.
Most of those who died were supporters of the sect, which is also known locally as the Taliban and wants to see Islamic law imposed across Nigeria.
The sect's leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was among those killed, apparently after he was handed over alive to the police. | Armed Conflict | October 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
Thousands of people in central Paris demonstrate in an anti-Macron protest against his sweeping reforms. 2,000 security forces are deployed. | Tens of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in Paris to protest against the stream of economic reforms brought in by French President Emmanuel Macron since coming to power a year ago.
Protesters bearing "Stop Macron" banners and chanting "one year is enough" were cheered on by drummers and marching bands in an anti-celebration of Mr Macron's time in office organised by a member of the hard-left France Unbowed movement.
The carnivalesque atmosphere follows a tense May Day rally in Paris, when hundreds of masked and hooded anarchists torched cars and hurled rocks at police on Tuesday, hijacking a demonstration called by labour unions.
Saturday's demonstration, under a large police presence, comes almost a year to the day since 40-year-old Mr Macron won the presidential race on a centrist platform and with a pledge to shake-up rigid institutions and revitalise the economy.
A wave of reforms soon followed, including an overhaul of labour laws that has made it easier for companies to hire and fire, earning Mr Macron the tag of "president of the rich" among detractors and sparking discontent from labour unions.
With a political opposition in tatters, Mr Macron vowed to press on with his bid to reboot the economy, even as he faces one of his sternest tests to date with a rolling strike by rail workers protesting a shake-up at state-owned train company SNCF.
Members of France Unbowed, headed by Jean-Luc Melenchon who also stood for the presidency last year, have sought to fire up a backlash against Mr Macron's policies by getting backers onto the streets.
AP: Francois Mori
The party estimated 160,000 people took part in Saturday's protest — the Paris prefect's office put the tally at 40,000 — and France Unbowed is pushing to hold a much larger rally with unions and other forces on May 26.
"The issue here are the endless gifts being made to the rich while the French people are struggling," Mr Melenchon told TF1 television ahead of the march, which drew a diverse crowd, from hospital workers and parent groups to communist supporters.
There were a few isolated scuffles at the march and at least four people were arrested, while one policeman was injured, the police prefect's office said.
Yet despite simmering protest movements, on the 50th anniversary of the May 1968 student riots that brought France to its knees, unions have lost clout and the mood is far from revolutionary.
Some 45 per cent of French people gave Mr Macron's first year in office the thumbs up, according to a poll of more than 13,500 by Ipsos-Sopra Steria published on Saturday in Le Monde, with the planned overhaul of the SNCF proving the most popular reform.
But when asked about the government's reform methods, 55 per cent of people taking part in the survey said they thought they were too authoritarian.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | May 2018 | ['(ABC)'] |
At least 20 people are killed and 42 injured after two suicide bombings in northern Iraq. | MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) At least 20 people were killed and another 42 wounded in two suicide bombings targeting police and security forces in northern Iraq on Thursday, officials said.
A man in a explosives-packed jacket blew himself up at a recruitment centre in Sinjar, a town west of the provincial capital Mosul on the road to Syria, and killed 17 people, officials said.
Interior ministry spokesman Major General Abdul Kareem Khalaf told AFP that the bomber targeted a centre that recruited personnel for the police and security services in the area.
Hospital sources said about 30 people were wounded.
A few hours earlier, a suicide bomber drove into a group of police officers and detonated his explosives in Al-Gabat, just north of Mosul, police Captain Aziz Imara told AFP.
At least three people, including two policemen, were killed and 12 people were wounded, he said, adding that the blast had also damaged shops and restaurants.
Iraqi security forces backed by the US military have been conducting a major crackdown against jihadists in the area since May 14. Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, is regarded by the American military as the last urban bastion of Al-Qaeda in the country. | Armed Conflict | May 2008 | ['(AFP via Google News)'] |
Former FIFA vice–president Jack Warner becomes the national security minister of Trinidad and Tobago. | Former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner has become national security minister in his native Trinidad and Tobago.
The appointment comes a year after Mr Warner resigned from the world football body after widespread allegations of corruption against him. Trinidad Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said he was a man of action who would be useful in the fight against crime. Mr Warner was the longest serving member of Fifa's executive committee.
He also dominated Caribbean football for more than three decades.
He previously held the post of minister of works in the government.
Mr Warner resigned from Fifa following allegations that he and fellow Fifa member Mohamed Bin Hammam had paid million-dollar bribes to Caribbean football associations. However, the former vice-president described the giving of gifts in Fifa as normal practice and accused those who had made the allegations of hypocrisy.
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | June 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
A court in Hong Kong convicts an 81–year–old man for stabbing pro–democracy activist Leung Kwok–hung, also known as "Long Hair". Magistrate Cheang Kei–hong adjourned sentencing to October 13 and praised the perpetrator for "loving society", while also commenting that Leung was not hurt seriously. | An 81-year-old man who attacked "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung with a chisel was praised by a magistrate at Eastern court yesterday for "loving society."
Wong Sum-kau had admitted assault causing bodily harm before magistrate Cheang Kei-hong.
The attack happened outside the Liaison Office in Sai Ying Pun on April 16 when Leung was being interviewed after a protest. He was sent to hospital with a scratch on his waistline.
Wong said he acted out of righteousness as he verbally attacked against other activists.
"One is Ted Hui Chi-fung, another is Joshua Wong Chi-fung - both have to die sooner or later," Wong said. "I can't bear anyone destroying our Chinese land ... Even if it wasn't Leung Kwok-hung but the emperor I would put him out."
Wong also told Cheang: "You can handle me by strictly following the rules. I did it for the sake of everybody."
He also said his real age is 83.
After watching footage of the crime, Cheang said Wong looked fit.
Wong responded: "I used to live in poverty in my home town. There were many snakes and I ate plenty of snake soup and congee."
Cheang also said Wong "loves society" and had attacked Leung due to a difference of political opinion. And he noted Leung was not hurt seriously.
He cited a case when a defendant convicted of the same offense was handed two months in prison. But it was changed to 160 hours of community service upon appeal.
So Cheang adjourned sentencing to October 13 for a report about community service, but he warned that Wong could go to prison before releasing him on HK$500 bail.
Leung said he didn't know Wing he was so old.
"It's very sad to put an elderly man in his 80s in jail," he said. "I understand the magistrate wouldn't want to give him such a sentence." | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | September 2020 | ['(The Standard)'] |
Peter Robinson announces he will step down as Northern Ireland's First Minister and as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, corresponding with recent tensions in the area and a murder linked with the Irish Republican Army. | Mr Robinson's article in the Belfast Telegraph, written ahead of his party's conference, confirmed he will not contest next May's Assembly election and is likely leave office in the coming weeks.
The announcement came two days after a deal was struck to salvage Stormont's crisis-hit power-sharing administration following 10 weeks of negotiations over a range of disputes, including the fallout from a murder linked to the IRA.
Mr Robinson had stepped down in September at the height of the political crisis, but returned as First Minister last month after a Government-ordered report into paramilitary activities in Northern Ireland was published.
Writing in the Belfast Telegraph on his decision to permanently step down, Mr Robinson said: "I think it would be disrespectful to the party membership if I was to go through a conference with the pretence that I would be leading the party into the next election."
Westminster-based North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds will be among the favourites to take over as DUP leader, though another senior party figure may take on the role of Stormont First Minister. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | November 2015 | ['(ITV News)'] |
Venezuelan security forces clash with opposition demonstrators in the so-called "Mother of All Marches" against President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. Two students and a National Guard sergeant are shot dead. (Reuters²) | CARACAS/SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela (Reuters) - Two Venezuelan students and a National Guard sergeant died on Wednesday after being shot during protests against unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro, increasing turmoil in the volatile nation amid a devastating economic crisis.
Violence erupts in 'Mother of all marches' in Venezuela
01:39
Opposition supporters protested in Caracas and other cities in what they called “the mother of all marches,” denouncing Maduro for eroding democracy and plunging the oil-rich economy into chaos.
Crowds swelled to hundreds of thousands, including Maduro supporters who held a counter-demonstration in the capital at the urging of the president, and clashes were reported across the country during the most sustained protests since 2014.
Maduro says that beneath a peaceful facade, the protests are little more than opposition efforts to foment a coup to end socialism in Venezuela. The opposition says he has morphed into a dictator and accuses his government of using armed civilians to spread violence and fear.
The deaths mean eight people have now been killed during protests in Venezuela this month. The opposition blames the deaths on security forces and alleged paramilitary groups. Over 400 people were arrested during protests on Wednesday, rights group Penal Forum said.
The opposition called for another protest on Thursday, raising the specter of prolonged disruption in Venezuela.
“Same place, same time,” said opposition leader Henrique Capriles on Wednesday night. “If we were millions today, tomorrow we’ll be more.”
Wednesday’s dueling marches drew parallels to the clashes between pro and anti-government protesters in 2002 that triggered a brief coup against late President Hugo Chavez.
Carlos Moreno, 18, a student, was leaving his home to play soccer in Caracas when armed government supporters approached a nearby opposition gathering and fired shots, according to witnesses. He was shot in the head, they said, and three security officials said he later died in a clinic after undergoing surgery.
Later on Wednesday in the opposition hotbed of San Cristobal near the Colombia border, university student Paola Ramirez died after being shot by men pursuing her and her boyfriend, according to relatives and witnesses.
“We were on a motorbike and they were following us, shooting,” her boyfriend told Reuters. “I left her on a block where she was going to find her sister and I went to hide the bike. I heard shots and when I arrived she was on the ground. I tried to protect her as much as I could,” he added, sobbing in front of her body.
The public prosecutor’s office said it was investigating both cases.
The opposition attributed both deaths to groups known as “colectivos,” armed government supporters who are frequently accused of involvement in confrontations during protests.
There are few clear ways of identifying colectivos, who call themselves community groups but whom the opposition accuses of being violent paramilitary wings of the ruling Socialist Party.
A National Guard sergeant was killed by a sniper during “violent protests” in Miranda state and a colonel was injured, the human rights ombudsman Tarek Saab tweeted on Wednesday night.
“MADURO OUT!”
Waving the country’s red, yellow and blue flags and shouting “No more dictatorship” and “Maduro out,” demonstrators clogged a stretch of the main highway in Caracas. Troops fired tear gas in Caracas neighborhoods, San Cristobal, the depressed industrial city of Puerto Ordaz, and the arid northern city of Punto Fijo.
“We have to protest because this country is dying of hunger said Alexis Mendoza, a 53-year-old administrator marching in the Caracas neighborhood of El Paraiso. “There are a lot of people in the opposition and they are full of courage.”
The march followed a fortnight of violent protests triggered by a Supreme Court decision in March to assume the powers of the opposition-led Congress - which it quickly reversed under international pressure.
The court’s move nonetheless fueled long-simmering anger over the ruling Socialist Party’s handling of the economy. The OPEC country suffers from Soviet-style shortages of food and medicines and triple-digit inflation.
The opposition is demanding early elections, the freeing of jailed politicians, humanitarian aid, and respect for the autonomy of the opposition-led legislature.
The marchers gathered at more than two dozen points around Caracas, although some were stalled by authorities closing around 20 subway stops. Protesters had hoped to converge on the office of the state ombudsman, but as in previous attempts they were blocked by the National Guard. The protests trailed off with youths throwing rocks squaring off against security forces spraying tear gas.
MADURO SAYS “ANTI-CHRISTS” DEFEATED
Maduro has charged that the opposition is trying to relive the 2002 coup against Chavez, his predecessor and mentor, by blocking roads and vandalizing public property.
On Wednesday afternoon he addressed a cheering red-shirted crowd in Caracas to declare that a “corrupt and interventionist right-wing” had been defeated.
“Today the people stood by Maduro!” the president said, blasting his rivals as “anti-Christs.” “We’ve triumphed again! Here we are, governing, governing, governing with the people!” he added, before breaking into song and dance.
Analysts say there is less likelihood of a coup against Maduro because Chavez launched a broad purge of the armed forces following his brief ouster.
Some unhappy Venezuelans also steer clear of protests, fearful of violence, cynical that marches can bring about change, or too busy looking for food amid the recession.
Venezuela benefited for years from oil-fueled consumption and many poor citizens rose into the middle class. But the 2014 collapse in oil prices left the government unable to maintain a complex system of subsidies and price controls. Snaking grocery lines are now a common sight and people routinely say they skip meals and cannot find basic medication.
Further spurring outrage was a decision by the national comptroller’s office earlier this month to disqualify opposition politician Capriles from holding office for 15 years, dashing his hopes for the presidency.
The elections council, which is sympathetic to the government, has delayed votes for state governors that were supposed to take place last year.
Demonstrators also gathered on Wednesday in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz, home to Venezuela’s struggling state-run mining companies, and the oil city of Maracaibo.
“I’ve just graduated ... and what I’ve got in the bank isn’t enough for a bottle of cooking oil,” said Gregorio Mendoza, a 23-year-old engineer in Puerto Ordaz. “We’re poorer every day.”
Additional reporting by Diego Ore, Girish Gupta, Deisy Buitrago, and Andreina Aponte in Caracas, German Dam in Ciudad Guayana, Maria Ramirez in Puerto Ordaz, Isaac Urrutia in Maracaibo, and Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo; Writing by Brian Ellsworth and Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Frances Kerry, Lisa Shumaker and Michael Perry
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. | Protest_Online Condemnation | April 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Spanish King Felipe VI swears in the cabinet of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. It is the first cabinet in European history, and the only in the world, to be composed primarily of women. | Spain's King Felipe VI has sworn in a new Socialist government with a record number of 11 women in 17 cabinet posts.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said his new team "shared the same vision of a progressive society that was both modernising and pro-European".
The cabinet is in marked contrast to the male-dominated executives of centre-right ex-PM Mariano Rajoy, who was ousted last week.
As a minority government, it will rely on other parties to enact legislation.
Including the prime minister, the 18-strong government is 61.1% female - the highest proportion in the country's history. Only a handful of countries currently have governments where at least 50% of ministers are women. They include France, Sweden and Canada. Women have been given some of the biggest jobs in the new Spanish cabinet, including the defence, economy, finance and education portfolios. Separately, an ex-astronaut has been given the role of science minister.
Mr Sánchez, 46, whose party commands just 84 seats in the 350-seat parliament, came to power when Mr Rajoy lost his job in the wake of a massive corruption scandal.
The new prime minister, who says he is a feminist, said his government marked a watershed moment in Spanish society.
His mix of party colleagues and experienced figures from outside politics is being described in Spain as a "feminist cabinet". In a televised statement on Wednesday evening he spoke of Europe as "our new homeland" and said he saw his cabinet as a faithful reflection of a change in Spain that had emerged on 8 March through a feminist movement. An estimated five million women across the country staged a "feminist strike" on that day against wage inequality and gender violence.
One of the biggest jobs has gone to Carmen Calvo, a Socialist who will become deputy prime minister and take charge of a reinstated equality ministry. Some of the other new ministers are:
La cultura nos hace más libres. Y más felices. Hoy me acuerdo de ti, maestra. pic.twitter.com/aGQwNx8Pja
In a tweet, the new culture minister paid tribute to his "teacher", the late writer Ana María Matute, with the words: "Culture makes us more free and more happy."
As the ministers were sworn in by the king on Thursday, they took their oaths on the constitution rather than on the bible or crucifix, following the example of Mr Sánchez, who became the first prime minister to forego religious symbols during his swearing-in on Saturday.
By James Badcock, Madrid Pedro Sánchez promised his government would be "Socialist and have gender parity". In fact, the government is not entirely Socialist because of its strong technocratic core, and women are commanding a majority. Given that Mr Sánchez has promised to call elections in less than two years and that he has inherited the outgoing government's budget for 2018, he is looking for a formula that will give him victory at the polls. He may have only 84 seats and will struggle to pass reforms, but he hopes to at least dangle enticing plans before Spanish voters. He has made a point of sourcing talent from outside his party as well as within. The women in his cabinet include a climate change treaty negotiator, a top Eurocrat and Spain's top anti-terror prosecutor. One of the other stand-out names was ex-astronaut Pedro Duque, 55, who last went to space in 2003 as part of an International Space Station (ISS) mission.
An aeronautical engineer with three children, he was selected by the European Space Agency's astronaut corps in 1992 and travelled to space for the first time in 1998, when he joined Nasa's STS-95 mission from Cape Canaveral. Mr Duque served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on the nine-day mission.
In 2003, he took part in the 10-day Cervantes ISS mission as a flight engineer on the Russian Soyuz-TMA. Conservative Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy, who took office in 2011, lost his job as prime minister last week after losing a no-confidence motion in parliament. On Wednesday, Mr Rajoy, 63, said he planned to leave the political scene, saying "there are other things to do in life than dedicate oneself to politics".
He added: "I had an enormously intense political life and I think it makes no sense to stay longer here." | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | June 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
A car bomb explodes outside a police station in Newtownhamilton, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. (People's Daily Online) | A car bomb exploded last night outside a police station in a Northern Ireland village close to the border with the Irish Republic. The explosion in Newtownhamilton in South Armagh came half an hour before midnight and damaged the building and nearby houses.
Police had been alerted that a vehicle had been abandoned when a call was made to a Belfast hospital at 10.30pm, according to a Police Service of Northern Ireland spokesman, and officers were en route to the station when the device went off. It later emerged that three people were injured but none seriously. Several homes were evacuated and fire crews were at the scene. The terrorist attack was the 35th on the station since the early 1970s. Recent weeks have seen an escalation in terrorism. Last week a suspect device was left in an abandoned car outside the same station, and up to 60 homes were evacuated. Senior police sources have recently warned that the threat by dissident republican terrorists is higher than at any time since the Omagh bomb almost 12 years ago. Earlier this month, the Real IRA claimed responsibility for a separate car bomb attack outside MI5's headquarters in Holywood, County Down, less than half an hour after policing and justice powers were devolved to Stormont.
But it emerged that a smaller republican group, glaigh na hEireann, was behind the MI5 attack rather than the Real IRA. ONH has within its ranks a number of experienced ex-Provisional IRA bomb makers. The security forces are on alert for attacks in the run-up to the general election. But some politicians and policing pundits are concerned there is an "intelligence gap" within the PSNI regarding terrorist groups opposed to the peace process. | Armed Conflict | April 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(CNN)', '(The Guardian)'] |
North Korea fires another ballistic missile off its east coast, according to South Korean officials. This occurred while world leaders are attending the annual Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., where North Korea is on the agenda for discussion. | Ballistic missile fired from site in the east, says South Korea, in the middle of Washington summit dismissed by the North as an exercise in fault-finding
Last modified on Tue 5 Sep 2017 08.14 BST
North Korea appears to have fired another ballistic missile off its east coast on Friday, South Korean officials said, as regional leaders met in Washington to discuss the threat of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.
South Korea’s defence ministry said the missile was fired at about 12.45pm local time from near Sondok airport in the east. The range and trajectory could not immediately be confirmed, a ministry official said.
It is the latest in a series of North Korean missile launches during what has been an extended period of elevated military tension on the Korean peninsula, triggered by Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test on 6 January.
Friday’s launch came in the middle of a two-day nuclear security summit being hosted by Barack Obama in Washington, at which North Korea has been the focus of the US president’s talks with the leaders of China, South Korea and Japan.
Obama spoke on Thursday of the need to “vigilantly enforce the strong UN security measures” imposed on the North after its latest nuclear test and subsequent long-range rocket launch.
Pyongyang’s state media has labelled the summit a “nonsensical” effort to find fault with the North’s “legitimate access to nuclear weapons”.
Existing UN sanctions ban North Korea from conducting any ballistic missile test, although short-range launches tend to go unpunished.
In February, the North upped the ante by test-firing two medium-range missiles, which were seen as far more provocative given the threat they pose to neighbours such as Japan. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | April 2016 | ['(The Guardian)', '(Yonhap)', '[permanent dead link]'] |
The World Bank announces a US$1.2 billion package to fight the global food crisis including $200 million in grants for those most at risk in Third World countries. | WASHINGTON (AFP) — The World Bank on Thursday announced a 1.2 billion dollar program to fight the global food crisis, including 200 million dollars in grants to poor countries facing the most dire needs.
The new program aims to speed up aid to those in need as "high food prices are making the bottom billion (people) into potentially the bottom two billion," World Bank president Robert Zoellick said.
The Bank also said it would boost its overall support for global agriculture and food to six billion dollars next year, up 50 percent.
Crop insurance and other assistance for small farmers in developing countries also will be part of the program, Zoellick said in a media teleconference from the sidelines of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development.
In preparation for a UN-sponsored food crisis summit in Rome next week, Zoellick said he has emphasized "the need for a clear action plan."
Skyrocketing commodity prices in the past year have battered developing countries, where food takes the lion's share of household income.
Rising food prices have sparked deadly unrest and rising malnutrition, and a number of countries have put limits on exports to try to feed their own populations.
Zoellick, a former top US trade official who has made agriculture a priority since taking the helm of the poverty-fighting bank last July, said the new program was aimed at supporting coordinated international efforts.
More than 150 countries agreed to a "new deal" for global food policy at the spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in April.
The new 1.2 billion dollar rapid-response facility supports safety-net programs such as food for work, conditional cash transfers, and school feeding for the most vulnerable.
It also provides support for food production by supplying seeds and fertilizer, improving irrigation for small farmers, and providing budget support to offset tariff reductions for food and other unexpected costs,
A 200 million dollar trust fund for the most vulnerable will come from income from the bank's International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
The World Bank approved the first grants from the trust fund for Liberia, Haiti and Djibouti on Thursday, with Liberia and Haiti receiving 10 million dollars each and Djibouti five million.
"What's urgent and key," Zoellick said, "is that we immediately respond to the terrible human needs of the present crisis ensuring that millions don't fall into this process again but also that we build a production response so we can transition this into an opportunity so we can make the African farmers help not only feed Africa, but people around the world."
Oxfam International's senior policy adviser, Elizabeth Stuart, welcomed the announcement.
"The World Bank has shown impressive leadership on the food crisis in the last few weeks," she said. "We need to see similar political momentum and serious response from next week's meeting in Rome."
US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, who will lead the US delegation to the three-day FAO world food security conference that opens Tuesday in Rome, said he would propose biotechnology as a strategy to boost agricultural production.
According to a study released Thursday by the US General Accountability Office, agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa, as measured by grain yield, is only about 40 percent of that of the rest of the world's developing countries, and the gap has widened over the years. | Financial Aid | May 2008 | ['(AFP via Google News)'] |
In women's college basketball, Baylor defeats top–ranked Connecticut 68–57, handing the Huskies their first regular–season loss since November 2014 and ending their NCAA–record regular–season winning streak at 126 games. | .
Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox describe what Baylor did differently to end UConn's 126-game regular-season winning streak. (2:01)
WACO, Texas -- Geno Auriemma knew that top-ranked UConn couldn't keep winning every regular-season game it played, even though the Huskies had won 126 in a row.
That winning streak of more than four years ended with a 68-57 loss Thursday night at No. 8 Baylor, which won against a No. 1 team for the first time.
"What is disappointing for me, not that we lost. How long did you think you were going to win every game in the regular season, 10 years?'' Auriemma said. "So I'm not surprised that we lost, but it was disappointing that we struggled so much on the offensive end.''
The Huskies (11-1) hadn't lost a regular-season game in regulation since a 76-70 home loss to Baylor in a Nos. 1 vs. 2 matchup on Feb. 18, 2013 -- a span of 163 games. Their only regular-season loss since then was 88-86 in overtime at Stanford on Nov. 14, 2014.
"Stanford in 2014. Think about that,'' Auriemma said.
The 11-time national champion Huskies shot only 29 percent (20-of-68) with their lowest point total this season. Their only lead came at 2-0 when Crystal Dangerfield scored in the opening minute of the game.
Kalani Brown had 20 points and 17 rebounds for the Lady Bears (10-1).
UConn is the only No. 1 team Baylor has ever faced in 19 seasons under coach Kim Mulkey, who has two national championships coaching the Lady Bears. They had lost each of the previous three such meetings, including UConn's last visit to Waco nearly five years ago.
"Connecticut gets everybody's best shot. They don't lose much, we don't lose much,'' Mulkey said. "When you can do it year after year after year, taking people's best shots and you have a shot to play each other, it's good for women's basketball.''
Chloe Jackson added 13 points, 8 assists and 7 rebounds for Baylor, and NaLyssa Smith had 12 points. Juicy Landrum scored 11 points and Lauren Cox had nine points and seven rebounds.
Napheesa Collier had 16 points and 11 rebounds for UConn, and Katie Lou Samuelson also had a double-double with 12 points and 11 rebounds. But the two seniors were a combined 8-of-34 shooting. Dangerfield had 11 points and Megan Walker 10.
"It just felt like everyone was kind of stagnant out there. We were all just looking at each other,'' said Samuelson, who missed her first six shots and finished 4-of-16. "We weren't hitting those difficult shots, and sometimes we do, but we don't always. When we're not getting shots in our offense, we shoot worse than we normally do. That's on us to be able to figure that out.''
BIG PICTURE
UConn: Auriemma's team was coming off tough wins at Oklahoma and California, and after both games the coach talked about those kinds of games were how the majority of the world lives. This time, they couldn't pull off a late comeback. The last time UConn had consecutive losses was in 1993 -- a span of 937 games going into its conference opener.
Baylor: The Lady Bears have won 28 consecutive home games and extended their nonconference home winning streak to 45 games since a home loss to UConn on Jan. 13, 2014.
IN AND OUT OF THE PAINT
Baylor outscored UConn 52-10 in the paint. "Are you surprised that they scored 52 points in the paint,'' Auriemma said. "I would think they would suck if they didn't score 52 points in the paint. They've got every one of our guys by six inches, so we knew that was going to happen, and we were OK with that. What we weren't OK with was how hard it was for us to get the shots that we wanted. And then when we did get the shots that we wanted, we didn't make any of them.''
UP NEXT
UConn, which hasn't lost an American Athletic Conference game in five full seasons in the league, opens conference play Sunday at Houston.
Baylor, which last season won its ninth Big 12 title, opens conference play Sunday at Texas Tech. | Sports Competition | January 2019 | ['(AP via ESPN)'] |
At least 18 people have died after a truck struck a crowd gathered at a road accident in western Guatemala. The group had apparently gathered on the road to inspect a person who had been killed in a separate crash when the vehicle ploughed into them. The estimates of those dead were later revised by officials. | At least 18 people have been killed after a truck ploughed into a crowd in Guatemala. The victims were looking at the scene of a previous accident in the western town of Nahuala when the truck struck them late on Wednesday. The driver then fled the scene. The ministry of health said 19 people had been taken to hospital with injuries. Guatemala's government has declared three days of national mourning. Images from the scene show emergency services lining up the victims' bodies on the road. The truck driver escaped the scene after the incident, but police spokesman Pablo Castillo said the authorities managed to capture a suspect following a high speed chase.
A 28-year old man identified as Pedro Rene Lorenzo Lopez was in police custody, the spokesman added.
Guatemala's president Jimmy Morales wrote on Twitter: "At this time we are co-ordinating our response to bring full support to the relatives of the victims. My heartfelt condolences."
The country has seen several major accidents on its roads in recent years. In 2013, 43 people were killed when a bus plunged 200m (660ft) into a ravine. | Road Crash | March 2019 | ['(Sky News)', '(Reuters)', '(BBC)'] |
Refugees flee Nigeria's Borno State following the Boko Haram massacre in the town of Baga. 7,300 flee to neighbouring Chad while over 1,000 are trapped on the island of Kangala in Lake Chad. Nigeria's army vows to recapture the town, while Niger and Chad withdraw their forces from a transnational force tasked with combating militants. | The UN refugee agency on Friday reported that some 7,300 Nigerian refugees have arrived in western Chad in the past 10 days, fleeing attacks by insurgents on Baga town and surrounding villages in north-east Nigeria.
A spokesperson said UNHCR teams in Chad were at the border and seeking more information on the new arrivals and their needs. The attack this week on Baga left hundreds of people dead, according to media reports, and forced most of its surviving inhabitants to flee.
The newly arrived refugees in Chad are staying with local communities in villages around 450 kilometres north-west of the capital, N’Djamena. The Chadian government has requested the assistance of aid agencies to help the refugees - distribution of relief items has started.
UNHCR is assessing the protection situation and coordinating aid delivery. “We’re already providing plastic sheets, jerry cans, mats, blankets and kitchen tools. Other humanitarian organizations are distributing aid too,” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards noted in Geneva.
Chadian authorities visited the area on Thursday and asked UNHCR to help with the relocation of more than 1,000 refugees who are stranded on the island of Kangala on Lake Chad. The group arrived there recently after fleeing the general insecurity in north-east Nigeria. Chad is now hosting more than 10,000 refugees from Nigeria.
Meanwhile in Niger, UNHCR has started to relocate refugees from the border area of Gagamari to Sayam Forage camp, deeper inside Niger’s Diffa region. A total 336 refugees have been moved in three convoys since December 30. More convoys are planned in the next days.
The refugees are among the thousands of people who fled to the Gagamari area in the past weeks following November’s attack on the Nigerian town of Damassak. A second camp is scheduled to open in the next days in Kablewa, in the Lake Chad area of Niger, where thousands of people have found refuge in the past months.
On arrival in Sayam Forage camp, refugees are being registered by UNHCR and the National Eligibility Commission of Niger. They receive identity documents and basic relief items. Drinking water is being delivered by trucks and emergency latrines have been built. Not all refugees are choosing to be relocated away from the border. Despite the proximity of the conflict in Nigeria, many are hoping to return to their home villages when the situation calms down.
In December, the first results of a continuing government census, organized with UNHCR technical support, revealed that at least 90,000 people, including Niger nationals previously living in Nigeria, have found refuge in Niger’s Diffa region since May 2013.
In all, the conflict in north-east Nigeria has led to the exodus of 135,000 people - around 35,000 Nigerians to Cameroon and 10,000 to Chad - and the displacement of at least 850,000 people within Nigeria’s Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. | Armed Conflict | January 2015 | ['(UNHCR)', '(NPR via BBC)'] |
The European Union casts doubt on last month's election results showing Afghan President Hamid Karzai winning the presidential election outright in the first round. | KABUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai won the presidential vote outright in the first round, election officials said on Wednesday, but the European Union said more than a third of his votes might be suspect because of fraud.
Battle over Afghan policy
01:58
A disputed result would prove difficult for U.S. President Barack Obama, who is considering deploying more troops and who set out broad goals on Wednesday for boosting the ability of Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight militancy.
Afghan election authorities issued complete preliminary results showing Karzai received 54.6 percent of the vote last month. His main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, got 27.8 percent.
The results are not final until approved by a separate election fraud watchdog, which has called for a recount of about 10 percent of polling stations.
But a campaign spokesman for Karzai said the result made it almost impossible that any probe could overturn the outcome. Only a “miracle” for his opponents could prevent Karzai winning, Waheed Omar said.
A spokesman for Abdullah had no immediate reaction.
A final result pending the fraud probe could be weeks away, prolonging a state of political limbo that has led to fears of instability and concern among Western donors that a future government may lack a clear mandate.
A European Union election observer mission said it believed as many as 1.5 million votes -- including 1.1 million cast for Karzai -- were “suspicious”.
“Any claim for any count or of victory will be premature and not credible,” the head of the EU mission, Philippe Morillon, told Reuters.
Karzai’s campaign called the EU mission’s statement “irresponsible” and said only the official, U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission was empowered to find fraud.
Ali Najafi, a member of the Afghan election commission, also criticized the EU mission for coming forward with its assessment before the complaints process was complete.
“Observers observe. They can give advice to the (election commission) but they do not have the right to interfere,” he said. Asked about the votes the EU team described as suspicious, he said: “I don’t know where they got this figure from.”
Western officials initially hailed the August 20 election, mainly because militant attacks failed to prevent it from taking place despite a resurgent Taliban insurgency.
One of the Obama administration’s objectives delivered to lawmakers on Wednesday was to promote a more capable, accountable and effective government in Afghanistan, according to a draft document obtained by Reuters.
It also wants to defeat the insurgency and develop the Afghan security forces so the U.S. role can be reduced. Obama also wants to develop neighboring Pakistan’s counterinsurgency capabilities to defeat insurgent groups.
The war, launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks to root out al Qaeda and topple the group’s Taliban backers, is becoming increasingly unpopular at home and Obama may find it difficult to persuade Americans to send soldiers to defend a government whose legitimacy could be called into question.
Obama told White House reporters there was “no immediate decision pending on resources,” a day after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said more troops would probably be needed and that he expected a request from Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, in a couple of weeks.
The United States almost doubled its number of troops in Afghanistan this year to 62,000, partly to help secure the election. The number is expected to grow by another 6,000 by year’s end.
Fraud accusations have been especially heavy in southern areas that favor Karzai but where Taliban threats had the most impact on turnout.
The EU’s Morillon said fraud had been carried out by “unscrupulous, overzealous supporters ... from every camp.”
In addition to the 1.1 million suspect ballots for Karzai, his team found 300,000 suspicious ballots for Abdullah. Disqualifying ballots for Karzai would have the most impact, by potentially putting the president below the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a run-off vote.
The final tally showed Karzai with 3.1 million votes of the 5.7 million valid votes counted. If all the votes considered suspect by the EU were omitted, Karzai would have 2 million out of 4.2 million valid votes, shy of 50 percent.
The U.N.-backed ECC must sign off on any final result. A second election round, if needed, would have to be held within two weeks of the final result being declared, although there has been some concern that this could be difficult if it is delayed into winter when travel is difficult in Afghanistan.
| Government Job change - Election | September 2009 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives Peter Slipper steps aside while allegations of sexual harassment and fraud against him are investigated. | Federal Parliament Speaker Peter Slipper has stepped aside while investigations are underway into allegations of sexual harassment and fraud against him.
Mr Slipper, who returned to Australia today, released a statement saying he "emphatically" denied allegations he sexually harassed a former staffer."The allegations include both a claim of criminal behaviour and claim under civil law," he said.Any allegation of criminal behaviour was grave and should be dealt with in a manner that showed appropriate regard to the integrity of Australia's democratic institutions and to precedent, he said."As such, I believe it is appropriate for me to stand aside as Speaker while this criminal allegation is resolved."
Peter Slipper in Los Angeles yesterday.
The allegation by former aide James Ashby was incorrect, Mr Slipper said."Once it is clear they are untrue I shall return to the Speakership," he said."In relation to the civil matter there will be an appropriate process that will resolve the matter in due course."In the meantime Labor MP and Deputy Speaker, Anna Burke, will act as Speaker, Mr Slipper said.
Mr Ashby, 33, reportedly launched legal action in the Federal Court on Friday alleging the Sunshine Coast MP had made unwelcome advances towards him and had sent him sexually explicit text messages.
Earlier today, the opposition demanded Mr Slipper's resignation. Opposition Senate leader Eric Abetz said the coalition wants Mr Slipper removed from parliament due to the issues swirling around him.
Mr Slipper resigned from the Liberal Party to become Speaker in November 2011. "The Labor Party in full knowledge of those issues deliberately embraced him and elevated him to the top position that the parliament has to offer, namely the speakership," Senator Abetz told Sky News on Sunday.
"That is where (Prime Minister) Ms Gillard is now hoist on her own petard and she is in a very real difficulty. She has to call on Mr Slipper to resign if he doesn't do so willingly himself."
Mr Slipper denied the allegations when questioned by reporters at Los Angeles airport on Saturday.
The government says the sexual harassment allegations should be tested in court without political interference.
Senator Abetz said there had been a formal complaint in relation to Mr Slipper's personal behaviour while he was a member of the coalition.
"There clearly is now and (that) will be pursued in the courts," he said.
"I understand there are now investigations in relation to criminal activity both of which occurred whilst he was Julia Gillard's Speaker in the house."
Treasurer Wayne Swan said he had seen allegations about MPs "come and go" during his long time in parliament.
Mr Slipper was entitled to the presumption of innocence while the matters were before the court, he said.
"These are allegations that are in legal proceedings," Mr Swan told ABC Television on Sunday.
"We should respect those legal proceedings. We should respect those processes."
Mr Swan said the opposition will use the allegations as a distraction from the economic debate as he prepares to deliver his fifth budget on May 8.
"They are going to want to run away from an economic debate, come what may," Mr Swan said.
"But here when it comes to legal proceedings, they are things that I don't intend to comment (on)."
Opposition leader Tony Abbott said Julia Gillard had to restore the integrity of the parliament following allegations of the "gravest kind" made against Mr Slipper.
"If the Speaker will not voluntarily stand aside while these allegations are being resolved, the prime minister must indicate to him that she will act to force him to stand aside," Mr Abbott told reporters in Melbourne on Sunday.
"This is a question of the prime minister's judgment, her integrity, her sense of the standing of the parliament and she cannot afford to wash her hands of this as she has washed her hands of the Craig Thomson matter."
Federal Labor MP Mr Thomson remains under pressure over investigations involving allegations of financial mismanagement of the Health Services Union when he was its national secretary.
The prime minister cannot directly dismiss Mr Slipper from the Speakership but he could lose his position by a vote in the House of Representatives.
Mr Abbott said Ms Gillard had acted 12 months ago when there was a sex scandal at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA).
ADFA commandant Bruce Kafer was placed on leave while the Kirkham inquiry investigated the claims. The official inquiry's report, delivered last month, exonerated Commodore Kafer over his handling of the Skype sex affair.
"The government immediately stepped in to require the commandant of ADFA to step aside while these allegations were being investigated and resolved," Mr Abbott said.
"If it was right for the commandant of ADFA to step aside to protect the integrity of that institution, it is surely right for the Speaker to step aside to protect the integrity of the parliament." | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | April 2012 | ['(Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
Michael Avenatti is charged by a federal grand jury in California on 36 counts, including embezzlement, wire fraud, tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud and bank fraud connected to his alleged theft of tens of millions of dollars from several clients. | LOS ANGELES A federal grand jury indictment filed late Wednesday charges high-profile attorney Michael Avenatti with a host of fraud and tax offenses that allege, among other things, that he stole millions of dollars from clients and millions of dollars of employment taxes that his coffee company should have paid to the Internal Revenue Service.
The 36-count indictment, which was returned by a grand jury in Santa Ana, outlines four areas of criminal conduct, all of which relate to the misappropriation and/or the illegal concealment of funds.
Avenatti, 48, who resides in Century City, was arrested in this case on March 25 pursuant to a criminal complaint that alleged the theft of money from one client and the use of bogus tax returns to obtain a series of loans. The indictment, which is now the operative charging document, alleges this conduct, but also significantly broadens the scope of the case.
The criminal charges in the indictment address four areas of wrongdoing: the embezzlement of millions of dollars that should have been paid to clients, the failure to file income tax returns and failure to pay the IRS millions of dollars in taxes, the submission of fraudulent loan applications that included tax returns never filed with the IRS, and the concealment of assets from the Bankruptcy Court.
“These four areas of criminal conduct alleged in the indictment are all linked to one another because money generated from one set of crimes appears in other sets typically in the form of payments to lull victims and to prevent Mr. Avenatti’s financial house of cards from collapsing,” said United States Attorney Nick Hanna.
“The financial investigation conducted by the IRS details a man who allegedly failed to meet his obligations to the government, stole from his clients, and used his ill-gotten gains to support his racing team, the ownership of Tully’s coffee shops, and a private jet,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Ryan L. Korner with IRS Criminal Investigation in Los Angeles. “Individuals who intentionally thwart the IRS and fail to meet their tax obligations will be caught and they will be held accountable”
The Wire Fraud Charges
Avenatti faces 10 counts of wire fraud related to more than $12 million he received on behalf of clients as a result of settlements in lawsuits and other negotiations. While he was entitled to attorney’s fees for work done on behalf of clients, the indictment alleges that Avenatti stole millions of dollars from clients he represented in four matters.
In each of the four cases of embezzlement alleged in the indictment, Avenatti received money on behalf of clients into client trust accounts, misappropriated the money, and lied to the clients about receiving the money or, in one case, claimed that the money had already been sent to the client.
The Tax Fraud Charges
The indictment charges Avenatti with a total of 19 tax-related offenses. The indictment alleges that Avenatti has failed to file personal income tax returns since 2010, and that he failed to file various tax returns for his two law firms in which he held a controlling interest.
Some of the tax charges relate to Avenatti’s ownership of Global Baristas US LLC (GBUS), which operated Tully’s Coffee. Starting in late 2015 and continuing into 2017, GBUS failed to file employment tax returns and failed to pay approximately $3.2 million in federal payroll taxes, according to the indictment, which notes that this figure includes at least $2.3 million in “trust fund taxes” that GBUS had withheld from its employees’ paychecks. In 2016, the IRS initiated a collection action against GBUS, and, in June 2017, the IRS filed a federal tax lien against GBUS as part of its attempts to collect nearly $5 million in unpaid federal payroll taxes and penalties.
Further, Avenatti allegedly attempted to obstruct the IRS’s efforts to collect the taxes. The indictment alleges that he lied to an IRS revenue officer, opened a new bank account to receive funds related to credit card transactions at Tully’s coffee shops, and directed Tully’s employees to deposit cash receipts into a bank account belonging to a car racing outfit that Avenatti also owned. Some of the money that should have been used to pay GBUS’ tax debt was transferred to bank accounts associated with Avenatti’s law firms, and some of that money was used to make lulling payments to Clients 1 and 2.
The Bank Fraud Charges
Avenatti faces two counts of bank fraud stemming from an alleged scheme in which he submitted bogus financial information to obtain three loans totaling $4.1 million from The People’s Bank, a federally insured financial institution in Mississippi. As previously alleged in the criminal complaint, Avenatti submitted personal tax returns that had never been filed with the IRS, but the indictment further alleges that he submitted documents to the bank that overstated the resources of the Eagan Avenatti law firm. For example, the indictment accuses Avenatti of submitting a balance sheet for the law firm stating that the law firm, on March 10, 2014, had $508,200 in its operating account, when in fact the account held slightly more than $43,000. Avenatti also allegedly submitted to the bank a partnership tax return for Eagan Avenatti for 2012 that was different from the return actually submitted to the IRS in that the return provided to the bank reported close to $8 million in additional business income.
The Bankruptcy Fraud Charges
Avenatti faces four bankruptcy fraud charges for allegedly making false statements in relation to a bankruptcy case involving Eagan Avenatti. As the managing partner of the firm, Avenatti agreed in the bankruptcy proceeding to abide by certain guidelines and requirements, including filing monthly operating reports that detailed all of the firm’s financial information. Three of the bankruptcy fraud charges allege that Avenatti submitted, under penalty of perjury, monthly operating reports that failed to report all of the firm’s accounts receivable. Additionally, Avenatti is charged with falsely testifying under oath during a June 2017 bankruptcy hearing by denying the firm had received any fees related to a lawsuit when Eagan Avenatti had actually received more than $1.3 million, which included attorney’s fees in relation to that case.
The indictment specifically charges Avenatti with 10 counts of wire fraud related to the theft of money that should have been paid to clients, eight counts of willful failure to collect and pay over taxes withheld from GBUS employee, one count of endeavoring to obstruct the administration of the Internal Revenue Code, four misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file his personal tax returns for the years 2014 through 2017, three misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file Eagan Avenatti’s tax returns for the years 2015 through 2017, three misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file tax returns for Avenatti & Associates for the years 2015 through 2017, two counts of bank fraud related to the loans received from The People’s Bank, one count of aggravated identity theft for misusing the name of a tax preparer in relation to the bank fraud scheme, three counts of making false declarations in relation to a bankruptcy, and one count of giving false testimony under oath in Bankruptcy Court.
An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.
If he were to be convicted of the charges alleged in the indictment, Avenatti would face a statutory maximum sentence of 333 years in federal prison, plus an additional two-year mandatory consecutive sentence for the aggravated identity theft charge.
Avenatti, who is free on a $300,000 bond, is scheduled to be arraigned on the indictment on April 29 in United States District Court in Santa Ana.
The ongoing investigation into Avenatti is being conducted by IRS Criminal Investigation, which has received assistance from the Newport Beach Police Department and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Julian L. André of the Major Frauds Section and Brett A. Sagel of the Santa Ana Branch Office.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | April 2019 | ['(United States Department of Justice)', '(ABC News)'] |
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia has died in a hospital at the age of 83. It was believed that he was in poor health and entered the hospital on May 27 with acute pneumonia. Crown Prince Abdullah, who had been effective regent for years, accedes to the throne. Defence Minister Prince Sultan will be the new Crown Prince. | Saudi Arabia's King Fahd has died and Crown Prince Abdullah has swiftly been pronounced monarch of the world's largest oil exporter and key US ally. "With deep sorrow and pain, the royal court ... mourns the death of The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd due to illness," said an official statement read out on Saudi state television on Monday. The announcement on television was preceded by recitations from the Quran that interrupted regular broadcasting.Fahd, who was believed to be 83 and had been in poor health, entered hospital on 27 May with acute pneumonia. Fahd's half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah, who has been running the kingdom's day-to-day affairs since Fahd suffered a stroke in 1995, automatically becomes king. Defence Minister Prince Sultan will be the new crown prince. "The royal family members have acknowledged Crown Prince Abdullah as sovereign of the country ... after which the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and ruler of Saudi Arabia King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz chose Prince Sultan as crown prince and the family members acknowledged that," the statement said.
A Saudi official said Fahd's funeral would take place on Tuesday to give time for foreign dignitaries to take part. Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest oil exporter and is a close ally of the United States. In the past two years, the kingdom has faced a violent al-Qaida campaign to end seven decades of the royal family's rule in Saudi Arabia, home to two of Islam's holiest places of worship. Home | | Famous Person - Death | August 2005 | ['(Wikinews)', '(Reuters)', '(Al–Jazeera)'] |
Brazil prison officials report at least 42 prisoners are found strangled to death in four separate jails in the state of Amazonas. Yesterday, 15 prisoners were killed in a fight between rival prison gangs at a facility near the Amazonas capital Manaus. | SAO PAULO (Reuters) - At least 40 prisoners in Brazil were found strangled to death on Monday in four jails in the Amazon jungle city of Manaus, where a fight between rival prison gangs resulted in 15 dead the day before, authorities said.
A federal task force is being sent to Manaus in an effort to halt the violence. Prison clashes often spread rapidly in Brazil, where drug gangs have de facto control over nearly all jails.
In January 2017, nearly 150 prisoners died during three weeks of violence in north and northeastern Brazil, as local gangs backed by Brazil’s two largest drug factions - the First Capital Command and the Red Command - butchered one another.
A statement from the Amazonas state penitentiary department revised to 40 from an earlier 42 the number of deaths that took place on Monday and said authorities had regained control of the four prisons. No other details were provided.
At least 15 inmates were killed at a jail in Manaus on Sunday, with authorities saying those who died were choked and stabbed to death.
Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has vowed to regain control of the country’s prisons - along with building many more jails.
But the vast majority of jails are administered at the state level. For decades they have been badly overcrowded and out of control of local authorities, essentially serving as recruiting centers for drug gangs.
Reporting by Eduardo Simoes and Brad Brooks in Sao Paulo; Writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
More From Reuters
All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. | Riot | May 2019 | ['(Reuters)', '(Firstpost)'] |
Two protestors who were arrested in Rostov–on–Don in 2017 while holding signs seeking resignations from the Russian government, and have been in custody since, are sentenced to over six years each in high–security prisons. They were charged with planning violent mass disturbances, and said that they confessed during torture. | Human rights groups have criticised the long jail sentences given to two protesters who held up signs calling for the Russian government to resign. Yan Sidorov, 19, and Vladislav Mordasov, 24, were arrested outside a local government building in Rostov-on-Don, a southern city near Russia’s border with Ukraine, in November 2017. They were later charged with planning violent “mass disturbances”, an allegation described by critics as absurd. The men said that they had been tortured into admitting to the charges.
Sidorov was sentenced to six and a half years and Mordasov to six years and seven months, both in maximum-security prison camps. They had been in police custody since their arrests. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | October 2019 | ['(The Times)'] |
The Russian polar station will be evacuated. Russia launches rescue operation to evacuate 12 of its scientists stranded on a research station near the North Pole. | North Pole-32 (SP-32) drifting station may start being evacuated on March 5, Vladimir Sokolov, the supervisor of the SP-32 scientific expedition, said. He said that the weather conditions may cause the evacuation plans to be changed, however the current weather forecast is quite favorable. A Mi-26 heavy transport helicopter and two Antonov An-74 airplanes are expected to be used to evacuate the expedition team. The helicopter and the planes will fly to Norway's Spitzbergen archipelago in the Barents Sea or a populated locality on Franz-Josef Land on March 5. Then they will leave for SP-32 on March 6. The plan calls for the evacuation of the expedition team on March 6 because a night evacuation is impossible, Mr. Sokolov said. Mr. Sokolov noted that all of the members of the expedition are in good health and that nothing was threatening their lives. The station was crushed by ice in the evening of March 3, and ice blocks subsequently engulfed part of its living quarters and auxiliary premises. Previously, the station was to have completed its work on March 20. | Organization Closed | March 2004 | ['(which partially sank)', '(Pravda)', '(BBC)'] |
2007 Chinese Sandstorms: After severe sandstorms caused communication and transportation problems in Hohhot and other regions of Inner Mongolia, the first severe sandstorm of the year hits Beijing and the surrounding regions of Liaoning, Xinjiang and Tianjin. | Sandstorms and snow have begun sweeping through many regions in northern China. However, it was a much different story in the south where the weather was warm. The first sandstorm of 2007 hit northwestern China over the past two days. Some areas of Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia were affected the most. Strong winds worsened the situation. People covered themselves with scarves and glasses as visibility was reduced to less than 50 meters in some places. Meteorologists say the storm was caused by a sudden change in air pressure, a decrease in temperature and heavy winds. In Xinjiang for example, the temperature fell below six degrees Celsius.The sandstorms are expected to continue for some time. Meanwhile, some areas in northeastern China received a heavy snowfall.
But in southern China, some regions are experiencing hot weather. In Hunan and Shanghai, the temperature reached 30 degrees Celsius, the highest in the 30 years. But, the central meteorological station predicts a large drop in temperature in southern China Friday. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | March 2007 | ['(CCTV)', '(SINA)'] |
Typhoon Fitow makes landfall in the Chinese province of Fujian, bringing heavy rain and killing at least two people. | Powerful Typhoon Fitow has rammed into eastern China after triggering the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people.
With winds up to 151km/h (93mph), the storm landed in Fujian province early on Monday, bringing heavy rains and causing widespread power cuts.
The authorities earlier issued the highest alert - red - for the area.
At least two people have been killed by the typhoon, state-run news agency Xinhua reported.
One victim was on his way to rescue a fisherman when he was blown off a hill by strong winds late on Sunday, Xinhua said.
Some homes are said to have collapsed in neighbouring Zhejiang province and two port workers are missing. Typhoon Fitow - named after a flower - made landfall at 01:15 local time on Monday (17:15 GMT Sunday) in the city of Fuding, Chinese meteorologists said.
The typhoon had affected over three million people in Zhejiang and caused economic damage of over 2bn yuan ($330m; £200m), Xinhua said, citing the provincial flood control office.
Parts of China have been hit by up to 200mm (8 inches) of rain, AFP news agency reported.
Over the weekend the authorities drafted in the army to help strengthen flood defences, the BBC's John Sudworth in Shanghai reports.
China is used to dealing with extreme weather events but, nonetheless, the risk to life remains high, our correspondent adds.
In Fujian, 177,000 people were evacuated before the storm hit the coast, Xinhua said, while in Zhejiang, some 574,000 people had to leave their homes.
Some 35,000 boats in Zhejiang and 30,000 in Fujian were ordered to return to harbour for shelter.
Coastal facilities such as seaside bathing centres were also closed, state media reported.
"We must not leave anybody in danger," Zhejiang Governor Li Qiang was quoted as saying.
The typhoon also caused suspension of bullet trains and coach services in several cities in the area.
Dozens of flights to and from Wenzhou airport in Zhejiang were cancelled.
The storm is now moving north-west and is expected to weaken quickly.
Typhoon Fitow is the 23rd tropical storm to hit China this year, Xinhua reported.
It comes just weeks after Typhoon Usagi killed at least 25 people in southern Guangdong province.
I.
| Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | October 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
North Korea fires two shots at South Korean military units across the border at Kwacheon, South Korea. | North Korea fired two rounds towards a frontline unit and South Korean soldiers returned fire three times.
The shooting occurred in Hwacheon, some 90km (56 miles) north-east of the South's capital, Seoul, according to reports from South Korea's YTN TV.
Officials say it was not clear if North Korea's initial shots were a deliberate provocation.
The border between the two Koreas is one of the most heavily fortified in the world, with many thousands of troops stationed on either side of a demilitarised zone.
There have been frequent incidents at sea, but this is believed to be the first cross-border shooting on land since 2006.
South Korea's military is currently on its highest state of alert, as the capital prepares to host a meeting of world leaders from the G20 group of nations on 11 and 12 November.
A spokesperson for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said that no South Koreans were hurt in the exchange of fire, AFP reports.
"There were no more shots afterwards. We are now closely watching their movements," the unnamed spokesperson said.
The BBC's John Sudworth, in Seoul, says that the exchange appears to have been a small incident which did not cause any damage. South Korean officials are not ruling out the possibility that the initial shot from the northern side of the border was accidental rather than deliberate, our correspondent adds.
Tensions between the two rivals have been high since the South accused the North of torpedoing one of its warships in March, with the loss of 46 lives. Pyongyang denies the charge.
Earlier on Friday the North warned that relations with its neighbour would face a "catastrophic impact" if South Korea continued to reject talks aimed at easing tension.
The first round of discussions in two years ended without progress in September after Seoul demanded an apology from Pyongyang for the warship sinking.
| Armed Conflict | October 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(MSNBC)', '(Xinhua)', '(Yonhap)'] |
Russia and Georgia continue to fight in South Ossetia and Georgia. The search for the dead and injured continues after at least 2,000 civilians were killed after two days Georgian offensive. Russia reported 12 peacekeepers killed and 30 wounded in the previous day during the Georgian tank and missile bombardment of Tskhinvali. | Aftermath of the air strikes in Gori
A delegation of European and US envoys is heading to Georgia as its conflict with Russia over the breakaway South Ossetia region deepens.
The envoys hope to broker a truce after three days of fighting which are said to have killed or injured hundreds, and sent thousands fleeing.
Russian jets have bombed several towns, including Gori in central Georgia.
Russia says it wants Georgian forces to withdraw to the positions they held outside South Ossetia before Thursday.
In the absence of independent verification, there are conflicting figures about the casualties suffered on both sides but the numbers appeared to rise sharply on Saturday.
Based on Russian and South Ossetian estimates, the death toll on the South Ossetian side was at least 1,400. According to Moscow, all but a few of the dead were civilians. Georgian casualty figures ranged from 82 dead, including 37 civilians, to a figure of around 130 dead. A Russian air strike on Gori, a Georgian town near South Ossetia, left 60 people dead, many of them civilians, Georgia says.
Based on information supplied by both sides, the UN refugee agency believes that about 2,400 people have fled South Ossetia to other parts of Georgia while between 4,000 and 5,000 have crossed the border into Russia.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said his country is seeking "to force the Georgian side to peace".
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili accused Russia of seeking to "destroy" his country. Meanwhile, separatists in Abkhazia - Georgia's other breakaway region - say they have launched air and artillery strikes on Georgian forces in the Kodori Gorge.
'Broadening' conflict
The joint delegation of the US, EU and the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe is due to visit Georgia on Saturday evening.
It comes as a third emergency session of the UN Security Council ended without an agreement on the wording of a statement calling for a ceasefire. UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Britain would "lend its strong support to all those committed to a swift resolution to the conflict". But emmissaries from the US and Europe who are Nato members may not be seen as honest brokers by the Kremlin, when it comes to Georgia, BBC's diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall says.
The danger now is that Russia will not only use this crisis to demonstrate its military power in the region, but argue it is time to redraw the map, she adds.
Russian PM Vladimir Putin arrived in Russia's North Ossetia region on his return from the Olympics on Saturday. He described the violence as "genocide", Russian media report.
Earlier, Mr Putin said it was unlikely now that South Ossetia would reintegrate with the rest of Georgia.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili denounces the Russian military action
This, our diplomatic correspondent says, is precisely the outcome Georgia was trying to avoid.
Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, said there could be no "consultations" with Georgia until Georgian forces returned to their positions and re-established "the status quo".
The crisis began spiralling when Georgian forces launched a surprise attack on Thursday night to regain control of South Ossetia, which has had de facto independence since the end of a civil war in 1992.
The move followed days of exchanges of heavy fire with the Russian-backed separatists, led by Eduard Kokoity.
In response to the Georgian crackdown, Moscow sent armoured units across the border into South Ossetia.
Tskhinvali 'destroyed'
Fighting continued around Tskhinvali overnight and into Saturday morning, although not at the same intensity as on Friday, Russian media reported.
Russia said it had taken control of the town, ejecting Georgian forces, while Tbilisi insisted its troops still held their ground.
Russia's ambassador to Georgia, Vyacheslav Kovalenko, was quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax as saying Tskhinvali had been "destroyed" by the Georgian military.
"The city of Tskhinvali no longer exists," he said. "It is gone."
The International Red Cross (ICRC) said it had received reports that hospitals in the city were "overflowing" with casualties.
In Gori, Russian aircraft bombed mostly military targets, where Georgian troops had been massing to support their forces engaged in South Ossetia.
The BBC's Richard Galpin in Gori heard loud explosions and saw large plumes of smoke rising into the sky; soldiers and civilians were seen running through the streets.
Injured civilians were being pulled from the buildings, which were on fire.
Georgian TV has shown pictures of damage to the Black Sea port of Poti, the site of a major oil shipment facility, after a reported Russian air strike.
Meanwhile Georgian TV reported that the Georgian-controlled section of the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia was under fire, blaming the bombardment on Russian forces.
The foreign minister in Abkhazia's self-declared government, Sergei Shamba, said Abkhaz forces had launched an attack aimed at driving Georgian forces out of the gorge.
The Georgian parliament has approved a presidential decree declaring that the country is in a state of war for 15 days.
President Saakashvili told the BBC on Saturday that Russia meant to "destroy" Georgia, comparing its actions to the Soviet invasions of Finland and Afghanistan.
He said Moscow wanted to take control of energy routes to Europe and accused it of "war crimes" against civilians. | Armed Conflict | August 2008 | ['(BBC News)', '(AP via Yahoo! News)', '(BBC News)', '(RIAN)'] |
Syrian government warplanes bomb Kurdish-held areas of Al-Hasakah for the first time in the country's five-year civil war, killing at least 13 people. | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian government warplanes bombed Kurdish-held areas of the northeastern city of Hasaka on Thursday for the first time in the country’s five-year-old civil war, killing at least 13 people, the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and a monitoring group said.
The powerful YPG, a crucial partner in the U.S.-led war against Islamic State, said it would “not be silent” over what it called it an act of flagrant aggression. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.
People’s Protection Units (YPG) spokesman Redur Xelil said the air strikes had hit Kurdish districts of the city, which is mostly controlled by Kurdish groups, and positions held by a Kurdish security force known as the Asayish.
“There are martyrs and wounded,” he told Reuters.
Government forces were also bombarding Kurdish districts of Hasaka with artillery, and there were fierce clashes in the city.
“Every hand spattered with the blood of our people will be held to account through all possible and available means,” the YPG said in a statement.
The YPG and Syrian government forces have mostly left each other to their own devices in the conflict, during which Kurdish groups have exploited the collapse of state control to establish autonomy across much of the country’s north.
The government, which routinely uses its air force against rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in western Syria, still has footholds in the cities of Qamishli and Hasaka, both in the Hasaka governorate.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war using a network of activists, said warplanes had targeted Kurdish security forces’ positions in the northwest and northeast of Hasaka city.
It said clashes were also taking place in a number of places around Hasaka.
At least thirteen people, including children and women, were killed as a result of shelling by the army on Kurdish-controlled areas in the city, the monitor said.
Syria’s complex, multi-sided war has created a patchwork of areas across the country controlled by the government, rebels, Kurdish forces or Islamic State.
The YPG makes up a significant portion of the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish and Arab alliance fighting Islamic State insurgents in Syria.
Last week the SDF, backed by air strikes from the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition, said they had ousted Islamic State from the city of Manbij near the Turkish border after a two-month campaign.
The recent fighting marks the most significant violence between the YPG and government forces since several days of fighting in Qamishli in April.
Writing by Tom Perry and Lisa Barrington; editing by Andrew Roche, G Crosse
| Armed Conflict | August 2016 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters)'] |
India's economy contracts by 23.9% in the April–June quarter, the country's worst recession on record since the government started releasing quarterly data in 1996. The lockdown caused massive disruptions to economic activity during the quarter. | India's economy contracted sharply in the three months to the end of June, official data shows.
It shrank by 23.9%, its worst slump since the country started releasing quarterly data in 1996.
The coronavirus pandemic and a grinding lockdown caused massive disruptions to economic activity during the quarter.
Experts fear that India is staring at a recession - that will happen only if it reports contraction in the next quarter as well, which experts say is likely.
A country is considered to be in recession if it reports contraction for two successive quarters. India was last in recession in 1980, its fourth one since independence. India has recorded more than 3.6 million Covid-19 cases so far - on Sunday it reported 78,761 new cases in 24 hours, the world's highest single-day increase. But the country continues to reopen because, experts say, a second lockdown is economically unviable. And the effects of the first lockdown are evident in the latest GDP figures. The numbers aren't surprising given that the lockdown was in effect for most of the quarter in question - April to June. By Nikhil Inamdar, BBC News' India business correspondent
While India's GDP saw the sharpest contraction on record, the number is expected to undergo further revisions as data collection was severely impaired during the lockdown. The headline figure is at the upper end of what most analysts were estimating, but some have cautioned that in the absence of real time data, the number doesn't reflect the gravity of the economic distress. From hotels to trade, electricity generation, manufacturing and construction, almost every segment of the Indian economy showed a sharp contraction during the first three months of the financial year. The only sector that posted positive growth was agriculture, at 3.4%. By all accounts, a quick recovery is unlikely in India, and it is only in the last three months of the year that growth is expected to return to positive territory. Cases continue to spike and lockdowns are ongoing in several areas. As a result, consumer demand, which determines 60% of GDP, is unlikely to return in a hurry as most people are stepping out only to buy essentials. "We expect further fiscal and liquidity stimulus," Abhimanyu Sofat, head of research at IIFL Securities, told the BBC. But with the government's tax and non-tax revenues down sharply and expenditure going up, the fiscal space to revive the economy remains limited.
India's economy was already faltering when Covid-19 struck. Last year, unemployment touched a 45-year high and growth dipped to 4.7%, the lowest in six years. Output was shrinking as demand fell and banks were burdened by a mountain of debt. Then came a global pandemic, which only worsened the situation. An unprecedented lockdown at the end of March forced many factories and businesses to shut temporarily, brining most economic activity to a halt. One month into the lockdown, 121 million Indians had lost their jobs, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), an independent think tank.
But CMIE also estimates that tens of millions of those jobs have since returned, mainly due to a resumption of economic activity as the country reopened from June onwards. Experts, however, believe that many of these jobs are in the informal sector, largely agriculture, the mainstay of India's economy. While most industries, from manufacturing to services to retail contracted, agriculture and agri-businesses have bucked the trend. Exemptions from the lockdown, a bumper harvest and the delayed arrival of Covid-19 in rural areas seems to have helped. | Financial Crisis | August 2020 | ['(BBC)', '(Bloomberg Quint)'] |
Claude Choules, the last known combat veteran from World War I, dies in Perth, Western Australia. | The world's last known combat veteran of World War I, Claude Choules, has died in Australia aged 110. Known to his comrades as Chuckles, British-born Mr Choules joined the Royal Navy at 15 and went on to serve on HMS Revenge.
He moved to Australia in the 1920s and served in the military until 1956.
Mr Choules, who had been married to his wife Ethel for 76 years, was reported to have died in his sleep at a nursing home in his adopted city of Perth.
He is survived by three children and 11 grandchildren. His wife died three years ago.
Mr Choules' 84-year-old daughter, Daphne Edinger, told the Associated Press news agency: "We all loved him. It's going to be sad to think of him not being here any longer, but that's the way things go."
Born in Pershore, Worcestershire, in March 1901, Mr Choules tried to enlist in the Army at the outbreak of WWI to join his elder brothers who were fighting, but was told he was too young. He lied about his age to become a Royal Navy rating, joining the battleship HMS Revenge on which he saw action in the North Sea aged 17. He witnessed the surrender of the German fleet in the Firth of Forth in November 1918, then the scuttling of the fleet at Scapa Flow. Mr Choules remembered WWI as a "tough" life, marked by occasional moments of extreme danger. After the war he served as a peacekeeper in the Black Sea and in 1926 was posted as an instructor to Flinders Naval Depot, near Melbourne. It was on the passenger liner to Australia that he met his future wife.
He transferred to the Royal Australian Navy and after a brief spell in the reserves rejoined as a Chief Petty Officer in 1932. During World War II he was chief demolition officer for the western half of Australia. It would have been his responsibility to blow up the key strategic harbour of Fremantle, near Perth, if Japan had invaded. Mr Choules joined the Naval Dockyard Police after finishing his service.
But despite his military record, Mr Choules became a pacifist. He was known to have disagreed with the celebration of Australia's most important war memorial holiday, Anzac Day, and refused to march in the annual commemoration parades.
He took a creative writing course at the age of 80 and recorded his memoirs for his family. They formed the basis of the autobiography, The Last of the Last, which was published in 2009.
The last three WWI veterans living in Britain - Bill Stone, Henry Allingham and Harry Patch - all died in 2009.
Another Briton, Florence Green - who turned 110 in February and was a waitress in the Women's Royal Air Force - is now thought to be the world's last known surviving service member of WWI. An American veteran, Frank Buckles, died earlier this year. | Famous Person - Death | May 2011 | ['(AP via MSNBC)', '(BBC)'] |
At least 14 people are killed at a fire at a drug rehabilitation centre in Lima. | A fire at a drug rehabilitation centre in the Peruvian capital Lima has killed 14 people - the second such tragedy there this year.
The blaze broke out at the Sacred Heart of Jesus centre in Chosica in eastern Lima in the early hours of the morning.
Firefighters said patients could not escape because the doors were locked and the windows barred.
In January a fire at another drug and alcohol clinic in Lima killed 29 people who were also locked inside.
Fire chief Fernando Campos said firefighters had to use tools to break into the two-storey building.
"The doors were locked and the windows on the second floor had bars on them. It wasn't possible for people to get out," he said.
At least one person managed to escape despite suffering burns. The cause of the fire has not yet been established.
The fire in January at the unlicensed Christ is Love clinic in Lima - where 29 people died - prompted calls for for better regulation of rehabilitation centres. Often run by church groups, unlicensed clinics have sprung up to make up for a shortage of official facilities to help an estimated 100,000 addicts in need of treatment across Peru. Some are said to lock patients inside to stop them leaving after they are brought in by relatives desperate to free them of their addictions. Peru's Health Ministry has been working on new regulations for rehabilitation clinics. | Fire | May 2012 | ['(BBC)', '(Al Jazeera)'] |
A grand jury report alleging that more than 300 priests abused over 1,000 children in six Pennsylvania Catholic diocese -- Allentown, Scranton, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Greensburg, and Erie -- is released by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro. | HARRISBURG More than 1,000 children and possibly many more were molested by hundreds of Roman Catholic priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses, while senior church officials took steps to cover it up, according to a landmark grand jury report released Tuesday.
The report is available here. The list of 59 Scranton Diocese priests named in the report is at the end of this story.
The grand jury said it believes the “real number” of abused children might be “in the thousands” since some records were lost and victims were afraid to come forward. The report said more than 300 clergy committed the abuse over a period decades, beginning in the mid-1950s.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said the two-year probe found a systematic cover-up by senior church officials in Pennsylvania and at the Vatican.
“The cover-up was sophisticated. And all the while, shockingly, church leadership kept records of the abuse and the cover-up. These documents, from the dioceses’ own ‘Secret Archives,’ formed the backbone of this investigation,” he said at a news conference in Harrisburg.
Significantly, the report faulted Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former longtime bishop of Pittsburgh who now leads the Washington archdiocese, for what it said was his part in the concealment of clergy sexual abuse. Wuerl, one of the highest-profile cardinals in the United States, released a statement Tuesday that said he had “acted with diligence, with concern for the victims and to prevent future acts of abuse.”
The grand jury scrutinized abuse allegations in dioceses that minister to more than half the state’s 3.2 million Catholics. Its report echoed the findings of many earlier church investigations around the country in its description of widespread sexual abuse by clergy and church officials’ concealment of it.
Most of the victims were boys, but girls were abused, too, the report said. The abuse ranged from groping and masturbation to anal, oral and vaginal rape.
“Church officials routinely and purposefully described the abuse as horseplay and wrestling and inappropriate conduct. It was none of those things. It was child sexual abuse, including rape,” Shapiro said.
The panel concluded that a succession of Catholic bishops and other diocesan leaders tried to shield the church from bad publicity and financial liability by covering up abuse, failing to report accused clergy to police and discouraging victims from going to law enforcement.
Yet the grand jury’s work won’t result in justice for the vast majority of those who say they were molested by priests as children. While the probe yielded charges against two clergymen including a priest who has since pleaded guilty, and another who allegedly forced his accuser to say confession after each sex assault the other priests identified as perpetrators are either dead or will avoid arrest because their alleged crimes are too old to prosecute under state law.
“We are sick over all the crimes that will go unpunished and uncompensated,” the grand jury said.
The document comes at a time of renewed scrutiny and fresh scandal at the highest levels of the U.S. Catholic Church. Pope Francis stripped 88-year-old Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of his title and ordered him to a lifetime of prayer and penance amid allegations that McCarrick had for years sexually abused boys and had sexual misconduct with adult seminarians.
Wuerl has come under harsh criticism over his response to the McCarrick scandal, with some commentators questioning his claims of surprise and ignorance over allegations that McCarrick molested and harassed young seminarians.
Wuerl replaced McCarrick as Washington’s archbishop after McCarrick retired in 2006.
The Pennsylvania grand jury, convened by the state attorney general’s office in 2016, heard from dozens of witnesses and reviewed more than a half-million pages of internal documents from the Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton dioceses.
Some current and former clergy named in the report went to court to prevent its release, arguing it violated their constitutional rights to reputation and due process of law. The state Supreme Court said the public had a right to see it, but ruled the names of priests and others who objected to the findings would be blacked out pending a September hearing on their claims.
The identities of those clergy members remain under court seal.
A couple of dioceses decided to strip the accused of their anonymity ahead of the report and released the names of clergy members who were accused of sexual misconduct. On Friday, the bishop of Pittsburgh’s diocese said a few priests named in the report are still in ministry because the diocese determined allegations against them were unsubstantiated. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | August 2018 | ['(Washington Post)', '(Wilkes Barre Times-Leader)'] |
Severe storms, from the weather system that hit Southern California Friday, reach southwest Texas injuring several people and damaging at least 100 homes with one confirmed tornado in San Antonio. Heavy rains continue today with flash floods likely as the storm moves to eastern Texas and southern Louisiana. | Residents in San Antonio were picking up the pieces Monday after severe overnight storms ripped through south-central Texas, damaging more than 150 homes.
The National Weather Service confirmed Monday that at least four six tornadoes hit San Antonio. Five minor injuries were reported, the Associated Press said.
At one point Sunday night, 46,000 customers were without power in the San Antonio area.
Thunderstorms and pounding rain rattled eastern Texas and southern Louisiana throughout the day and into Monday night. Fortunately, no severe thunderstorms are forecast anywhere in the U.S. on Tuesday, the Storm Prediction Center said.
A family of five said they hid under a mattress to stay safe from what they describe as tornado-like winds over their home Sunday night in San Antonio.
Homeowner Lucy Duncan said the family was watching TV as the storms were starting to pick up. "I couldn’t even describe it because I’ve never experienced it before,” Duncan told KENS-TV. “I knew immediately something was wrong.”
The storm ripped part of the roof from Duncan’s house. Duncan said the swing set and and outside structure in their backyard are both completely gone.
“We were acting on instinct,” Duncan said. “The reality is setting in now like, ‘Oh my goodness I can’t believe that happened,’ but in the moment we were just trying to survive.” | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | February 2017 | ['(USA Today)', '(Weather Channel)'] |
Tanzanians head to the polls to elect their President. Incumbent John Magufuli seeks reelection as his top opposition candidate Tundu Lissu, who returned from exile after a failed assassination attempt, warns of "widespread irregularities". | Voters in Tanzania have cast ballots in elections overshadowed by opposition allegations of “widespread irregularities”, including ballot-box stuffing, amid a massive internet slowdown.
President John Magufuli seeks a second term in office despite criticism by the opposition of stifling dissent and narrowing democratic space since he took office five years ago. Nicknamed by his supporters “The Bulldozer”, the 60-year-old has won plaudits for his efforts to strengthen the economy, reduce wasteful public spending and pursue large-scale development projects.
Some 29 million people had registered to vote in Wednesday’s elections for a president in mainland Tanzania and the semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, as well as for lawmakers and local councilors.
Results declared by the electoral commission cannot be challenged in court, bringing urgency to vote-monitoring efforts, but the opposition said observers were turned away from scores of polling stations on Wednesday. Many journalists from foreign media, including Al Jazeera, were not able to obtain accreditation to cover the elections while major social media networks were blocked, accessible only through virtual private networks.
Meanwhile, major independent observers such as the European Union were not invited or barred, unlike in previous elections.
In a Twitter post on Wednesday, top opposition candidate Tundu Lissu, of the Chadema party, alleged “widespread irregularities” as voting got under way.
Having survived an assassination attempt in 2017, Lissu returned from exile this year to challenge Magufuli. The 52-year-old has urged supporters to stage protests on the streets if election results are announced on Thursday without ballots being counted properly.
“Mass democratic action will be the only option to protect the integrity of the election,” said Lissu.
Voting reports indicate widespread irregularities in the form of preventing our polling agents from accessing polling stations. Stuffed ballot boxes seized in Kawe, Dar. If this continues, mass democratic action will be the only option to protect the integrity of the election.
— Tundu Antiphas Lissu (@TunduALissu) October 28, 2020
The other major opposition party, ACT Wazalendo, which reported deadly violence ahead of the vote, said its polling agents witnessed ballot box-snatching by security agents, ballot box-stuffing and voters turned away by authorities who said ballots had run out.
Electoral Commission Chairperson Semistocles Kaijage, in a statement after polls closed, said that allegations of irregularities circulating on social media were not true. The commission had not received any formal notification of alleged fraud, he said.
National Election Commission Director Wilson Mahera told reporters that counting had begun.
“We are ready for the job. Tomorrow [Thursday], we will be summing up the presidential results and start updating,” he said. It was not clear when results would be released.
But even before dawn, some claimed intimidation. “My life is in danger,” Chadema Chairman Freeman Mbowe tweeted, later sharing surveillance video he said showed an armed local official outside his hotel.
Hai DC riding a car with @UN ante & armed with guns & machetes led his notorious gangsters to invade Hotel Aishi, Machame intending to kidnap & kill me. On realizing CCTV security, they dashed out with Tourist's Lodge 2 security guards & their gun & dumped them along Arusha Rd. pic.twitter.com/FAZqOq5fwF
— Freeman Mbowe (@freemanmbowetz) October 28, 2020
In Zanzibar, voting was largely peaceful after police and security fired tear gas and live rounds and arrested scores on Monday night and Tuesday. The election took place under heavy security and as polls closed AFP news agency reporters saw two armoured personnel carriers loaded with soldiers driving through the streets of the capital.
“A man appeared with a dead man’s ID. The dead man’s son, however, was present in the polling station as an ACT Wazalendo agent,” the party alleged in a statement. “The agent was ejected from the polling station and the man allowed to vote.”
“It’s the worst election in Tanzania’s history,” an exhausted Ismail Jussa, an ACT Wazalendo official, told The Associated Press news agency. He said police ordered him out when he tried to witness vote-counting, then saw tanks in the streets while driving to party offices.
Considering Magufuli’s ban on opposition political gatherings in 2016, the disqualification of some opposition candidates and other harassment ahead of the vote, “I thought [the ruling party] would leave today to go smoothly to give credit for themselves,” Jussa said.
Opposition leader Seif Sharif Hamad has accused the ruling party of trying to steal every vote in Zanzibar since multi-party democracy was introduced in 1995. Foreign observers have often agreed.
“I feel proud that I have managed to vote this year,” said Hamad after casting his ballot and slamming the election as a “farce” following his detention for several hours Tuesday.
Though Tanzania has long been deemed a haven of stability in East Africa, local and international observers say the country has seen a worrying crackdown on the opposition and freedom of speech under Magufuli.
The president, who is expected to win a second term, is also accused of downplaying the coronavirus pandemic, declaring it defeated through prayer.
“We also need to maintain our peace and I always say there is life after elections,” he said after voting in the administrative capital, Dodoma.
“Everyone has the duty to protect the legitimacy of this general election,” The Citizen newspaper said in an opinion article on Wednesday, reminding readers that “for decades, Tanzania has been an island of peace”.
Al Jazeera’s Catherine Wambua-Soi, reporting from Nairobi, the capital of neighbouring Kenya, said there was a “lot of concern from ordinary Tanzanian people”, who were worried what might happen if the opposition “senses defeat”.
“We have been hearing very aggressive words from the opposition in mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar using very aggressive tones,” Wambua-Soi added.
Tanzania Elections Watch, a regional initiative of prominent personalities, has pointed out hate speech and intimidation of candidates.
“There are legitimate concerns that the heavy police and army deployment across Zanzibar is intimidating residents and creating fear and despondency that could deter voters from turning out,” Tanzania Elections Watch said in a statement on Wednesday.
It warned that actions by security forces have created a “climate of fear”.
Internet services slowed ahead of the vote. Fewer major election observers will be present, some saying they were not invited by the government, and the opposition said authorities made it difficult to accredit thousands of their own observers. | Government Job change - Election | October 2020 | ['(Al Jazeera)'] |
The Turkish government arrests at least ten former admirals under suspicion of initiating a coup d'état, after 104 retired admirals issued an open letter opposing the proposed Istanbul Canal. | Turkey on Monday detained 10 retired admirals after a letter signed by more than 100 of them warned against a possible threat to a treaty governing the use of Turkey's key waterways.
Turkey's approval last month of plans to develop a shipping canal in Istanbul comparable to the Panama or Suez canals has opened up debate about the 1936 Montreux Convention.
In their letter, 104 retired admirals said it was "worrying" to open the Montreux treaty up to debate, calling it an agreement that "best protects Turkish interests".
The Ankara chief public prosecutor's office said arrest warrants were issued for the 10 and ordered four other suspects to report to Ankara police within three days, opting not to detain them because of their age.
They are accused of "using force and violence to get rid of the constitutional order", NTV broadcaster reported.
The prosecutor launched a probe on Sunday into the retired admirals on suspicion of an "agreement to commit a crime against the state's security and constitutional order".
One of the 10 suspects detained was Cem Gurdeniz, described as the father of Turkey's controversial new maritime doctrine known as "Blue Homeland".
The doctrine has grown in prominence, especially during tensions last year between Greece and Turkey over Ankara's gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.
It argues Turkey has rights to substantial maritime borders including the water surrounding some Greek islands, much to Athens' chagrin.
Turkish officials have reacted angrily to the letter, claiming it appears to be a call for a coup.
"Stating one's thoughts is one thing, preparing a declaration evoking a coup is another," parliament speaker Mustafa Sentop said on Sunday.
Coups are a sensitive subject in Turkey since the military, which has long seen itself as the guarantor of the country's secular constitution, staged three coups between 1960 and 1980.
There was also an attempted overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016, blamed on followers of US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen in the military.
The Montreux Convention ensures the free passage through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits of civilian vessels in times of both peace and war. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | April 2021 | ['(The News International)'] |
A record fine of almost three million is upheld by the Superior Labor Court of Brazil (Tribunal Superior do Trabalho, TST). (People's Daily) | A Brazilian court has upheld a fine of nearly $3m (£1.93m) on a company accused of keeping people as slave labourers on its ranches for years. The fine is the biggest imposed for employing slave labour, the Supreme Labour Tribunal said in a statement. Among 180 employees freed from the firm's two ranches in the state of Para in 1998 were several adolescents. It is estimated some 25,000 people in Brazil still work in conditions that amount to slave labour. In its ruling, the TST upheld a decision by a lower court to impose a financial penalty on Lima Araujo Agropecuaria, the firm that owns the ranches in the Amazonian state. Confirming the fine of 5m reais ($2.8m), Judge Luiz Philippe Vieira de Mello Filho said it should serve as an example not only for the company in question but to all guilty of exploiting workers. He said the company's premises had been raided on five occasions between 1998 and 2002. The company's behaviour, the judge said, was "absolutely reprehensible, a direct attack on and affront to people's dignity".
This included not giving them water, keeping them in mud huts without sanitation and denying sick workers medical treatment. Debt slavery is found especially in Brazil's Amazon. Poor workers are lured to plantations where they then incur debts to owners which they cannot pay off. The Brazilian government launched a national plan in 2002 to eradicate slavery. Government agents last year rescued some 3,000 workers across Brazil. Brazil tackles forced labour boom | Organization Fine | August 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The New Zealand Herald)'] |
British Holocaust denier David Irving is jailed for three years by an Austrian court after pleading guilty to denying the existence of the Holocaust during a visit to Austria in 1989. Arrested last November, a suspended sentence had been expected and Irving is expected to appeal the sentence. | David Irving entered the historic Vienna courtroom with a cheeky swagger yesterday morning and left in the evening a stooped and defeated man. The 67-year-old was sentenced to three years in jail by an Austrian judge for denying, in two speeches he made 16 years ago, the existence of the gas chambers of the Second World War and the murder of six million Jews.
"I am deeply shocked and will appeal," a stunned Irving told reporters as he was bundled out of court by armed riot police officers. There was uproar from his supporters. "Stay strong, David!" shouted Richard Edmunds, who had flown over from London for Irving's day in court. "Good luck to you!" He too was bundled out of court.
Irving was not wearing his £2,700 pinstripe Savile Row suit as he had promised. The shabby navy blazer he did choose only reinforced the fact that this was a day when nothing would go right for him.
With a P G Wodehouse novel stuffed in his pocket to stave off boredom, he brandished a copy of his book, Hitler's War, for the ruck of photographers and television crews outside the court. "I've learnt a lot during the last 17 years," he declared to the reporters. "I've changed my views."
But, despite blustering optimistically into the high-ceilinged courtroom, he was soon thrust on the defensive by a particularly stern-tongued judge, Peter Liebtreu. And his admission that he had changed his mind was not enough to save him. The eight-man jury took less than two hours to deliver a unanimous verdict that the British revisionist historian should be imprisoned. The judge then ruled that three years, rather than the maximum sentence of 10 years, was appropriate.
It was still a body blow for the pale and tired-looking defendant. "Do you understand your sentence, Mr Irving?" the judge asked. "I'm not sure I do," Irving replied.
The judgment hung on whether the jury would believe his show of remorse and his dramatic U-turn. "I'm not a Holocaust denier," Irving had even told reporters as the court opened.
The charges stem from two lectures given in Austria in November 1989. Mr Irving said the gas chambers at Auschwitz extermination camp did not exist, that Hitler held a "protective hand over the Jews" and that the Holocaust was a myth.
Judge Liebtreu examined statements Irving had made to two audiences of far-right extremists and supporters in Leoben and Vienna in 1989. His stern, often mocking, cross-examination soon forced Irving to abandon some of his more controversial statements. Judge Liebtreu read out part of one of Irving's speeches in which he claimed that Holocaust witnesses were "cases for psychiatric treatment".
"Do you still believe this?" Judge Liebtreu asked. The defendant was silent for a moment. Eventually, he replied: "I regret that formulation."
"Do you take it back?" the judge persevered. "I regret it," Irving replied.
Irving said sorry and expressed regret for many other statements. He accepted now, he said, that there had been gas chambers in Auschwitz and that millions of Jews had indeed been killed by the Nazis, but he continued to play with numbers. "Last week, on the occasion of the Dresden bombing," he said, "I knelt in my cell and prayed to remember the 100,000 civilians killed there."
The accepted historical casualty figure is closer to 35,000. Irving has traditionally exaggerated the numbers of Germans killed in the war and played down the numbers of Holocaust victims. Even yesterday, pleading for his freedom, he stressed "the figure of six million killed Jews is just symbolic".
The state prosecutor, Michael Klackl, remained unimpressed. He called Irving a "dangerous falsifier of history" and a man who often played the role of a repentant sinner.
"You must remember," he told the court, "David Irving only uses words, but these words are used by right-wing extremists to give them an ideological position." Summing up, he said: "Mr Irving might have said he has changed his views, but that has all been a show for you."
Irving's defence lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, told the jury that the defendant was a self-made man who, in order to be successful, had to provoke, and in doing so, had stepped over the boundaries of taste. "He is not the youngest of men. He has a sick wife at home and he is a foreigner," Mr Kresbach said. "Is the man before you really dangerous, or is he a lonely and somewhat desperate 67-year-old who has said some terrible things?"
Irving, who has been in jail since his arrest on 11 November last year, told the court he has an annual income of £57,000 and draws a £20-a-week pension. He admitted that the prospect of a prolonged jail sentence was worrying. "I have a 12-year-old daughter," he said. "I have great worries about the future."
Incarceration in Vienna's Josefstadt prison will mean a harsh change of lifestyle for Irving, who complained recently to an Italian newspaper that his Mayfair living room was at least twice the size of the dining room in which 70 prisoners had to eat each day. He said that all he wanted to do was to go home to his "sick wife and daughter".
At lunch in the court canteen, one Holocaust survivor was eating a plate of spaghetti. He talked about the spell he survived in Treblinka and the 17 family members he lost during the war. "I am here because I am a part of the history this man denies," he said. "Even if they sentence him to a one euro fine for what he has said didn't happen, it will be a judgment which will go down in history."
By evening, Irving was a broken man, his career at an end. Distraught and stunned, he was escorted from the courtroom to return to his 19th-century cell.
Why freedom of speech has never been an absolute right
By Robert Verkaik
The right to freedom of speech has never been an absolute right to say anything.
Yesterday's conviction and sentence of David Irving also demonstrates that the limits on freedom of expression can depend on where the speaker makes their comments.
In Germany and Austria, where the Holocaust was dreamt up, their criminal laws make it an offence to deny that that historical event took place. There are few other democracies that have felt it necessary to enact these draconian laws. Irving made his statements 17 years ago.
In Britain we still rely on principles of criminal law to bring cases to court. This month the Muslim cleric Abu Hamza was sentenced to seven years for inciting racial hatred and Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, was unsuccessfully prosecuted for making accusations about murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | February 2006 | ['(BBC)', '(The Independent)'] |
2007 Pakistan unrest: A strike in Pakistan closes shops and clears transport from the roads after two days of violence in Karachi left 41 people dead. | The strike was called amid some of the worst street battles in recent years, triggered by the suspension of a top judge by President Pervez Musharraf.
Authorities have now banned gatherings of more than five people in the city.
Correspondents say the weekend's violence marked a serious escalation of a crisis that began in March.
The city is totally paralysed
In those two months, suspended chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has become a focus for protesters trying to end military rule.
Karachi city police chief Azhar Farooqi told Reuters news agency that there had been no violence on Monday, although the city was very tense.
Mr Farooqi said the city remained "totally paralysed" throughout Monday, with shops closed and very little public transport on the roads. He said people were still scared. Opposition parties on Monday called for a national strike and a day of mourning to protest against the bloodshed. Meanwhile, provincial authorities have banned all political rallies as security forces tried to restore order. "We have banned the assembly of more than five people in any public place in Karachi for Monday," Sindh province interior secretary Brigadier Ghulam Muhammad Muhtaram told the AFP news agency earlier on Monday.
Funeral processions were accompanied by gun battles and arson. The fighting on Saturday was between supporters of the government and supporters of the chief justice but by Sunday it had begun to turn into clashes between traditional ethnic rivals. A number of people were injured in clashes
Opposition groups blamed the pro-Musharraf MQM party of organising the unrest, but it denied the claim.
Pakistan's government on Sunday authorised paramilitary troops to shoot anyone involved in serious violence.
Speaking at a mass rally in Islamabad on Saturday night, Gen Musharraf ruled out declaring a state of emergency and appealed to the country to stand united.
He also blamed "elements who tried to create turmoil by politicising" Chief Justice Chaudhry's suspension.
I regard the rallies in Pakistan as battle for democracy Metin, Ankara Send us your comments
Since his suspension on charges of "misuse of authority", Mr Chaudhry has become the focus of widespread opposition to the government of Gen Musharraf, who took power in a coup in 1999.
Correspondents say opposition parties have turned Mr Chaudhry's case into a campaign against military rule. Mr Chaudhry was suspended from his post in March
His supporters say that Gen Musharraf wants the judiciary headed by a lawyer whom he can more easily manipulate.
Meanwhile, a hearing into a petition by the chief justice challenging his dismissal has been halted in the Supreme Court in Islamabad after one of the 14 judges on the bench refused to hear the case.
Justice Falak Sher raised objections over the constitution of the bench saying several judges were his junior.
The bench will be reconstituted later.
Also in Islamabad, an official of the Supreme Court was shot dead. Police say he was killed by robbers in an unrelated incident.
But lawyers fighting on behalf of the suspended chief justice say that Syed Hammad Raza, an additional registrar of the Supreme Court, was an "important person" in their case against his dismissal.
"He was witness to many things, like the chief justice said in his petition that some files were removed from his chamber on the day he was suspended," lawyer Tariq Mehmood told Reuters. The most shared story right now is: Ban for owner of bust company | Riot | May 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
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