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A Russian Kogalymavia Airbus A-321 airliner crashes in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula with 224 passengers on board travelling from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg. | A Russian airliner has crashed in central Sinai killing all 224 people on board, Egyptian officials have said.
The Airbus A-321 had just left the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, bound for the Russian city of St Petersburg.
Wreckage was found in the Hasana area and bodies removed, along with the plane's "black box". An official described a "tragic scene" with bodies of victims still strapped to seats.
Egypt's prime minister said no "irregular" activities were to blame.
Sinai has an active militant network, and on Saturday afternoon, jihadis allied to the so-called Islamic State made a claim on social media that they brought down flight KGL9268.
But Russian Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov told Interfax news agency that "such reports cannot be considered true". No evidence had been seen that indicated the plane was targeted, he said.
Egypt's civilian aviation ministry said the plane had been at an altitude of 9,450m (31,000ft) when it disappeared.
Security experts say a plane flying at that altitude would be beyond the range of a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile (Manpad), which Sinai militants are known to possess.
But the German carrier Lufthansa said it would avoid flying over Sinai "as long as the cause for today's crash has not been clarified". On Saturday evening, Air France said it was following suit.
British Airways and easyJet said their routes were regularly reviewed, but that they had no plans to alter their routes to and from Sharm el-Sheikh.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared Sunday a day of mourning.
He has ordered an official investigation into the crash of the flight, and for rescue teams to be sent to the crash site.
Egyptian officials said 214 of the passengers were Russian and three Ukrainian.
Russian authorities say the plane was carrying 217 passengers, 17 of them children aged between 2 and 17. Most were tourists. There were seven crew on board.
A commission headed by Mr Sokolov left for Egypt on Saturday afternoon.
A criminal case had been opened against the airline, Kogalymavia, for "violation of rules of flight and preparation for them", Russia's Ria news agency reported.
Yulia Zaitseva said her friends, newlyweds Elena Rodina and Alexander Krotov, were on board.
"We were friends for 20 years," she told AP at a hotel where relatives were meeting near Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg.
"To lose such a friend is like having your hand cut off."
05:58 Egyptian time (03:58 GMT): flight leaves Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian cabinet says in a statement 06:14 Egyptian time (04:14 GMT): plane fails to make scheduled contact with air traffic control based in Larnaca, Cyprus, according to Sergei Izdolsky, an official with Russia's air transport agency.
06:17 Egyptian time, approx (04:17 GMT): plane comes down over the Sinai peninsula, according to Airbus
11:12 Egyptian time (09:12 GMT): flight had been due to land in St Petersburg's Pulkovo airport
Oksana Golovin, a spokeswoman for Kogalymavia, said the company did not see any grounds to blame human error.
She told a press conference that the pilot had 12,000 hours of flying experience. Kogalymavia did not yet know what caused the crash, she said, but the plane was fully serviced.
Police are reported to be searching the company's offices.
Initially there were conflicting reports about the fate of the plane, some suggesting it had disappeared over Cyprus.
But the office of Egyptian Prime Minister Sharif Ismail confirmed in a statement that a "Russian civilian plane... crashed in the central Sinai".
Officials say up to 50 ambulances have been sent to the scene. Access to the area is strictly controlled by the military.
One official told Reuters news agency that at least 100 bodies had been found.
"I now see a tragic scene," the official said. "A lot of dead on the ground and many died whilst strapped to their seats."
The plane split in two, with one part burning up and the other crashing into a rock, he added.
Live flight tracking service Flight Radar 24's Mikail Robertson told the BBC that the plane started to drop very fast, losing 1,500 metres in one minute before coverage was lost.
Egyptian aviation official Ayman al-Mukadem said the pilot had reported technical difficulties before the plane went missing, the Associated Press reported.
Local weather observations in the vicinity of the rescue scene suggest relatively benign conditions.
| Air crash | October 2015 | ['(The News Hub)', '(BBC)'] |
In Vietnam, President Trần Đức Lương, Prime Minister Phan Văn Khải and the Chairman of the Assembly Nguyen Van An resign, citing old age. | The National Assembly in Hanoi approved the resignations of President Tran Duc Luong, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, and Assembly Speaker Nguyen Van An.
They are in their seventies or late sixties, and failed to win re-election to the Communist Party Politburo.
PM Khai, 72, is best known for driving through market reforms that transformed the Vietnamese economy in the 1990s.
The resignations were announced on Saturday by the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Nong Duc Manh.
He told the National Assembly that because of their age and the policy of rejuvenation of the leadership, the three leaders had expressed their intention of not standing for re-election.
The BBC's Bill Hayton, in Hanoi, says that since Vietnam is a one-party state, the Communist Party will actually appoint their successors. Deputies have been meeting behind closed doors to discuss new names due to be endorsed in the coming week.
The new president is expected to be Nguyen Minh Triet and the new Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, currently deputy prime minister and seen as an economic liberal. Both men come from the south of the country. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | June 2006 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Taliban ambush a group of soldiers in Khan Abad, Kunduz, killing three of them. Five Taliban insurgents are killed in the clash. | At least three police and five Taliban were killed in clashes in the northern province of Kunduz on Thursday night, local police officials said.
The Taliban attack occurred in parts of Khanabad district, said Hijratullah Akbari, a spokesman for the provincial police chief.
“The clashes ended after an hour and the Taliban fled the area,” said Akbari.
The Taliban have not yet commented on the attack.
Three police and three Taliban were wounded in the clashes, according to Kunduz police officials.
At least three police and five Taliban were killed in clashes in the northern province of Kunduz on Thursday night, local police officials said.
The Taliban attack occurred in parts of Khanabad district, said Hijratullah Akbari, a spokesman for the provincial police chief.
“The clashes ended after an hour and the Taliban fled the area,” said Akbari.
The Taliban have not yet commented on the attack.
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Telecommunication companies issued a joint statement calling on the Afghan government to immediately address the issue…
Afghan forces suffered casualties in Taliban attacks in two districts of Jawzjan in northern Afghanistan, a source said. | Armed Conflict | May 2020 | ['(Tolo News)'] |
Former President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, dies at the age of 83. He was the first non-Arab president of Iraq. , | The Kurdish leader and former Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, has died at the age of 83, Iraqi state TV has said. Talabani was a veteran of the Kurdish struggle for an independent state and founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in 1975.
In 2005, two years after the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, he became Iraq's first non-Arab president. He stepped down in 2014, two years after suffering a stroke that led him to seek medical treatment in Germany.
Although the post of president is largely ceremonial, while in office he helped mediate disputes among the country's many political and religious factions.
Talabani's death was announced on Tuesday amid a major rift between the autonomous Kurdistan Region and the Arab-led central government in Baghdad.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has demanded that the Kurdish authorities annul the referendum on independence that was held eight days ago and banned international flights to the region.
The Kurdistan Regional Government insists the vote, in which more than 90% of people backed secession from Iraq, was legitimate and accused Mr Abadi of "collective punishment".
Setback for EU in legal fight with AstraZeneca
But the drug-maker faces hefty fines if it fails to supply doses of Covid-19 vaccine over the summer.
| Famous Person - Death | October 2017 | ['(Reuters)', '(BBC)'] |
President-elect Trump announces former Governor of Texas Rick Perry is his choice to be Secretary of Energy. | President-elect Donald Trump has picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department, said two people familiar with the decision, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it.
Perry, who ran for president in the past two election cycles, is likely to shift the department away from renewable energy and toward fossil fuels, whose production he championed while serving as governor for 14 years.
The Energy Department was central to the 2011 gaffe that helped end his first presidential bid. Declaring that he wanted to eliminate three federal agencies during a primary debate in Michigan, Perry then froze after mentioning the Commerce and Education departments. "The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops."
Later during the debate, Perry offered: "By the way, that was the Department of Energy I was reaching for a while ago."
Speaking to reporters once the event was over, he said, "The bottom line is I may have forgotten energy, but I haven't forgotten my conservative principles, and that's what this campaign is really going to be about."
Despite its name, most of the Energy Department's budget is devoted to maintaining the nation's stockpile of nuclear warheads and to cleaning up nuclear waste at sites left by military weapons programs. The department runs the nation's national laboratories, sets appliance standards and hands out grants and loan guarantees for basic research, solar cells, capturing carbon dioxide from coal combustion and more.
Four years after his first Oval Office bid, the former governor sought it once again in the big Republican field that included Trump. Perry touted the high rate of job growth and the low tax rate his state enjoyed under his leadership. At one point, he dismissed Trump's campaign as a "barking carnival act."
The child of a cotton farmer and county commissioner from west Texas, Perry immersed himself in politics from a young age. He was elected as a Democrat to the state legislature but switched to the GOP when he ran for Texas agriculture commissioner.
As governor, he recruited out-of-state firms to Texas. In 2013, he starred in an ad that aired in California in which he declared that companies should visit his home state "and see why our low taxes, sensible regulations and fair legal system are just the thing to get your business moving. To Texas."
Salo Zelermyer, who served as a senior counsel at the Energy Department's general counsel's office under President George W. Bush and is now a partner at the Bracewell law firm, said Perry has proven "it is indeed possible to successfully balance appropriate environmental regulations with domestic energy production and use."
"During his time in office, Perry embodied the type of 'all of the above' approach to U.S. energy production that many have advocated on both sides of the aisle," Zelermyer said. "Rick Perry's Texas was not only a world leader in oil and gas production; it was also a global leader in wind power and renewable energy investment. This approach is a big reason Texas experienced such enormous job growth during Perry's tenure."
But environmentalists take a dim view of Perry. The former governor has repeatedly questioned scientific findings that human activity is helping drive climate change. In 2011 during a presidential debate, he compared the minority of scientists who challenged this assumption to 17th-century astronomer Galileo, who was persecuted by the Catholic Church after suggesting that the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than the reverse.
"The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans' economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that's not settled yet to me is just nonsense," Perry said at the time. "Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for a spell."
In his 2010 book, "Fed Up!" Perry described the science showing that climate change was underway and caused by humans as a "contrived phony mess," writing that those who embraced this idea "know that we have been experiencing a cooling trend, that the complexities of the global atmosphere have often eluded the most sophisticated scientists, and that draconian policies with dire economic effects based on so-called science may not stand the test of time."
"Al Gore is a prophet all right, a false prophet of a secular carbon cult, and now even moderate Democrats aren't buying it," he added, referring to the former vice president and environmentalist. Gore met with Trump recently to discuss climate change.
Later, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Perry said, "There are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects."
In fact, the top 10 hottest years on record have all been since 1998, and 2016 is expected to be the hottest year since formal record-keeping began in 1880. The 2014 summary report for policymakers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was endorsed by officials from nearly 200 countries, stated, "Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic [human caused] emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history."
"There is no doubt that Rick Perry is completely unfit to run an agency he sought to eliminate - and couldn't even name. Perry is a climate change denier, opposes renewable energy even as it has boomed in Texas, and doesn't even believe CO2 is a pollutant," League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski said in a statement. "Not only that, he is deep in the pocket of Big Polluters, who have contributed over $2.5 million to his presidential campaigns, a disturbing sign that they expected him to protect their profits in office, not do what's best for the American people."
Wind power did expand under Perry during his tenure in Texas - from 200 megawatts in 2000 to 14,098 megawatts in 2014, according to the American Wind Energy Association - and he supported the construction of transmission lines nearly a decade ago that helped bring wind-generated electricity to market.
"He created an environment conducive to economic investment through robust infrastructure and competitive power markets that allowed new technologies to enter," said Tom Kiernan, the chief executive of the American Wind Energy Association, in a statement. "The Texas model under Gov. Perry's leadership enabled the growth of low-cost wind energy that made the grid more diverse and reliable while saving consumers money."
However during a 2015 Iowa Agriculture Summit in Des Moines, the former governor said he opposed extending the federal tax credit for wind power. "I do if a state wants to do it," he said. "I don't at the federal level. I think all of these need to be looked at, whether it's oil and gas, whether it's the wind side, whether it's the [Renewable Fuel Standard program] - I think all of them need to be put on the table, prove whether or not these are in fact in the best interest of this country."
Referring to renewable sources, Jennifer Layke, the World Resources Institute energy program director, said: "The Department of Energy leads essential programs that drive innovation and fill important gaps to get new technologies off the ground. These are vital to keep the U.S. at the frontier of energy technology. In recent years, the Department of Energy has given U.S. businesses a significant boost to accelerate the development of battery storage, solar panels and electric vehicles. These programs must continue."
Perry sits on the board of Energy Transfer Partners, the firm that is trying to complete work on the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Great Plains. Under President Obama, the Army Corps of Engineers recently decided to withhold a key permit from the company that is needed to finish the oil pipeline. The pipeline has drawn protests from activists who say that segment of the pipeline would disturb American Indian burial grounds and pollute the drinking water of the nearby Indian reservation. The Energy Department has not played a role in that decision-making process, however, and Trump has indicated he would allow the project to move forward once he takes office.
If confirmed, Perry would walk into an agency where many career civil servants are likely to be wary of him, not only because of his past pledge to abolish the department. Employees there are already on edge, given the fact that Trump's transition team gave a questionnaire to DOE officials asking that they identify which employees have worked on either international climate negotiations or domestic initiatives to cut carbon.
Current DOE leaders have declined to provide any individual names of employees to Trump transition team members.
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | December 2016 | ['(Chicago Tribune)'] |
A federal district court in Washington State issues a preliminary injunction against enforcement of an initiative by the Donald Trump administration ("gag order") that would have restricted doctor-patient communications about abortion in family planning clinics that receive U.S. taxpayer funding. | (Reuters) - A federal judge in Washington state on Thursday blocked a Trump administration rule that would prohibit taxpayer-funded family planning clinics from referring patients to abortion providers.
The preliminary injunction bars enforcement nationwide of a policy that was due to go into effect on May 3 over the vehement objections of abortion supporters who have decried it as a “gag rule” designed to silence doctor-patient communications about abortion options.
“Today’s ruling ensures that clinics across the nation can remain open and continue to provide quality, unbiased healthcare to women,” Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement announcing the decision.
Washington state was a named plaintiff in the case challenging restrictions proposed by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) to its Title X program subsidizing reproductive healthcare and family planning costs for low-income women.
Neither the White House nor HHS immediately responded to requests from Reuters for comment.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima, in eastern Washington, capped a hearing in which oral arguments were presented by both sides.
“There is no public interest in perpetuating unlawful agency action,” Bastian wrote in his ruling.
Bastian also wrote that the “Plaintiffs have presented reasonable arguments that indicate they are likely to succeed on the merits.”
He said that the plaintiffs “are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction.”
A federal judge in Oregon earlier this week said he intended to grant a preliminary injunction in a similar but separate lawsuit brought by 20 states and the District of Columbia. Two more lawsuits challenging the Title X restrictions are pending in California and Maine.
The restrictions are aimed at fulfilling Republican President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to end federal support for Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides abortions and other health services for women under Title X.
Congress appropriated $286 million in Title X grants in 2017 to Planned Parenthood and other health centers to provide birth control, screening for diseases and other reproductive health and counseling to low-income women.
The funding is already prohibited from being used for abortions, but abortion opponents have long complained that the money in effect subsidizes Planned Parenthood as a whole.
Planned Parenthood provides healthcare services to about 40 percent of the 4 million people who rely on Title X funding annually, and the organization has argued that community health centers would be unable to absorb its patients.
Under the new rule, clinics that receive Title X funding would be barred from referring patients for abortion as a method of family planning. The regulation also would require financial and physical separation between facilities funded by Title X and those providing abortions.
Abortion opponents have argued the plan would not ban abortion counseling but would ensure that taxpayer funding does not support clinics that also perform the procedure. | Government Policy Changes | April 2019 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Head of International Monetary Fund says the US financial crisis threatens to send the world into a recession. IMF releases World Economic Outlook report with gloomy projections for the global financial system. | The head of the International Monetary Fund says that the US financial crisis threatens to send the world into a recession. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said at a news conference in Washington that the credit market turmoil can only be resolved through international co-operation. The IMF head stressed that policymakers must co-operate in a transparent manner if the turbulence were to be overcome. He said a recovery from the current crisis was possible in mid- to late 2009. Strauss-Kahn and World Bank chief, Robert Zoellick, are also expected to attend a weekend meeting between the finance ministers of the world's top seven industrialised countries on how to tackle the financial crisis. | Financial Crisis | October 2008 | ['(Deutsche Welle)'] |
Two campaigners for LGBT rights in Zimbabwe are freed after spending six days in custody on charges of possessing pornographic material and insulting President Robert Mugabe. | Two members of a Zimbabwean gay rights association have been freed from custody, their lawyers say.
They say the two are facing charges of possessing pornographic material and insulting President Robert Mugabe.
Ellen Chadian - administrator of the group, Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe - and Ignatius Muhambi - an accountant - were picked up during a raid.
Homosexual acts are illegal in Zimbabwe but the group has been allowed to operate openly.
Magistrate Munamate Mutevedzi released the two on Thursday until a trial set for 10 June, when they will face penalties of imprisonment or a fine.
"The magistrate has released them on a $200 [£137] bail each," Dzimbabwe Chimbga, a lawyer representing the pair, told the AFP news agency.
Their employer said that the two were assaulted by police while in custody after their arrest last Friday.
"The initial charges are that they were found in possession of pornographic material," Mr Chimbga said earlier this week.
"Now the police want to add a charge of insulting the president," he added.
Police told by AP news agency say that they had found a letter undermining President Mugabe during the raid.
Mr Mugabe has in the past described same-sex partners as "lower than dogs and pigs", but arrests of gays are rare in Zimbabwe, correspondents say.
Homosexual acts are illegal in most African countries.
Last week a judge in Malawi sentenced a gay couple to 14 years in prison with hard labour after they held a traditional engagement ceremony. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | May 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(IOL)', '(News24.com)'] |
The Public Prosecutor General of Germany announces the arrest of two members of the Syrian military intelligence service on charges of crimes against humanity. The arrests happened the day before in the states of Berlin and RhinelandPalatinate. | German serious crimes police arrested two alleged former Syrian secret service agents on charges of crimes against humanity committed in Syria. Both men are accused of torture, and one is also accused of murder.
Germany's investigative police force (Bundeskriminalamt) has arrested two alleged former employees of the Syrian secret service suspected of having committedcrimes against humanity while working for the intelligence service in Syria.
Federal prosecutorssaid the two men, 56-year-old Anwar R. and 42-year-old Eyad A.,were arrested by federal police in Berlin andRhineland-Palatinate state respectively. The arrest of the two men came after French authorities apprehended a third Syrian man near Paris.
Prosecutors said that Anwar R., ahigh-ranking member of Syria's General Intelligence Service, is accused of participating in the abuse of detainees at a prison he oversaw in Damascus.
As lead investigator, the manallegedly ordered the use of systematic and brutal torture onanti-government activists between the end of April 2011 and the beginning of September 2012.
Eyad A., prosecutors said, was part of a unit that arrested hundreds of activists and brought them to the prison run by the other suspect.
Between the beginning of July 2011 and mid-January 2012, Eyad A. is suspected of helping tokill two people and torture and physically abuseat least 2,000 people.
Both Anwar R. and Eyad A. left Syria in 2012, prosecutors said. Anwar R. has been in Germany since mid-2014 and Eyad A. since mid-2018. Both suspects applied for asylum in Germany.
Prosecutors said theSyrian regime has beenusingbrutal force tosuppress all opposition activities critical of the government throughout the country since April 2011, andthe Syrian secret services played an essential role.
Editor's note: Deutsche Welle follows the German press code, which stresses the importance of protecting the privacy of suspected criminals or victims and obliges us to refrain from revealing full names in such cases. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | February 2019 | ['(DW)'] |
A man stabs the Mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, on stage at a Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity event in Gdańsk, Poland. | The mayor of the northern Polish city of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, was stabbed on Sunday evening in an apparent assassination attempt in front of thousands of people during a charity concert.
Adamowicz, who has served as mayor of Gdańsk since 1998, was resuscitated at the scene and rushed to a nearby hospital where he underwent five hours of surgery. Doctors described his condition as “critical” and “serious”.
One of the surgeons, Dr Tomasz Stefaniak, said Adamowicz suffered a “serious wound to the heart, a wound to the diaphragm and to the internal organs” and had needed a huge amount of blood. Gdansk is holding a blood collection for Adamowicz on Monday and a rally against violence is also planned.
Adamowicz is a powerful liberal voice in a country that has been governed by the rightwing Law and Justice party since 2015. He is best known in Poland and internationally as a staunch supporter of LGBT rights and the rights of migrants and refugees during a period of rising anti-migrant sentiment. “I am a European so my nature is to be open,” Adamowicz told the Guardian in 2016. “Gdańsk is a port and must always be a refuge from the sea.”
Interior minister Joachim Brudziński described the incident as “an attack of inexplicable barbarity”. Polish president Andrzej Duda said: “Today I am unconditionally with him and his loved ones, just as I hope all of us compatriots are. I pray for his return to health and full strength.”
“Shocked to hear of the attack on Paweł Adamowicz, Mayor of Gdańsk, this evening,” the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, wrote on Twitter. “Sending best wishes for his swift recovery, and solidarity to the city he leads, his family and supporters.”
Polish media reports quoting police sources have named the alleged assailant as Stefan W, a 27-year-old from Gdańsk with a record of violent crime. Polish law restricts the surnames of people accused of a crime being reported.
Video footage of the incident shows the assailant addressing the crowd from a microphone on the stage. He is reported as saying: “Hello! Hello! My name is Stefan. I sat innocent in prison, I sat innocent in prison. Civic Platform tortured me, and that’s why Adamowicz is dead.”
Adamowicz was a member of Poland’s pro-European Civic Platform, which governed Poland between 2007 and 2015, before leaving the party to fight local elections as an independent. It is understood that Stefan W was convicted of a series of violent assaults and sentenced to prison in 2014.
According to police sources quoted by Polish news broadcaster TVN24, the assailant is understood to have been planning the attack for some time. The fact that the assailant was able not only to gain access to the stage and to attack the mayor but also to address the crowd in the aftermath has raised serious questions about security, which was provided by a private firm.
The attack happened during the culmination of the annual Great Orchestra of Christmas festivities, a nationwide charity drive for equipment to treat children in state-run hospitals. The charity has raised more than 951 million złoty (£200m) since it was founded 26 years ago. Concerts were being held for the charity across the country. | Famous Person - Sick | January 2019 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights states there is evidence of "massive" violations of human rights with more than 50 people killed in recent days as protests over the Ivorian election continue. | GENEVA, Dec 19 (Reuters) - The United Nations' human rights chief cited evidence on Sunday of "massive" violations in Ivory Coast, saying more than 50 people had been killed in past days as a battle for the presidency escalates.
Incumbent Laurent Gbagbo has claimed victory in a Nov. 28 poll which the outside world says was won by rival Alassane Ouattara. Pro-Gbagbo security forces used live rounds last Thursday to put down street protests by Ouattara supporters.
"When people are victims of extrajudicial killings there must be an investigation, and there must be accountability," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, estimating that more than 50 people had been killed in the past three days with more than 200 wounded.
Pillay said the local U.N. mission also had reports from hundreds of victims and family members of abductions by unidentified armed attackers "accompanied by elements of the Defence and Security Forces or militia groups."
"Abducted persons are reportedly taken by force to illegal places of detention where they are held incommunicado and without charge. Some have been found dead in questionable circumstances," Pillay said in a statement.
Gbagbo's government has denied using excessive force to put down Thursday's protests, called by Ouattara allies in a failed attempt to seize the state broadcaster building.
Gbagbo allies said some protesters were armed and put the toll from the clashes at 20 dead, including 10 members of the security forces.
Last week French President Nicholas Sarkozy warned Gbagbo he could face prosecution in the International Criminal Court and renewed a call for him to stand down immediately.
Election commission results showed Ouattara won by some 8 percentage points. But Gbagbo has claimed victory and is backed by the Constitutional Council, headed by an ally. The Council erased nearly half a million Ouattara votes, alleging fraud.
The United Nations, France, the United States, the European Union, the African Union and West African regional bloc ECOWAS have urged Gbagbo to admit defeat and step down. Please note: Your comment will need to be approved by a moderator before it is added, so it may not appear on the site straight away.
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Colombia's displaced petition UNHCR's Antonio Guterres for help to pressure the government to fulfill its obligations to assist IDPs | Protest_Online Condemnation | December 2010 | ['(Reuters Alert Net)'] |
Kalamazoo County, Michigan, authorities say last evening's shooting spree resulted in six deaths with two others seriously wounded. Each victim was shot multiple times. Police acknowledge that an earlier report that a 14-year-old girl died is incorrect; she is alive, but "severely, gravely" injured. The suspect, a 45-year-old man who is an Uber driver without a prior criminal record, was taken into custody without a struggle. | By Kevin Conlon and Nick Valencia, CNN
Updated 1003 GMT (1803 HKT) February 22, 2016 Kalamazoo, Michigan (CNN)The man accused of killing six people and injuring two more in a Saturday evening shooting rampage in Kalamazoo, Michigan, was an Uber driver who picked up and dropped off passengers between shootings, a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. CNN's Vivian Kuo, Ryan Young, Brad Parks, Joe Sutton, Ed Danko, Melanie Whitley, Rashard Rose and Josh Berlinger contributed to this report. For California Residents OnlyPursuant to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) Some of your data collected from this site is used to help create better, more personalized products and services and to send ads and offers tailored to your interests. Occasionally this is done with help from third parties. We understand if you’d rather us not share your information and respect your right to disable this sharing of your data with third parties for this browser, device, and property. If you turn this off, you will not receive personalized ads, but you will still receive ads. Note that any choice you make here will only affect this website on this browser and device. To learn more about how your data is shared and for more options, including ways to opt-out across other WarnerMedia properties, please visit the Privacy Center.
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you, which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in, or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | February 2016 | ['(USA Today)', '(CNN)'] |
South Africa's Olympic governing body suspends Leonard Chuene, the President of Athletics South Africa, and apologises to Caster Semenya over the controversy it generated over her gender. | South Africa's Olympic governing body has suspended Athletics South Africa's president, while the ASA has apologised to Caster Semenya over her gender row.
Semenya, 18, was embroiled in controversy after her 800m victory at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. ASA chief Leonard Chuene admitted in September he lied about whether Semenya had been gender tested before Berlin. The ASA board and its members have also been suspended pending a disciplinary investigation into the matter. A statement said: "Athletics South Africa wishes to publicly and unconditionally apologise to Caster Semenya and her family, the President of South Africa as well as to all South Africans for the handling of her gender verification processes and the subsequent aftermath."
Semenya burst on to the world stage when she ran one minute, 56.72 seconds for the 800m in July, smashing her previous personal best by more than seven seconds. She also broke Zola Budd's long-standing South African 800m record before arriving in Berlin as the newly-crowned African junior champion. The teenager then left her rivals trailing in Berlin to win by 2.5 seconds from 2007 champion Janeth Jepkosgei in a time of 1.55.45, the fastest time of the year. On the same day, it emerged that gender tests had been carried out on Semenya earlier in August - Chuene at first denied knowledge of those tests before admitting he lied to protect Semenya. However, former South Africa coach Wilfred Daniels told BBC Sport that the ASA kept a lot from Semenya. He said: "She was told it was random doping tests she was being taken to in South Africa and Berlin, in the meantime it was gender verification tests. "She was never briefed properly about her rights and the implications about the outcome of the tests. "She was never given the opportunity to make a decision to compete or allow medical interventions that could regularise her situation. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Semenya was welcomed by hundreds of well-wishers on her return to South Africa
"So those issues remained in the public domain for a very long time and brought so much trauma that I don't think she will ever be able to be a normal woman ever again, to compete on the top tracks of the world and be accepted as a bona fide woman competitor." Meanwhile, the ASA has also acknowledged the criticism it received from South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, which set up a task force to look into the ASA's handling of the affair. The ASA statement added: "Athletics South Africa has taken note of the African National Congress Caster Semenya Support Task Team media statement issued on 16 October relating to Caster Semenya and the gender verification tests conducted on her. "ASA appreciates the ANC's position on this matter, fully welcomes and accepts without any reservations the findings and recommendations of the task team." South Africa's Olympic governing body, SASCOC, says it is considering "taking appropriate action against the IAAF for its disregard of Semenya's rights to privacy". | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | November 2009 | ['(BBC)', '(The Times)'] |
Chinese President Hu Jintao begins a four–day state visit to the United States. | Chinese President Hu Jintao has kicked off a four-day US visit with a rare private dinner at the White House with President Barack Obama.
Analysts say Mr Hu's visit is the most important by a Chinese leader in 30 years given China's growing military, economic and diplomatic clout. Relations have been strained on issues from currency controls and trade disputes to human rights and Taiwan.
Talks are also expected to include North Korea's nuclear activities.
Mr Hu stepped off a jet plane to a show of pomp at Andrews Air Force base outside Washington on Tuesday, greeted by US Vice-President Joseph Biden.
In the US capital, meanwhile, raucous demonstrators protesting against China's Tibet policies gathered in front of the White House, waving signs and flags and chanting slogans.
Workers hung US and Chinese flags along Pennsylvania Avenue, one of Washington DC's chief arteries, which runs between the White House and the Capitol building where Congress sits.
Tuesday's dinner will be followed on Wednesday by talks in the Oval Office, during which White House aides pledged the US president would engage his counterpart on the top issues facing the two nations.
"Whether we're dealing with economic discussions, whether we're dealing with those in the security realm, or whether we're doing those with human rights, I think this is an argument that we have and we'll continue to make to the Chinese and push them to do better," spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
On Wednesday evening Mr Obama will host an opulent state dinner.
Later in the week, Mr Hu is expected to travel to Chicago, where some predict he will sign a series of trade and investment agreements.
China's foreign ministry called Mr Hu's visit "an important one".
"We hope the visit will promote positive and co-operative China-US relations, map out new directions for bilateral relations in the new era and raise co-operation to a new level," said spokesman Hong Lei.
This is likely to be Mr Hu's last state visit to the US before a handover of power is completed in China in 2013.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that America and China are "at a critical juncture, a time when the choices we make, big and small, will shape the trajectory of this relationship".
Both sides recognise the deep divisions that have dogged relations over the past year: the value of the yuan, the huge trade gap, human rights, US arms sales to Taiwan.
The US is also concerned by China's growing military strength. Earlier this month, during a trip to China by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Beijing confirmed that it had tested a prototype J-20 stealth fighter, invisible to radar.
The US has also bolstered its support for its East Asian allies, most notably South Korea and Japan amid maritime rivalries with China in the Pacific.
The two powers have also been at loggerheads over how to curb North Korea's belligerent behaviour and advancement of its nuclear programme.
In a rare interview with foreign media, Mr Hu acknowledged the "differences and sensitive issues", but said co-operation rather than confrontation would serve both sides best.
Ahead of Mr Hu's arrival in the US, a Chinese trade mission signed six deals with US companies in Houston worth $600m (£376m) - which analysts say is an attempt to create a "positive" atmosphere for the talks.
Trade between the US and China is worth $400bn, up from $100m 30 years ago, when the US formalised relations with the communist state.
The US is also encouraging China to buy tens of billions of dollars of aircraft from Boeing, car parts, agricultural goods and beef.
A series of deals on bilateral trade, energy, environmental protection, infrastructure building, and cultural exchanges are expected to be signed during the visit, Chinese state media reported.
Meanwhile, US senators have been pressing Congress to penalise Beijing for "manipulating" its currency.
They say it is important to punish China if it does not allow the yuan to rise in value rather than manage its exchange rate - making Chinese products cheaper in the US and raising the price of US goods in China.
Mr Hu earlier said the yuan was not undervalued, and that China had adopted a "managed floating exchange rate regime" determined by the balance of international payments and supply and demand.
He also questioned the role of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency and criticised US monetary policy, saying that by keeping interest rates low, the Federal Reserve was devaluing the dollar and creating inflation elsewhere.
| Diplomatic Visit | January 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(Al Jazeera)'] |
Two openly gay candidates are elected to the Anchorage Assembly, becoming the first openly LGBT elected officials in Alaska. Approximately 20 percent of the city's population voted, a notably low turnout. | WASHINGTON, D.C. – Two Victory Fund endorsed candidates – Felix Rivera and Christopher Constant – won their races for Anchorage Assembly to become the only openly LGBTQ elected officials in Alaska. Tuesday’s wins are groundbreaking for Anchorage and the entire state, as both candidates faced numerous opponents and campaigned on their commitment to LGBTQ equality and social justice.
“These historic wins in Anchorage will reverberate throughout the entire state of Alaska,” said Victory Fund President & CEO Aisha C. Moodie-Mills. “There are currently zero LGBTQ elected officials serving in all of Alaska – so Felix and Alex will be much needed voices when they take office. We know that representation is power – and that LGBTQ elected officials humanize our lives and change political and policy debates. The wins for Felix and Christopher will lead to more inclusive legislation that benefits all residents of Anchorage.”
Felix won with 47 percent of the vote despite a crowded field and one of his opponents sending homophobic mailers the weekend before the election. The election win makes him the first openly LGBTQ Latino person to win an election in Alaska. Christopher, a long-serving LGBTQ activist in Alaska, faced five opponents and won with 52 percent of the vote. Both Felix and Christopher will be the first openly LGBTQ people to serve on the Assembly.
In the contiguous states, four Victory Fund endorsed candidates won local races in Illinois. In Berwyn, three LGBTQ candidates won races: Margaret Paul for Town Clerk, and Jose Ramirez and Jeanine Reardon for the Board of Aldermen. Openly LGBTQ candidate Nick Kachiroubas won his election to become Town Clerk of Crystal Lake. Three additional LGBTQ candidates who did not apply for Victory Fund’s endorsement also won their races in Berwyn.
| Government Job change - Election | April 2017 | ['(LGBT Weekly)', '(Alaska Commons)'] |
The Department of Health of the Philippines declares a national dengue epidemic in the country, as cases spike to 622 deaths. | MANILA, Philippines Dengue-related deaths have gone up to 622 from January to July this year in the Philippines, prompting the Department of Health (DOH) to declare a national dengue epidemic.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III cited 622 deaths and 146,062 cases recorded from January to July 20 this year, ? a 98 per cent spike compared to the number of cases recorded in the same period last year.
Duque said the agency made the declaration to improve the response to the outbreak by allowing local governments to draw on a special "Quick Response Fund".
Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral infection found in tropical countries worldwide. It can cause joint pain, nausea, vomiting and a rash, and can cause breathing problems, hemorrhaging and organ failure in severe cases. While there is no specific treatment for the illness, medical care to maintain a person's fluid levels is seen as critical.
The Department of Health said that starting Tuesday, it was conducting a campaign to focus on finding and destroying mosquito breeding sites, which is a primary means of containing dengue.
Other government agencies, local government units, schools, offices and communities will join in the effort, it said.
Other Southeast Asian countries have also reported an surge in dengue cases this year, according to the U.N.'s World Health Organization.
The organization said Malaysia had registered 62,421 cases through June 29, including 93 deaths, compared to 32,425 cases with 53 deaths for the same period last year.
Vietnam over the same period had 81,132 cases with four deaths reported, compared to 26,201 cases including six deaths in 2018.
In South Asia, Bangladesh has been facing its worst-ever dengue fever outbreak, putting a severe strain on the country's already overwhelmed medical system.
| Disease Outbreaks | August 2019 | ['(Gulf News)'] |
It later strengthens to Category 4 with predictions that it will hit Central America or the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. | NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Hurricane Felix was downgraded to a Category 1 storm late Tuesday, drenching northern Nicaragua and El Salvador after thrashing the coast earlier in the day as a dangerous Category 5 storm, the National Hurricane Center said.
Felix's winds have dropped to 75 miles per hour, down from the 120-mph winds it packed at landfall. Tropical storms must sustain winds of 74 miles per hour to be classified a hurricane. As Felix moves farther inland, it is expected to dump 8 to 12 inches of rain on Nicaragua, El Salvador and neighboring Honduras, with downpours of up to 25 inches raising the threat of flash floods and mudslides in the Central American highlands. The Miami-based Hurricane Center, in a storm bulletin issued at 5 p.m. Eastern time, left in place a tropical storm warning for the entire coast of Honduras, adding that the storm would continue to plod along on a westward path for the next 24 hours, continuing to weaken as it moves away from the warm waters of the Caribbean.
The hurricane steered well clear of vital U.S. energy infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. In recent Nymex trading, the price on the benchmark crude-oil contract for October delivery was up $1.14 at $75.18 a barrel as energy traders turned their attention to other storm systems brewing in the Atlantic. See Futures Movers.
Felix is the second hurricane and the sixth named storm of the 2007 Atlantic season. Last month, Hurricane Dean left 20 dead after carving a destructive path from St. Lucia in the Caribbean to Mexico.
ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) -- So much money is invested in index mutual funds that adding or deleting a stock from a widely followed index has a huge impact on its price. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | September 2007 | ['(Reuters Alertnet)', '(Matket Watch)'] |
A natural gas explosion at college prep school Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis, Minnesota, kills two staff members. Another nine people were injured, seven of whom are hospitalized, three in critical and four in serious condition. | MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In a story Aug. 2 about an explosion that killed two people at a Minneapolis school, The Associated Press, relying on information from a relative, erroneously reported that victim John Carlson was 81. The medical examiner said he was 82.
A corrected version of the story is below:
2 dead after explosion at Minneapolis school
Authorities say one person is dead and another is missing after a natural gas explosion at a college prep school in Minneapolis
By AMY FORLITI and JEFF BAENEN
Associated Press
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A second body was found in the rubble of a collapsed school building in Minneapolis after an explosion killed a school employee and injured several others, fire officials said Wednesday night.
City Fire Chief John Fruetel said the body was recovered around 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Minnehaha Academy. Fruetel said the medical examiner’s office is working to notify relatives.
The blast occurred in a utility as students were playing soccer and basketball at the private Christian school, which serves students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, according to fire and school officials.
Contractors were working on one of the campus’ buildings at the time of the blast, which investigators believe was caused by a natural gas explosion, said Assistant Minneapolis Fire Chief Bryan Tyner.
The explosion killed Ruth Berg, a receptionist for 17 years at the school who “welcomed everyone with a smile,” the school said in a statement.
John Carlson, a part-time janitor known for giving Dilly Bars to students, was reported missing. The 82-year-old attended the school as a child, sent his own children there, and was like a grandfather figure to students, school officials said.
At a news conference Wednesday night, Fruetel did not specify whether Carlson’s body was the one located.
Four people remained hospitalized late Wednesday, including one in critical condition, at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, according to the hospital. Their names haven’t been released.
Dr. Jim Miner, the hospital’s chief of emergency medicine, said victims treated from the blast suffered injuries ranging from head injuries and broken bones to cuts from debris.
Aerial video footage of the school’s campus showed part of a building was ripped apart, with wood splintered and bricks scattered about. Windows in other areas were blown out and shattered. Three people were rescued from the building’s roof shortly after the explosion and fire, Tyner said.
Paul Meskan, who lives across the street, said he was pulling weeds when the blast happened, and he quickly ran over to the school. Meskan said he and other people who rushed to help found a man pinned under the rubble.
“We just started digging,” Meskan said. He said that after police and firefighters arrived, “we kept digging, and gas, gas was going. Fire was going. And it’s like, ‘we’re not going back until we get this guy out of here.’ And we got him out, and they got him on a stretcher.”
The Star Tribune reported that city records show Master Mechanical Inc. was issued a permit on June 7 for “gas piping and hooking up meter” at the school’s address. Ryan Larsen, a company official, released a statement saying the company was monitoring the situation and referred questions to the Minneapolis Fire Department.
Larsen wouldn’t confirm to The Associated Press that company workers were on site, saying: “We are trying to figure it out.”
Master Mechanical has twice been cited for workplace violations in recent years, according to the newspaper. Jenny O’Brien, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said in 2010 there was a violation related to protecting an employee from falling. In 2014, the company had paperwork violations.
At the time of Wednesday’s blast, as many as 10 students were playing basketball inside a gym at Minnehaha Academy but weren’t near the explosion, said Sara Jacobson, the school’s executive director of institutional advancement. Jacobson also was in the building during the explosion.
“There was a very loud explosion, and ceiling tiles and windows and materials rained down on our heads,” she said. “And then soon as it was over, we made our way down a dark hallway to the exit as quickly as we could.”
Gov. Mark Dayton released a statement saying his office was in contact with city officials and the state “will provide any and all resources necessary” to help first responders and ensure everyone is safe. | Gas explosion | August 2017 | ['(AP)', '(CBS News)'] |
A funeral is held for journalist Yasser Murtaja, shot at the fence wearing a press jacket covering tyre burnings by protestors yesterday. Israel denies targeting journalists intentionally and says it is investigating. | Yasser Murtaja, 31, was shot by Israeli forces while covering Friday’s protests at the Gaza border
Last modified on Sat 7 Apr 2018 18.53 BST
Hundreds of colleagues and friends have attended the funeral of a popular and widely respected Palestinian video journalist who was killed as he covered Friday’s mass border protests in the Gaza Strip.
Yasser Murtaja, 31, was shot despite wearing a flak jacket with clear press markings as he filmed in thick black smoke from burning tyres set alight by protesters in Khuzaa, east of Khan Yunis. He was one of at least nine Palestinians killed by Israeli fire at various points along the border during the day.
Friday’s deaths brought to 31 the total of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the past week.
The two main Palestinian parties – the Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and the Islamist militant group Hamas – have run separate governments in the West Bank and Gaza respectively since 2007.
The situation emerged after Hamas defeated Fatah in parliamentary elections in 2006. Fatah refused to recognise the result, leading to a near-civil war that saw Hamas push Fatah out of Gaza.
Numerous attempts at reconciliation have ensued but the latest effort looks the most serious yet. The issue of who controls the borders and runs government ministries is a key test, not least in loosening the Israeli blockade on Gaza, imposed after Hamas took control.
Responsibility for land border crossings – in a coastal strip without a commercial sea port or airport – is crucial, as Palestinians and goods can only cross by these checkpoints. Both Egypt and Israel will want to ensure that no arms reach Hamas and other groups.
The Israeli military, which insists that it fires only at “instigators” involved in attacks on soldiers, said it was investigating Murtaja’s death. It added that its troops were “operating in accordance with clear rules of engagement” and that it did “not intentionally target journalists”.
Murtaja’s body, draped in a Palestinian flag, was carried from the principal al-Omari mosque in Gaza City to the cemetery. After the burial, freelance photojournalist Shadi al-Assar, described how his friend – who was married with a two-year-old son – had been standing with him about 100 metres from the border fence when he decided to go into the smoke to get a better shot. “Some time later I saw some of the young guys carrying him out on a stretcher. I wanted to take a picture of it and then I realised it was Yasser, my friend.” He and others had removed the jacket and uncovered a small entry wound in his left side. “I thought it was a light injury,” said Assar. But Murtaja, who was taken by ambulance to Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, died in the early hours of Saturday.
Assar, 35, added: “He was a good guy, always smiling and loved by everybody. He was very ambitious, always looking for a better shot.” Like many Gazans of his generation, Murtaja had never been out of the Strip.
One of the first journalists to use camera drones in Gaza, Murtaja founded Ain Media, a TV production company that has done work for foreign clients including the BBC and Al Jazeera English. Under a drone image of the Gaza port that he posted on Facebook, he wrote: “I wished I could take this photo from the sky, not from land. My name is Yasser Murtaja, I am 30 years old. I live in Gaza City. I have never travelled.” Although Murtaja is understood to have been independent of all political factions, the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh attended his funeral. He said the weekly protests – described as the “Return March” – represented a “battle of truth and awareness. Yasser held his camera to direct the arrows of truth to convey the image of the besieged people.”
The 31 deaths in the past eight days include 19 Palestinians who were killed in the previous mass demonstrations on March or died subsequently of their wounds, along with two armed militants shot dead by Israeli troops in a separate border incident. Hamas has admitted that five of those killed on 30 March were members of its military wing, while Israel has said that 10 of the 19 dead were identified as belonging to Hamas or other factions.
The protests are expected to continue over the next month and scheduled to reach their climax in mid-May, when Palestinians commemorate the 70th anniversary of the nakba, or catastrophe, when more than 700,000 were driven out or fled their homes in what is now Israel during the war of 1948. | Protest_Online Condemnation | April 2018 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The Iranian government announces an emergency in southwestern provinces threatened by flooding and worked to evacuate dozens of villages as forecasters predicted more of the heavy rains that have killed at least 45 people last week. | DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran said on Saturday it faced an emergency in a southwestern province threatened by flooding and worked to evacuate dozens of villages as forecasters predicted more of the heavy rains that have killed at least 45 people this week, state media reported.
Some 56 villages lying near the Dez and Karkheh rivers in the oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan may have to be evacuated as officials released water from two major dams along the rivers due to forecasts for more rain, the provincial governor, Gholamreza Shariati, told state television.
“Some residents are resisting (evacuation calls) because of their livestock...and because they’ve experienced similar circumstances in the past,” Shariati said, adding Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli had agreed to call an emergency in Khuzestan.
Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian, who is in charge of water resources, said authorities were working round-the-clock to “control floodwaters and to minimize possible damage”.
“It’s estimated that in the next five days about three billion cubic meters of water will flow into dam reservoirs in Khuzestan due to rainfall ... 1.8 billion of which (is above capacity and) will have to be released,” he told state television.
The semi-official news agency ISNA quoted Shariati as saying floods could also threaten the provincial capital Ahvaz if the rain is at the highest end of forecasts.
In the neighboring province of Lorestan, at least eight villages and parts of the town of Dorud were being evacuated, the semi-official news agency Fars reported.
Officials have said the government would compensate residents for flood damage.
At least 45 people were killed this week in flash floods in northern and southern Iran after the heaviest rains recorded in Iran in at least a decade, the state news agency IRNA quoted Health Minister Saeid Namaki as saying.
Western and southwestern parts of the country are expected to bear the brunt of the storms in the days ahead.
Police renewed calls for people to avoid unnecessary journeys even though Iran is celebrating the Nowruz new year holiday, a time when many families travel.
Iran has implemented measures to prevent rain and flooding affecting its main crude oil export terminal on Kharg Island in the Gulf, the head of the Iranian Oil Terminals Company told the semi-official news agency Mehr on Saturday.
National Iranian Gas Company said earlier its pipeline network had not been affected by the bad weather.
Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Helen Popper, Edmund Blair and Marie-Louise Gumuchian
| Floods | April 2019 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Four people are killed and many more are injured by police fire in Assam in India during a protest by thousands against government registration. | Four people were killed and many more injured in the eastern Indian state of Assam when police opened fire to disperse a crowd of demonstrators. Police say more than 5,000 people were protesting against a government registration drive. The protesters, mostly from West Bengal, vandalised shops and vehicles. Correspondents say the demonstrators fear registration could identify them as non-Assamese and that, as a result, they could be forced from the state.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | July 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Boy Scouts of America release documents containing over 15,000 pages relating to allegations of sexual abuse by over 1200 scout leaders between 19651985. | PORTLAND, Ore. Details of decades of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America, and what child welfare experts say was a corrosive culture of secrecy that compounded the damage, were cast into full public view for the first time on Thursday with the release of thousands of pages of documents describing abuse accusations across the country.
“The secrets are out,” said Kelly Clark, a lawyer whose firm obtained the files as evidence in an $18.5 million civil judgment against the Scouts in 2010. The legal effort to make the files public, by a group of national and local media outlets, including The New York Times and represented by another lawyer, Charles F. Hinkle resulted in an Oregon Supreme Court decision in June ordering full release. Mr. Clark said in a news conference that the database would be sortable by state, year and name.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | October 2012 | ['(New York Times)'] |
An American who formerly worked for the Central Intelligence Agency is arrested on charges of selling classified information to Chinese operatives in May 2017. | A former CIA officer sold top secret and other classified documents to Chinese intelligence officials, according to charges filed Thursday in Alexandria federal court.
Kevin Patrick Mallory, 60, of Leesburg, Va., was arrested Thursday and appeared briefly in front of Judge Theresa Buchanan on counts of delivering defense information to aid a foreign government and making false statements. He asked to be represented by a public defender. Mallory had a top secret security clearance until he left the government in 2012, prosecutors say, having worked at various government agencies and defense contractors.
Although the primary government agency in question is not named, two government officials confirm that Mallory worked for the CIA. Prosecutors say Mallory sent three documents containing classified information, one of which was labeled top secret, to a Chinese intelligence operative in May. “Your object is to gain information, and my object is to be paid for it,” Mallory wrote to the Chinese contact at around the same time, according to an affidavit from FBI agent Stephen Green filed in federal court. Mallory allegedly added that he would “bring the remainder of the documents” on a June trip. “My current object is to make sure your security (sic) and try to reimburse you,” the operative allegedly replied. The CIA declined to comment Thursday.
According to the affidavit, Mallory told FBI agents in May that he had been contacted in February on a social media site by a recruiter for a Chinese think tank, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He spoke on the phone with the recruiter and was then introduced to a potential client, whom he traveled to Shanghai to meet in both March and April. In March, Mallory allegedly reached out to several former CIA coworkers and asked for help getting in touch with a specific department. He told one employee that he believed the people he had met with were working for Chinese intelligence, according to Green. He allegedly also said he had been given a device to communicate securely with the Chinese agent and been taught how to use it. Expecting to meet with the same CIA employee in May, Mallory was instead greeted by FBI agents. He let them search the device given to him by the Chinese operative. But, according to Green’s affidavit, Mallory was surprised that past conversations on the device had not been erased. He was showing the agents how to move a message from normal to secure mode when the secure messages appeared. Mallory allegedly told the Chinese agents he had destroyed his paper records and planned to destroy all electronic records once they were sent. He told the agents the documents on the phone were merely white papers he had written based on his own knowledge. While he told the FBI agents he had been paid $25,000 by the Chinese operatives, the court files show, he said the money was only for his consulting services in the country and expenses. Between 1990 and 2012 Mallory was stationed in Iraq, China and Taiwan; he is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. He founded a consulting company, GlobalEx, in 2010. He attended Brigham Young University and then served in the military. He also served in active army deployments in more recent years. Charlie Sherrod, a friend and former financial advisor, was shocked by the arrest and charges. “I find it very hard to believe that he would do something like that,” he said Thursday. He knew Mallory as “a strong Christian and a family man.” A woman who answered the phone at Mallory’s residence said she was unfamiliar with the charges and wanted to consult a lawyer before commenting. Mallory appeared in court wearing a loose tank top and gym shorts. He faces up to life in prison. He will return to court Friday for a detention and preliminary hearing. “The conduct alleged in this complaint is serious and should send a message to anyone who would consider violating the public’s trust and compromising our national security by disclosing classified information,” said Dana J. Boente, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | June 2017 | ['(The Washington Post)'] |
An Israeli inquiry finds its own army acts "legal pursuant to the rules of international law" during May's fatal Gaza flotilla raid in which 9 Turkish activists were killed; a separate United Nations inquiry said there had been an "unacceptable level of brutality". The inquiry also declares Israel's naval blockade of Gaza to be legal. | An Israeli inquiry has found the country's navy acted legally in a deadly raid on a flotilla of aid ships trying to reach Gaza last May.
The raid, in which nine Turkish activists were killed, attracted widespread international condemnation.
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the inquiry had neither value, nor credibility.
A separate UN inquiry last year said the navy had shown an "unacceptable level of brutality".
The military operation severely strained relations with Ankara - a long-time ally of Israel's.
The 300-page Turkel Committee report found the actions of the Israeli navy in the raid and Israel's naval blockade of Gaza were both legal under international law.
The panel of inquiry - headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel, with five Israeli members and two international observers - was set up in June.
One of the inquiry's members died aged 93 during its hearings, and correspondents say the report will be dismissed by Israel's critics as biased.
The Free Gaza Flotilla, which had more than 600 pro-Palestinian activists on board, was trying to break Israel's blockade of the territory when it was intercepted by Israeli navy commandos on 31 May.
Israel says its commandos used live fire only after being attacked with clubs, knives and guns.
But activists on board the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara say the commandos started shooting as soon as they boarded the vessel.
The Turkel Committee report said Israel's actions had "the regrettable consequences of the loss of human life and physical injuries".
"Nonetheless... the actions taken were found to be legal pursuant to the rules of international law."
The report did offer some criticism of the planning of the operation, saying "the soldiers were placed in a situation they were not completely prepared for and had not anticipated".
The inquiry heard testimony from high-ranking Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and army chief General Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as several Israeli-Arab lawmakers who were travelling with the flotilla.
None of the military personnel directly involved in the raid was authorised to provide testimony.
In August, Mr Netanyahu told the inquiry that Israel "acted under international law" when it intercepted the flotilla.
He said the Gaza blockade was legal and that Israeli troops only used force when their lives were in danger.
After its own inquiry, Turkey described the attack - which took place in international waters, about 130km (80 miles) from the Israeli coast - as a violation of international law, "tantamount to banditry and piracy", and described the killings as "state-sponsored terrorism".
Results of Turkish post-mortem examinations have suggested that a total of 30 bullets were found in the bodies of the nine dead activists, including one who had been shot four times in the head.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has asked for reports from both the Israeli and Turkish inquiries to be submitted as part of a wider UN inquiry to be held later this year.
After criticism from its allies over the flotilla incident, Israel considerably eased its blockade of Gaza - allowing in more food and humanitarian goods.
Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade on the coastal territory when the Islamist militant group Hamas seized control of it in 2007.
Israel said it was intended to stop militants in Gaza from obtaining rockets to fire at Israel.
The restrictions were widely described as collective punishment of the population of Gaza, resulting in a humanitarian crisis.
But in the report released on Sunday, the Turkel Committee said: "The imposition and enforcement of the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip does not constitute 'collective punishment' of the population of the Gaza Strip." | Armed Conflict | January 2011 | ['(The Jerusalem Post)', '(BBC)', '(Al Jazeera)', '(The Irish Times)', '(AFP via Google News)'] |
Google artificial intelligence company DeepMind's AlphaGo program takes an unbeatable three to zero lead in a five-game Go match against grand master Lee Sedol. | SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA --- Google's artificially intelligent Go-playing computer system has claimed victory in its historic match with Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol after winning a third straight game in this best-of-five series. This Google creation is known as AlphaGo, and with its three-games-to-none triumph, the machine has earned Google a million dollars in prize money, which the company will donate to charity. But the money is merely an afterthought. Machines have conquered the last games. Now comes the real world.
Over the last twenty-five years, machines have beaten the top humans at checkers and chess and Othello and Scrabble and Jeopardy!. But this is the first time an artificially intelligent system has topped one of the very best at Go, which is exponentially more complex than chess and requires an added level of intuition---at least among humans. This makes the win a major milestone for AI---a moment whose meaning extends well beyond a single game. Considering that many of the machine learning technologies at the heart of AlphaGo are already running services inside some of the world's largest Internet companies, the victory shows how quickly AI will progress in the years to come.
Just two years ago, most experts believed that another decade would pass before a machine could claim this prize. But then researchers at DeepMind---a London AI lab acquired by Google---changed the equation using two increasingly powerful forms of machine learning, technologies that allow machines to learn largely on their own. Lee Sedol is widely regarded as the best Go player of the past decade. But he was beaten by a machine that taught itself to play the ancient game..
Though AlphaGo had won the first two games of the match---and Lee Sedol almost conceded the match after his loss in Game Two---the outcome of Game Three was by no means a certainty, and it was surrounded by the same heightened level of excitement. Lee Sedol could draw on the experience of two complete contests---a notable advantage, since the Google team doesn't have the power to tweak AlphaGo in the middle of a match.
In one sense, this is a game. But the match also represents the future of Google.
Among Go aficionados, the rumor was that after Game Two, Lee Sedol and several other top Go players stayed up most of the night analyzing the first two games and looking for weaknesses in AlphaGo's play. But one of the match's English language commentators, Michael Redmond, wasn't convinced this was the best approach. "Lee Sedol has more to gain by playing his own game or playing an opening he likes to play, rather than fooling around and trying to find some weakness in AlphaGo," he said. But the rumor gave the game an added spice.
Google chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt was at the Four Seasons for Game One, as was Jeff Dean, one of the company's most important engineers. Game Three spectators included Google founder Sergey Brin, who quietly flew into Seoul the day before. In one sense, this is a game---a sporting event that draws spectators for all the same reasons that other sporting events do. But the match also represents the future of Google. The machine learning techniques at the heart of AlphaGo already drive so many services inside the Internet giant---helping to identify faces in photos, recognize commands spoken into smartphones, choose Internet search results, and much more. They could also potentially reinvent everything from scientific research to robotics.
For far different reasons, the match is just as important to Lee Sedol. When Game Three began, he seemed to betray the pressure he was feeling to win at least one contest in this five game match. As the referee kicked things off, he leaned forward in his chair, and as if to calm himself, he closed his eyes---keeping them closed for several seconds.
His opening was definite. From the beginning, Lee Sedol played quickly, and he by no means played it safe. According to Redmond, the Korean's opening was rather unusual, perhaps an indication that he aimed to push AlphaGo in a new direction. Indeed, within a mere 45 minutes, Redmond felt that the game had entered entirely new territory. "It's already a position we probably haven't ever seen in a professional game," he said.
That's a product not only of Lee Sedol's opening, but of AlphaGo's unique approach to the game. The machine plays like no human ever would---quite literally. Using what are called deep neural networks---vast networks of hardware and software that mimic the web of neurons in the human brain---AlphaGo initially learned the game by analyzing thousands of moves from real live Go grandmasters. But then, using a sister technology called reinforcement learning, it reached a new level by playing game after game against itself, coming to recognize moves that give it the highest probability of winning. The result is a machine that often makes the most inhuman of moves.
This happened in Game Two---in a very big way. With its 19th move, AlphaGo made a play that shocked just about everyone, including both the commentators and Lee Sedol, who needed nearly fifteen minutes to choose a response. The commentators couldn't even begin to evaluate AlphaGo's move, but it proved effective. Three hours later, AlphaGo had won the match.
Game Three was different. As it approached the one-hour-and-twenty-minute mark, Redmond called the contest a "very Lee Sedol-like game," meaning that the Korean was able to play in his characteristic style---a fast and aggressive approach. But AlphaGo was playing just as aggressively---"fighting," as Redmond described it. He couldn't judge who was ahead and who was behind.
Such is the nature of Go---a game that's won by the tiniest of increments. This week's match is so meaningful because this ancient pastime is so complex. As Google likes to say of Go: there are more possible positions on the board than atoms in a universe. Even for commentator Michael Redmond---a very talented Go player in his own right---judging the progress of a Go match is a difficult thing. That said, there's one Go player that has made a science of this: AlphaGo. One of the machine's advantages is that it's constantly calculating its chances of winning. Every move it makes is an effort to maximize these chances.
There's one Go player that has made a science of this: AlphaGo.
This was clearly on Redmond's mind as the game progressed. The play had concentrated in the top left-hand corner of the board, and Redmond said that Lee Sedol had found his way into a "scary" situation. "I would be worried if I was black," he said, referring to the Korean grandmaster. In other words, the pressure was on Lee Sedol to break out of the top left corner and extend the play into the middle of the board. AlphaGo was simply connecting his lines of white stones---as opposed to playing more strategic moves---and Redmond started to wonder if, even this early in the match, AlphaGo "thinks it's ahead."
As Google researcher Thore Graepel explained earlier in the week, because AlphaGo tries to maximize its probability of winning, it doesn't necessarily maximize its margin of victory. Graepel even went so far as to say that inconsequential or "slack" moves can indicate that the machine believes its probability of winning is quite high. As Redmond saw them, AlphaGo's latest string of moves were slack.
That said, the game was still very young. "It's a bit early," Redmond said. "Generally speaking, it's dangerous to think you're ahead at this point in the game. There is so much area on the board that still needs to be filled."
A few minutes later, Lee Sedol had an opportunity to invite what's called a "ko." Basically, this is a situation where the game could enter a loop where the two players capture each other's pieces---and then recapture them over and over again. There's a rule that prevents this infinite loop. But prior to the game, the theory among Go aficionados was that AlphaGo---like past computer Go programs---was ill-equipped to handle a ko.
During Games One and Two, AlphaGo seemed to avoid the ko scenario. But Redmond played down the theory. He pointed out that even back in October, when a much less proficient version of AlphaGo topped three-time European Go champion Fan Hui during a closed-door match at DeepMind headquarters in London, the machine successfully embraced the ko. "I doubt that would be a major problem," Redmond said.
In any event, the ko did not play out. Instead, Lee Sedol shored up his position on the left-hand side of the board as AlphaGo continued to play with moves that Redmond and his co-commentator Chris Garlock describes as slack.
Two hours and forty minutes in, the two players approached the end game. And it was still too early to tell who was ahead. But Lee Sedol was beginning to run into time trouble, just as he had in Game Two. Because he found himself in that tight position on the left-hand side of the board, the Korean had used a significant amount of time very early in the game, and his play clock had dropped to under 20 minutes. AlphaGo still had close to an hour. Once their play clocks run out, the players must make each move in under 60 seconds.
At about the three-hour mark, Garlock said: "It looks difficult for Lee Sedol." And Redmond agreed. Lee Sedol was on the verge of losing an enormous piece of territory in the lower half of the board, and his play clock was approaching ten minutes. Then, as this play clock expired, Redmond said Korean had little choice but to do something drastic. Then Lee Sedol twice failed to make a play within his 60 seconds. One more failure and he would forfeit the match. Redmond was increasingly sure of the win for AlphaGo. But Lee Sedol fought on.
The commentators kept returning to the possibility of a ko---playing off the theory that this may be a weakness for the Google machine, but also painting it as Lee Sedol's only hope. Meanwhile, AlphaGo started using more and more time for each play. In this respect, it was playing like a human. This, Redmond said, is what any top player would do in an effort to kill off such a game.
Then AlphaGo played a ko---with a mistake. And at long last, Redmond dismissed the lingering idea that AlphaGo couldn't handle a ko. "I think we have an answer to our ko question," he said. Still, Lee Sedol fought on. But only for a little more. Just past the four hour mark, he resigned.
AlphaGo had won once playing black and twice playing white. Just a few days earlier, most in the Go community were sure this wasn't possible. But these wins were decisive. Machines have conquered the last games. Now comes the real world.
WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture to business, science to design. The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and new industries. | Sports Competition | March 2016 | ['(Wired)'] |
The Supreme Court of Pakistan frees Javed Hashmi, the leader of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy and Pakistan Muslim League faction leader, who was jailed in 2003 for writing a letter critical of the President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf. | The former acting president of a Pakistan Muslim League faction was sentenced to 23 years in jail in 2004. Mr Hashmi was effectively serving at most seven years in jail as he was handed seven different prison terms running concurrently.
He was arrested in 2003 over a letter critical of President Pervez Musharraf.
Mr Hashmi's appeal against his sentence is yet to be taken up for hearing by the high court in Lahore.
But the country's Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikar Chaudhry, acting on a separate review petition, granted Mr Hashmi bail saying that he had already served his sentence.
"If periodic remissions are counted, he has already served his entire sentence," Chief Justice Chaudhry said, while granting bail to Mr Hashmi.
"Even if remissions are not allowed to him, he has nearly served the sentence, counting the length of his imprisonment before and during the trial," he added.
Mr Hashmi is still behind held in a prison in Lahore. He will be immediately freed if he obtains bail in another case pending against him for fighting with government officials, our correspondent says.
'Forgery'
Mr Hashmi is the leader of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, a body campaigning for the return of civilian rule after Gen Pervez Musharraf's seizure of power in 1999.
Pakistan's army has dominated the country's affairs
He is also former acting president of the PML-N, the Pakistan Muslim League faction still loyal to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who was ousted in the coup. Javed Hashmi was arrested after circulating a letter bearing a military letterhead which was purportedly written by disgruntled officers.
It called for an inquiry into alleged corruption in the army's senior ranks and demanded a judicial investigation into a Pakistani military operation in Indian-administered Kashmir in 1999.
The authorities claimed the letter, which was also highly critical of Gen Musharraf and his alliance with the United States, was a forgery.
Mr Hashmi's allies said they believed the letter was genuine and that the charges of forgery were politically motivated. He was convicted at a trial behind closed doors in the city of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad.
Mr Hashmi's trial was widely criticised as "politically motivated" by observers and opposition groups.
The US and other foreign governments had expressed concerns over lack of transparency in the trial. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | August 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
A bus accident leaves at least 18 people dead in Ivory Coast. | OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - Eighteen Burkinabe nationals died when a bus they were travelling in crashed near the town of Bouake in central Ivory Coast on Wednesday morning, Burkina Faso’s government said.
“It was a bus that overturned during a failed overtaking | Road Crash | October 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The United Kingdom's House of Commons approves the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the European Union by 521 votes to 73. | MPs have overwhelmingly approved the UK's post-Brexit trade deal with the EU in a parliamentary vote.
A bill bringing the deal into UK law was backed by the Commons by 521 to 73 votes after Parliament was recalled.
The majority of Labour MPs voted for the agreement after leader Sir Keir Starmer said a "thin deal was better than no deal".
The UK will sever its ties with the EU at 23.00 GMT on Thursday, four and a half years after the Brexit referendum. The House of Lords also passed the bill, which will now receive Royal Assent.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson thanked MPs and peers for passing the bill, adding: "The destiny of this great country now resides firmly in our hands."
The agreement hammered out with Brussels over nine months sets out a new business and security relationship between the UK and its biggest trading partner.
The EU (Future Relationship) Bill is being rushed through Parliament in a single day and is set to become law late on Wednesday once it has received Royal Assent. After five hours of debate in the Commons, it passed its two legislative hurdles by huge margins, thanks to Mr Johnson's large majority and the support of the Labour Party. It is now being considered by the Lords. In an interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, the prime minister said the treaty would allow the UK to "go our own way but also have free trade" with the EU. He said: "There will be changes. And we've been very clear with people that they have to get ready for 1 January, things will work differently. "But from the point of view of UK exporters, for instance, they'll now have the advantage, that they'll only have one set of forms they have to fill out for export to around the whole world."
Offering his backing, Sir Keir - who campaigned against Brexit - told MPs he wanted to "avoid a no deal and put in place a floor from which we can build a strong future relationship". But he accused the prime minister of not being honest with the public about the deal, which he said would lead to an "avalanche of checks, bureaucracy and red tape for British businesses".
There was also a "gaping hole" in the agreement when it came to the service sector, which accounts for about 80% of the UK's economic output, said Sir Keir. "The lack of ambition here is striking," he told MPs, saying there was a lack of mutual recognition of professional standards with the EU, which would make life more difficult for people who wanted to work abroad.
One Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy voted against the deal while 36 others also defied their leader's orders by either not voting at all or actively abstaining. Three of these - Helen Hayes, Florence Eshalomi and Tonia Antoniazzi - resigned their junior frontbench positions as a result.
All other opposition parties, including the SNP, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and all Northern Ireland parties that take seats at Westminster, also voted against the deal.
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said the deal would "undermine our children's future", while the SNP's Ian Blackford said Scotland's fishing industry had been "betrayed" and the country's future "must be European". And Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said it would undermine hard-won environmental and consumer protections and leave the UK "less equipped" to respond to the climate emergency. Only two Tory MPs failed to support the deal - Brexiteers John Redwood and Owen Paterson abstaining.
Members of the European Research Group (ERG) who helped sink Theresa May's EU withdrawal deal in 2019, lined up to praise the deal. Sir Bill Cash said the PM had achieved the seemingly "impossible" while Sir Iain Duncan Smith said it represented a "huge advance on where we might have been".
And Steve Brine, one of the 21 Tory MPs who lost the whip last year after defying the government over Brexit, said he would back a deal that left the UK "culturally, emotionally, historically and strategically attached" to Europe.
"We now have a new future to look forward to," he said. "It won't be the same. We should never have pretended it will and that's OK. It is time to come together and to move on."
In his Commons speech, Mr Johnson said the bill heralded a "new relationship between Britain and the EU as sovereign equals, joined by friendship, commerce, history, interests and values, while respecting one another's freedom of action and recognising that we have nothing to fear if we sometimes choose to do things differently".
Mr Johnson's predecessor Theresa May told MPs she would vote for the deal "in the national interest" but was "disappointed" about aspects of it and warned against thinking the UK could "excise the EU" from its politics. "Sovereignty does not mean isolationism, it does not mean we never accept somebody else's rules, it does not mean exceptionalism," she said. "It is important as we go forward that we recognise we live in an interconnected world."
Mr Johnson has signed the international treaty ratifying the deal in Downing Street after it was flown across the Channel in an RAF plane.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel signed the document earlier in Brussels.
The European Parliament has begun its scrutiny of the agreement but will not get a chance to ratify it before the UK leaves the EU single market and customs union at 2300 GMT on Thursday.
The deal has, however, been given the unanimous backing of ambassadors from the 27 nations and the member states gave their written approval on Tuesday.
| Sign Agreement | December 2020 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Ukrainian parliament votes to ban all Russian films released after January 1, 2014, saying the move is aimed at improving “national security"; more than 430 Russian films and TV series fall under the new measures. Last month, the State Committee in Television and Radio-broadcasting in Ukraine removed 15 Russian TV channels from being broadcast in Ukraine. | The ban is an amendment to the Law on Cinematography that was adopted by the Ukrainian parliament in 2015.
Some 237 Rada (Ukrainian parliament) deputies voted in favor of the new measure.
The original version of the law banned Russian films that fall within the military genre made from 1991, which were dubbed as “propaganda” by the Ukrainian authorities. Now, the fresh amendment bans all films produced or showcased after 2014 in all genres.
More than 430 Russian films and TV series fall under the new measures.
The explanatory note to the amendment says its aim is “to perfect the legal mechanisms of defending Ukraine’s national security in the information sphere by limiting all sorts of propaganda used by an occupant-state.”
Kiev believes that Crimea’s reunification with Russia through a referendum was annexation by military force, rather than a democratic exercise in self-determination.
The new law is the latest in a series of anti-Russian measures that have been introduced by Kiev in the Ukrainian film industry. Besides keeping a blacklist of Russian movies, the Ukrainian Culture Ministry also has a list of more than 80 Russian and foreign actors, filmmakers, singers and other cultural figures, whose presence in the country is undesirable as they are deemed to "threaten national security."
Last month, the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting in Ukraine removed 15 Russian TV channels from being broadcast in Ukraine. | Government Policy Changes | March 2016 | ['(RT)'] |
A priest is arrested and questioned over an alleged drug–induced gay orgy hosted in his apartment in the Vatican City. | A new scandal is rocking the Vatican as police recently raided a drugs and gay sex party at a cardinal's apartment near the city.
Without revealing the name of the occupant of the apartment, police said that the person is believed to be a priest who serves as a secretary to cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, the head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative texts and a personal adviser to Pope Francis.
According to Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano which first published the news, police raided the apartment in June after complaints from neighbours who reported unusual behaviour among people visiting the apartment.
The newspaper quoted the police as saying that they found drugs and a group of men engaged in sexual activity when they entered the apartment.
The police have arrested the priest and taken him for questioning, presumably on drugs charges. It is not a criminal offence to engage in private same-sex activity in Vatican City.
The apartment belongs to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose duties include investigating clerical sexual abuse.
Coccopalmerio had reportedly recommended his aide for promotion to bishop, but that consideration may be put on hold following this incident and two previous alleged drug overdoses.
Meanwhile, the Pope is under huge pressure from sex abuse scandals involving Vatican churches, priests and cardinals. The latest are charges of child sex abuse against cardinal George Pell, who will return to Australia to stand trial. The Pope's critics have reportedly blamed him for picking wrong people for key positions. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | July 2017 | ['(International Business Times)'] |
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is released from house arrest, but there are still dozens of policemen around her house. | The opposition leader was placed under a seven-day detention order on Tuesday in Lahore, where she had been planning a mass protest march.
Police said the order had been lifted - but there are reportedly still dozens of officers outside her residence.
A new prime minister, Mohammedmian Soomro, has been sworn to act as the head of an interim government until parliamentary elections next year.
President Pervez Musharraf says the move, which follows the dissolving of parliament at the end of its five-year term on Thursday, marks a transition to democracy.
But General Musharraf's critics say he has demonstrated no commitment to democracy in the past.
Opposition leaders say the interim government is not neutral and will rig the elections.
Tensions rise
"The government has withdrawn Bhutto's detention order, and from now, she is free to move wherever she likes," Aftab Cheema, police chief of the eastern city of Lahore, told the news agency Reuters.
"Police will remain [outside] for her security, but there will be no restriction on her movement," he added.
We are introducing a new culture of smooth transition which is as it should be in civilised societies
Gen Musharraf
Send us your comments
On Thursday Ms Bhutto reportedly told Dawn TV she had conclusively ruled out the possibility of sharing power with Gen Musharraf, whom she accuses of taking Pakistan back towards military dictatorship. "Too much water has gone under the bridge," she said.
"We have said very clearly that we cannot keep doors open when commitments are broken."
Tensions rose when the first reported deaths of the crisis came amid pro-Bhutto protests in Karachi on Thursday. Two boys, said to be aged around 11 or 12, and an adult died when gunfire broke out during a demonstration against Ms Bhutto's detention, police said.
Several other people were reportedly wounded.
US visit
John Negroponte, the US deputy secretary of state, is due to arrive in Pakistan on Friday.
The US says it is waiting to see how events unfold in the days to come.
As protests continued in Karachi, the first deaths of the crisis came
Washington has refused to distance itself from Gen Musharraf, a long-time ally, though correspondents say it is making increasingly urgent demands that emergency powers he imposed on 3 November be lifted.
Pakistan's National Assembly dissolved at midnight after its five-year term came to an end.
Mr Soomro, a member of Gen Musharraf's ruling Pakistan Muslim League Q party, has taken over as prime minister from Shaukat Aziz, who is leaving office after three years.
Gen Musharraf confirmed the appointment at a dinner on Thursday, at which he wore a black suit instead of his military uniform, reported AFP news agency.
Court deliberates
"We are introducing a new culture of smooth transition which is as it should be in civilised societies. The assemblies are completing their five-year term in a better way than before," Mr Musharraf was quoted as saying.
The appointment came as the Supreme Court heard a challenge to emergency rule imposed earlier this month. The court is also due to rule on whether Gen Musharraf's re-election as president last month was legal.
Correspondents say he is expected to win both cases after changing the make-up of the court when he declared the emergency on 3 November, sacking several judges who had shown judicial independence. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | November 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
The former President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, claims in court that American officials tortured him. Part of his testimony is censored and the US strongly denies the accusations. | The ousted Iraqi leader used his war crimes trial in Baghdad to accuse the US of mistreating him while in custody.
Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants are due back in court on Thursday, to hear more testimony from witnesses.
On Wednesday, men from the Shia village of Dujail described being taken away and tortured by Iraqi security forces.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan called Saddam Hussein's allegations "preposterous".
"Saddam Hussein is being treated the exact opposite of the way his regime treated those he imprisoned and tortured," Mr McClellan said.
A state department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said the allegations were "highly ironic".
"Look, he's been given to grandstanding in this trial, but where the focus should be is on the testimony of those people who were victimised.
"That's what people should be listening to."
Iraq's ex-leader is on trial over the killing of 148 people in a Shia village in 1982. He denies responsibility.
Sound cut
Saddam Hussein sat quietly through most of Wednesday's testimony - graphic accounts of alleged torture by his own regime - before standing to accuse his US captors of ill-treatment.
"I have been beaten on every place of my body, and the signs are all over my body," he told the court.
The sound feed to the television coverage - being seen across Iraq - was cut several times during his outburst, the BBC's Quil Lawrence reports from Baghdad.
This has been seen as an attempt to keep Saddam Hussein from upstaging the testimony of the witnesses, he says. The prosecution gave little credence to the former president's claim he had been tortured, saying he was being held in an air-conditioned room when some of Baghdad had no power.
Chief prosecutor Jaafar Mousawi said the claims would be investigated and that he would ask for Saddam Hussein to be transferred to Iraqi custody if there was any truth to them.
One US embassy official in Baghdad, Christopher Reid, agreed that all accusations of mistreatment should be investigated.
The allegations were probably made up to ambush the judge, he wrote during a chat session on the White House website.
"I know that the soldiers who guard them have it rougher than they [the defendants] do. Until today, I never heard Saddam make these allegations," he added.
Earlier, two of three witnesses said Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti - a former intelligence chief who is also on trial - had been present when they were tortured.
One described how his entire family of 43 was rounded up and imprisoned.
The witnesses told of intelligence agents shocking people with electricity and pouring melted plastic on people's flesh.
One said he had been tortured three times at intelligence headquarters, then sent to Abu Ghraib prison for over a year before being exiled to the desert for months.
After he was allowed to return home, he was seized afresh by intelligence agents and kept in solitary confinement until he pleaded with them to kill him.
"For God's sake, if you are going to execute me, take me out and execute me!" After the day's proceedings, the case is expected to be adjourned until mid-January.
The ousted president is expected to face further charges relating to his tenure as Iraqi leader and could be hanged if found guilty. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | December 2005 | ['(BBC)'] |
Brenton Tarrant, accused of killing 51 people and wounding 49 others in two New Zealand mosques, is also charged with committing terrorist acts. |
Wellington: The man accused of shooting dead 51 people in Christchurch mosque attacks, has been charged with terrorism, New Zealand police said on Tuesday. Brenton Tarrant, 28, has been charged with "engaging in a terrorist act" under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. In addition, he faces 51 charges of murder and 40 of the attempted murder, reported Xinhua.
The charge will allege that a terrorist act was carried out in Christchurch on March 15. Police said that the decision to lay the terror charge was made after consultation with the Crown Law Office and the Christchurch Crown Solicitors office. Shortly after the development, New Zealand police met with the survivors and families of the victims to inform them of the new charges filed against the gunman and update them on the ongoing investigation and the court process that would follow.:/:Ads by
"New Zealand police are committed to providing all the support necessary for what will be a challenging and emotional court process to come for the victims' families and survivors of the attack," said New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush. On March 15, Brenton, a suspected white supremacist from Australia, stormed into two mosques during congregational prayers and indiscriminately opened fire on the assembled. The act of terrorism left the entire Muslim community shaken, with the international community and locals showing their solidarity with the affected. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | May 2019 | ['(New York Post)', '(Mid Day)'] |
Another land campaigner is shot dead in Brazil's Amazon basin with five activists shot dead in the past month. | A rural worker has been shot dead in Brazil's Amazon - the sixth murder in a month in the region, amid conflicts over land and logging. The body of Obede Loyla Souza was found in dense forest close to his home in the northern state of Para. The 31-year-old had argued with illegal loggers in the area, the Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission said. Violence in the Amazon prompted the Brazilian government last month to offer more protection for activists. Police believe Mr Souza was killed last week, but news of his death was only confirmed on Tuesday. He was found close to his home in a settlement for landless rural workers near the town of Pacaja. The Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) said Mr Souza had received death threats after a run-in with loggers, who were reportedly cutting down trees illegally.
"There is in this region a really dangerous group of loggers," Hilario Lopes Costa from the CPT told the Associated Press.
"He had a fight with one of them over the cutting of these trees and he was a marked man from then on."
Local residents told the CPT they had seen four people in a pick-up truck drive to the camp where Mr Souza lived.
Forensic tests showed he was killed by a shot to the head.
Since May, there have been six murders in the states of Para and Rondonia. Police say not all were linked to land disputes. However, some of those targeted had been threatened. Joao Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do EspIrito Santo da Silva, were found murdered on a nature reserve near Maraba in Para state, where they had been working for the past 24 years.
According to family and friends, the couple had received numerous threats in the past two years for their environmental activism.
Their deaths were followed days later by the killing of rural leader Adelino Ramos in Porto Velho, capital of Rondonia. The government said it would increase protection for those activists considered most at risk and boost co-operation with state governments to tackle the violence. Brazil to tackle Amazon violence | Riot | June 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Musician Wyclef Jean is reportedly omitted from the list of candidates for the Haitian presidential election. | The hip-hop star Wyclef Jean's bid to become the president of Haiti appeared to be in doubt last night after an election official said he was not on the list of candidates for the 28 November poll.
The singer's presidential bid has electrified the earthquake-stricken country's election campaign. But yesterday a member of the country's provisional electoral council, who asked not to be named, told Reuters: "He is not on the list as I speak."
The official added that the country's electoral disputes office had ruled that Jean's candidacy did not meet several legal requirements.
Jean, 37, had a meeting with the Haitian president, René Préval, yesterday which the singer described as positive. Over the course of two hours the men discussed a range of subjects, from the hip-hop artist's safety to relations with the neighboring Dominican Republic.
Jean said Préval had offered him security after he had been the target of death threats earlier in the week.
The former Fugees frontman and several dozen other presidential candidates are due to find out later today if the country's electoral council allows them to run for office, when the provisional electoral council publishes its official list.
Jean carries a Haitian passport, but has US permanent residence status and has lived in New Jersey since he was a teenager. Haiti's electoral law requires candidates to have five consecutive years of residency in Haiti, among other requirements, such as tax compliance. Jean has said he meets those requirements.
His lawyers say he has maintained a "constant presence" in Haiti since 2005, and argue his appointment in 2007 as a roving "ambassador-at-large" for Haiti inevitably involved some absences from the country.
Jean had filed documents with the electoral council this month to run as a candidate for the election. He was among 34 contenders for the presidency who filed initial candidacy bids.
The country is struggling to recover from the earthquake in January this year that killed up to 300,000 people and destroyed much of the coastal capital, Port-au-Prince.
Whoever is elected will have a large say in the final use of almost $10bn pledged by foreign donors for post-quake recovery. With this in mind, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has called for transparent and credible elections.
Jean's bid for the presidency has galvanised the Haitian political scene, triggering a new enthusiasm among the country's many unemployed young people, who see him as a symbol of home-grown hope. | Government Job change - Election | August 2010 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Seven people are killed and 13 are injured after suicide bombers hit a state-run power station near the northern city of Samarra, Iraq. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claims responsibility for the attack. | TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Suicide bombers struck a state-run power station north of Baghdad early on Saturday, killing seven people and forcing the facility to shut down in an attack claimed by Islamic State, police and army sources said.
At least three gunmen wearing explosive vests attacked the power station around 3 a.m. local time, near the northern city of Samarra, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad. They used grenades to enter the facility.
“I was on my night shift and suddenly heard shooting and blasts. A few minutes later I saw one attacker wearing a military uniform and throwing grenades through the windows,” said Raied Khalid, a worker who was injured by shrapnel.
Security sources said the three gunmen briefly took control of the station, but police managed to regain control after three hours.
Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement.
Four policemen and three workers were killed in the assault, in which 13 were wounded, police and medical sources from a nearby hospital said.
One of the attackers, who was cornered by security forces, detonated his suicide vest near one the power generators, causing a fire.
The two other gunmen were killed, security sources said, either by blowing themselves up or in clashes with the security forces.
Operations at the facility were expected to be suspended briefly, while repairs were under way, electricity officials said.
Reporting by Ghazwan Hassan; Writing by Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Ros Russell and Helen Popper
| Armed Conflict | September 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
U.S. film producer Harvey Weinstein is found guilty of rape, and not guilty of predatory sexual assault. | A jury convicted Mr. Weinstein of felony sex crime and rape, but acquitted him of the most serious charges against him, predatory sexual assault.
transcript
“I could say that, right now, I’m happy to see that those years that I lost of my life are getting back. Of course, there is a lot of work to do. And I’m here to, you know, being there and speak to people so that situations like this will never happen again, and yeah, this is my mission right now.” “It’s no longer business as usual in the United States. This is the age of empowerment of women. And you cannot intimidate them anymore because women will not be silenced. They will speak up. They will have their voice. They will stand up and be subjected to your small army of defense attorneys, cross-examining them, attempting to discredit them, humiliate them, shame them, and they will still stand in their truth. So Harvey Weinstein, this justice has been a long time coming, but it’s finally here.” “It’s a bittersweet day, we’re disappointed. We knew we came in, and we were down 35 to nothing the day that we started this trial. The jurors came in knowing everything that they could know about this case. We couldn’t find a juror that never heard of Harvey Weinstein. You know, Harvey is strong. As I said, obviously he’s disappointed. But he’s strong, he’s mentally tough and he’s going to continue to fight.” “He didn’t react emotionally. There was no crying or anything like that. All he kept saying over and over again was, ‘I’m innocent, I’m innocent. How could this happen in America, I’m innocent?’”
Lawyers for Weinstein and His Accusers Speak Out After Verdict Harvey Weinstein, who long reigned as one of the most influential producers in Hollywood, was found guilty on Monday of two felony sex crimes after a Manhattan trial that became a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement.
But the jury acquitted Mr. Weinstein of the two most serious charges against him, predatory sexual assault.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | February 2020 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
The Afghan National Assembly building is attacked by gunmen after a suicide bombing. All 6 of the gunmen are killed, with 18 people injured. | A co-ordinated Taliban attack on the Afghan parliament in Kabul has ended with all six gunmen killed, the interior ministry says. Attackers detonated a huge car bomb outside the gates, stormed the compound, then entered a building next to the chamber. Police evacuated the premises, while trying to fight the gunmen off. The Taliban say they carried out the attack to coincide with a vote to endorse a new defence minister. The spokesman for the interior ministry, Sediq Seddiqi, said the gunmen had attempted to storm the parliament building itself after the gates were breached by the suicide bomb. They were fought off and entered a building under construction next to parliament. MPs were showered with broken glass, and the chamber filled with smoke as the fighting went on. It took nearly an hour before all the firing stopped.
At least 18 people are reported to have been wounded. Mr Seddiqi said no MP had been injured.
Pictures on social media showed parliament full of smoke and people running for cover. Television was broadcasting live from the parliament building when the attackers struck. MPs were seen fleeing the building.
Even by Afghan standards, these were very dramatic scenes, and police had a complex operation on their hands, says the BBC's David Loyn in Kabul.
The Taliban were extracting maximum propaganda advantage by doing it on the day that parliament was meeting to consider the appointment of new Defence Minister Massoom Stanekzai, our correspondent says.
Local media reported another explosion in the Dahmazang area of Kabul city. The Taliban have launched complex attacks on government buildings in the capital in the past.
They have made substantial gains recently in Helmand in the south-west, and have been advancing across the north of the country, capturing two districts of the Kunduz province in recent days.
Militant violence has increased across the country since the departure of most US and Nato forces last year. | Armed Conflict | June 2015 | ['(BBC)'] |
After having been postponed by a week, Nigeria's general election takes place nationwide. | Observers say Saturday's vote to re-elect Muhammadu Buhari or his main rival Atiku Abubakar is too close to call. The election was marred by technical issues that delayed the opening of polling stations in some areas.
Most polling stations closed at 2 p.m. local time (1300 UTC) in Nigeria on Saturday following a delayed election to pick the president of Africa's most populous nation and leading oil producer.
Despite a promise by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that it had overcome logistical difficulties that forced the postponement of last weekend's vote, some polling stations still opened hours late.
A coalition of civic groups said there were delays to the delivery of some materials and the deployment of staff. Election officials allowed those stations to remain open past the afternoon deadline.
Incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari was one of the first to vote, and he emerged from the polling booth in his hometown of Daura, in the northwestern state of Katsina, to say he was confident of victory.
His main challenger, Atiku Abubakar, who represents the main opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP), voted in Yola, in the northeastern state of Adamawa.
Early results revealed Abubakar lost at his home polling station, with Buhari beating him with 186 votes to 167.
Economic woes weigh on Nigerians
Most observers say victory for either front-runner is still too close to call, with the outcome set to hinge on which man voters most trust to revamp an economy still struggling to recover from a 2016 recession.
The results — including for a parliamentary election that ran alongside — are to be announced early next week.
Saturday's election was postponed by a week just hours before polls were due to open on the morning of February 16, with officials blaming logistical challenges. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the PDP accused each other of conspiring with INEC to rig the result.
Incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari casts his ballot. He is seeking a second term in office
Hours before polls opened on Saturday, suspected Islamist insurgents attacked the northeastern town of Geidam, forcing residents to flee. However, civilians returned to town hours after the attack and the polls were opened at noon local time, according to DW correspondent Al-Amin Suleiman.
Separately, reports surfaced about Boko Haram terrorists attacking the city of Maiduguri in the northeastern state of Borno with rocket fire, but these were disputed by local security forces.
The army and police claim to have "fired the shots themselves, in order to drive away the attackers," Suleiman reported from the scene.
"Many people still believe that the attacks were meant to keep them from exercising their right to vote," he added. "They remain determined to vote even at risk to their life."
Large crowds of people came to the polls, according to local officials.
"Despite everything, the people in Borno refuse to be intimidated," Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima said. "This is a reason for joy."
Despite the delays and concerns that heavy security may intimidate potential voters, Buhari described the voting process as "smooth."
Some voters who made it to the polls encountered frustrating logistical problems. Before casting their ballot, registered voters must check to see if their serial number is listed on the wall at the polling station. But would-be voter Grace could not find her number on the list at a polling station in Abuja.
"I have checked, I cannot see my own," she told DW. "I have a voter's card, but I cannot vote because I don't have my serial number."
Grace was eventually assured by a polling station official that she would still be allowed to vote; however, DW cannot confirm that she cast her ballot.
#DefendYourVote
Nigerians are still divided over who deserves the top job. The majority of voters are under 35 and many young Nigerians want Buhari out.
"A lot of us are not happy," one young woman told DW. "There is bloodshed; the government is not doing a lot [to fix] what is happening in this country."
But others think Buhari deserves a second term, with one young male voter in Abuja telling DW: "He has fought corruption and he has actually provided direction."
Despite the record number of registered voters, militant group Boko Haram warned people not to cast their ballots. The group and its offshoot, Islamic State in West Africa Province, have carried out deadly sporadic raids in the northeastern Borno state.
The election campaign has coincided with fresh violence in northern Nigeria, blamed on criminal gangs as well as Boko Haram jihadis. More than 200 people have died since the start of this month alone.
Voters stand in line in front of a polling station in Abuja
72.8 million voting cards
Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of the INEC, said that 72.8 million cards had been collected out of 84 million registered voters. Candidates need to win the most votes and at least 25 percent support in two-thirds of Nigeria's 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja.
Buhari was elected president in 2015, but many Nigerians believe he has failed to live up to his initial campaign promises, which included cracking down on rampant corruption and fighting Boko Haram. For Abubakar, it is his fifth attempt at the presidency on the PDP ticket. The 72-year-old businessman-turned-politician has been implicated in a number of corruption scandals over the years.
Fanny Facsar contributed to this article.
On February 16, President Muhammadu Buhari and opposition leader Atiku Abubakar will face off in Nigeria’s presidential election. The outcome of this highly contested vote is far from certain. (13.02.2019)
The former Nigerian vice president has hinted at plans to further privatize corrupt state institutions; however, he continues to deny his own corruption allegations in the lead-up to Saturday's general election. (15.02.2019)
| Government Job change - Election | February 2019 | ['(DW)'] |
Nature publishes Penn State University findings of Ancient shells with 430,000–year–old engravings believed to be made by Homo erectus, changing beliefs on artistic expression and tool use by ancestors of Homo sapiens. Dutch anthropologist Eugene Dubois found the collection in Java in 1891 and Penn State discovered the markings in a museum in the city of Leiden. | Scientists say marks carved onto a freshwater clam shell represent the earliest known engravings by a human ancestor.
The zigzag lines in the shell probably were carved at least 430,000 years ago by a Homo erectus, an extinct hominid with a brain only slightly smaller than those of modern humans, researchers say.
The engraving on the fossil shell from 500,000 years ago.
The findings were published this week in Nature.
The previous earliest known engravings also have a zigzag pattern and were found in the small Blombos Cave in South Africa, about 290 kilometres east of Cape Town. They date back about 100,000 years.
The fossil Pseudodon shell with the engraving made by Homo erectus at Trinil, Indonesia.
"I was pretty surprised when I first heard about this because it was not what I would have predicted," said Pat Shipman, an adjunct professor of anthropology at Penn State University, who was not involved in the study. "But having gone through the evidence carefully, I find it quite convincing."
This earliest known engraving has been hiding in plain sight for more than 100 years.
The fossilised shell was collected in Java in 1891 by Dutch physician and anthropologist Eugene Dubois. Dubois travelled to the Indonesian island in search of fossils that would link man and ape on the evolutionary tree. When he returned, he brought back fossils of Homo erectus, as well as a wide range of other fossils, including elephants, fish bones and a few hundred shells. The collection is housed in the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the city of Leiden.
Dubois described a species of clam from the shells he found, and at least one other researcher did extensive work on the shells in the 1930s, but the marks on the surface of the shell defied detection until May 2007 when an Australian doctoral student started photographing the shells so he could study them at home.
"He couldn't stay in the collection, so he was just photographing all of it," said Jose Joordens, researcher at the faculty of archaeology at Leiden University and the lead author on the paper, which was published on Thursday. "As soon as he photographed it, he saw it right away."
To figure out what these marks were, and how they got there, Dr Joordens and her colleagues took a closer look at all the shells in the collection. They noted that one-third had one or two small holes in the same area. This led the researchers to surmise that the shells had been collected by an animal that got to the meat in the shell by poking the hole.
Next they asked what animals living at this time could have made the hole. After ruling out all the options - including otters, rats, birds and octopus - they concluded that only Homo erectus could have done so, probably using a shark tooth as a tool.
Trying this ancient technique for themselves, the researchers found that if they poked a clam shell with a shark tooth at the right spot, they could cut through the muscle that holds the shell shut.
"If you pierce the shell and damage the muscle, it is easy to open the shell, and you can eat them," Dr Joordens said.
Now the scientists had evidence that the shells had been deliberately assembled, and that they had been assembled by Homo erectus. Analysis of the grooves on the shell show they were made with a hard tool before the shell fossilised.
"To me, the most logical assumption is they made the carvings in the context of opening the shells for food," Dr Joordens said. "They had the shark tooth in one hand, and the shell in another. It is such a small step to use the shark tooth to play around a bit on the shell."
Dr Joordens imagines the person scraping the tooth along the brown surface of the shell, revealing a layer of white.
"Maybe the person thought it was attractive, and was motivated to make another line, and before you know it, there was a drawing," she said. "I think the person did his or her best to make something that looks good."
The conundrum here is that only one of the 248 pieces of shell that Dr Joordens and her colleagues analysed had any evidence of engraving.
"Clearly everybody would like to see more," Dr Shipman said, "but you've got what you've got."
Dr Joordens said the next step for her team was to examine the Dubois collection even more closely for similar markings, as well as return to the original site in Java, which has remained untouched for more than 100 years.
"It's hard to look for what you don't expect, but now, we have this new way of looking," she said. "Opening up the excavation would allow us to check so many things, and strengthen our story." | New wonders in nature | December 2014 | ['(WA Today)'] |
A large fire 12 miles west of the French city of Bordeaux ravages more than 350 hectares of forest. | A Canadair water bomber aircraft flies over a forest fire that broke out near Saint-Jean d'Illac, some 20km of Bordeaux, on July 24, 2015. AFP PHOTO / MEHDI FEDOUACH
BORDEAUX: Water-bombers were called in Saturday to try to contain a forest fire burning on the western outskirts of Bordeaux that has prompted dozens of evacuations including from a psychiatric facility, authorities said.
The fire, which broke out Friday afternoon and spread quickly thanks to 50 kilometers-per-hour (30 mph) winds, has now consumed nearly 370 hectares (900 acres) of pine forest and is just 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the city.
But the winds abated overnight and the fire "has calmed and stabilized, but it is neither contained nor under control," said a spokesman for the regional administration.
"There are still active areas, flying sparks," he added.
Two water-bombers are working to contain the forest fire, with another two due to join during the day Saturday. Some 250 firefighters and 60 firetrucks were deployed on the ground.
Authorities ordered the evacuation of 40 households in the town of Saint-Jean-d'Illac and 80 in the Bordeaux suburb of Pessac on Friday as a precaution. Some 80 residents of a psychiatric facility were moved to a local gym or to a main Bordeaux hospital.
Much of France is experiencing a drought and several fires broke out Friday in the pine forests that dominate to the west and south of the city Bordeaux.
The region's celebrated vineyards are located mostly to the east and north of the city, with national authorities saying the hot and dry weather has so far favored the growth of nice grapes, though the harvest is expected to dip slightly from last year.
BORDEAUX: Water-bombers were called in Saturday to try to contain a forest fire burning on the western outskirts of Bordeaux that has prompted dozens of evacuations including from a psychiatric facility, authorities said.
The fire, which broke out Friday afternoon and spread quickly thanks to 50 kilometers-per-hour (30 mph) winds, has now consumed nearly 370 hectares (900 acres) of pine forest and is just 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the city.
But the winds abated overnight and the fire "has calmed and stabilized, but it is neither contained nor under control," said a spokesman for the regional administration.
"There are still active areas, flying sparks," he added.
Two water-bombers are working to contain the forest fire, with another two due to join during the day Saturday. Some 250 firefighters and 60 firetrucks were deployed on the ground.
Authorities ordered the evacuation of 40 households in the town of Saint-Jean-d'Illac and 80 in the Bordeaux suburb of Pessac on Friday as a precaution. Some 80 residents of a psychiatric facility were moved to a local gym or to a main Bordeaux hospital.
Much of France is experiencing a drought and several fires broke out Friday in the pine forests that dominate to the west and south of the city Bordeaux.
The region's celebrated vineyards are located mostly to the east and north of the city, with national authorities saying the hot and dry weather has so far favored the growth of nice grapes, though the harvest is expected to dip slightly from last year.
| Fire | July 2015 | ['(19 kilometres)', '(860 acres)', '(The Daily Star)'] |
A bus veers off the Second Wanzhou Yangtze River Bridge and plunges into the Yangtze River in Chongqing, China after its driver was distracted by an unruly passenger, killing at least 13 people. | Security footage from a bus which crashed into a river in China has revealed that the driver was fighting with a passenger moments earlier.
The bus plunged 50m (164ft) off a bridge into the Yangtze River in Chongqing on Sunday - at least 13 people died and two more are missing. Early reports said the bus had swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle.
But the new footage shows the driver was being hit by a passenger and then struck her back.
The bus, travelling at speed, then turns into the opposite lane and smashes through the safety barriers, before the footage cuts out. Police have said the fight was the cause of the crash, state newspaper People's Daily reports. Passengers can be heard screaming in the disturbing footage, shared by Chinese state media. Police said the passenger, identified as a 48-year-old woman with the surname Liu, was angry that the bus had missed her stop. They said she hit the driver, named Ran, with her mobile phone when he refused to stop and let her off. Witnesses had said they saw the bus swerve across to the wrong side of the road before crashing through a safety barrier in Wanzhou district. A huge rescue operation was mounted with teams of divers and dozens of boats and cranes deployed. But there have been no reports of survivors. The wreckage of the bus was pulled out of the river from a depth of 71m on Wednesday night. Several of the passengers' bodies had to be retrieved by divers. The crash, on a well-maintained and relatively quiet bridge, has shocked China. Social media comments on Friday widely blamed the passenger for the crash, though some also criticised the driver for reacting.
One poster on Weibo, Wanten888, said: "If we see any passenger quarrelling with bus driver, we shouldn't stay quiet!"
Another said it was "heartbreaking" to hear the terrified passengers, while a Weibo user called Liza said there should be a law banning passengers from distracting bus drivers.
| Road Crash | October 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
Bobi Wine, challenger to the incumbent President Yoweri Museveni who has been in office since 1986, is arrested along with his entire campaign team in the town of Kalangala. No information about the arrest has been made available. | Ugandan opposition presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, was arrested on Wednesday alongside members of his campaign team in the country's central region, according to a post shared by an administrator on his official Twitter account. "Bobi Wine and his entire campaign team arrested in Kalangala! Media blocked," the tweet said. Load Error
No further details of their arrest have yet been made available.
Wine is challenging incumbent President Yoweri Museveni -- who has been in power for more than 30 years -- in January 14 elections. The presidential candidate has accused Museveni of being a dictator responsible for human rights abuses, after at least 45 people were killed in protests last month sparked by Wine's earlier arrest for contravening coronavirus regulations at a campaign rally.
He said one of his bodyguards was run over and killed Sunday by a military police truck, while the guard was taking a journalist to the hospital.
A spokesperson for the Ugandan military denied Wine's bodyguard had been targeted.
In an interview with CNN earlier this month, Wine said he had nearly been killed on two occasions in recent weeks and urged the international community to hold Uganda's government accountable ahead of elections next month.
While authorities have said the restrictions are necessary to curb the spread of Covid-19, opposition members and their supporters say they are an excuse to limit campaigning before the election.
United Nations human rights experts on Tuesday released a statement expressing serious concerns about the violence ahead of Uganda's presidential election. They urged authorities to "put an end to the arrest, detention and judicial harassment of political opponents, civil society leaders and human rights defenders."
Nicholas Opiyo, a prominent human rights activist, was arrested along with four other individuals on December 23. He is accused of money laundering and will be tried accordingly, a statement from authorities said. "Since the publication of the guidelines on the conduct of elections during Covid-19 in June by the Uganda Electoral Commission, we have witnessed gradual shrinking of civic space, and misuse and abuse of health-related restrictions to curb dissent in the country ahead of the election on 14 January," said the UN experts. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | December 2020 | ['(CNN via MSN)'] |
The Taliban gains control of the Ajristan District in Afghanistan's Ghazni Province after a week of battle. | Taliban fighters have seized control of a strategic district in the Afghan province of Ghazni, officials say.
Insurgents killed about 70 villagers after taking Ajrestan district late on Thursday night after a week of battle.
A spokesman for the provincial governor said 15 people suspected of collaborating with authorities were beheaded, including women.
The Taliban is active in many parts of Ghazni, an important gateway to the capital, Kabul, from the south-east.
Fighting is continuing as security forces try to regain the district but officials fear surrounding districts are now vulnerable to attack. Some analysts say that control of Ajrestan also provides militants with a launching pad for attacks into adjacent provinces in the east of the country. Ajrestan is a small town surrounded by about 100 villages in a predominantly rural area. Earlier this month militants killed 10 people when they attacked a government compound in Ghazni. The fall of the district comes days before Afghanistan's new president Ashraf Ghani is due to be inaugurated. He secured the position after striking a unity deal in which runner-up Abdullah Abdullah will nominate someone to a post similar to that of prime minister.
The power-sharing deal was announced last week after months of tension following disputed presidential elections.
Foreign combat forces are set to withdraw troops by the end of 2014 with control being transferred to Afghan national forces.
The Afghan army has seen a rise in the number of casualties as it increasingly takes over the battle against Taliban militants from US-led foreign troops.
The US has said that it hopes a key bilateral security agreement with Afghanistan can be signed in the coming weeks.
UN calls for end of arms sales to Myanmar
In a rare move, the UN condemns the overthrowing of Aung San Suu Kyi and calls for an arms embargo.
The ethnic armies training Myanmar's protesters. | Armed Conflict | September 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
A Guatemalan court sentences Felipe Cusanero, an ex–paramilitary officer, to 150 years in prison for the forced disappearance of civilians in the 36–year Guatemalan Civil War. | A Guatemalan court has sentenced an ex-paramilitary officer to 150 years in prison for the forced disappearance of civilians in the civil war.
Felipe Cusanero, found guilty over the disappearance in the 1980s of six indigenous Maya farmers, is the first person to be jailed for such crimes. Human rights groups have hailed the verdict as a breakthrough in the fight against impunity in Guatemala. Some 250,000 people were killed in the 36-year conflict, which ended in 1996. The court in Chimaltenango, about 40km (25 miles) west of Guatemala City, was packed as the judges read their verdict and sentence - 25 years for each victim. Cusanero was found guilty in connection with the disappearances of six people in the Chimaltenango region between 1982 and 1984. At the time, which was the height of the long-running civil war between government forces and left-wing guerrillas, he was a military commissioner, a civilian working with the army. "We weren't looking for vengeance but for the truth and justice," Hilarion Lopez, whose 24-year-old son was taken by soldiers in 1984 and never seen again, told Reuters news agency. Rights groups believe Cusanero was involved in the disappearances of more people but only six families came forward to testify against him. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | September 2009 | ['(BBC)', '(Boston Globe)', '(The Irish Times)', '(Reuters)'] |
At least seven people are killed when their vehicle hits a roadside bomb in Nangarhar Province. | Afghan officials say at least seven civilians, including a woman and three children, were killed when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan on January 15.
The villagers were traveling from Pacheer Agam district to a nearby village in Nangarhar Province, district Governor Hijratullah Rahmani told the AFP news agency.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which the Interior Ministry blamed on "enemies of peace and stability," a term Afghan officials use to refer to Taliban militants.
The Taliban has a strong presence in Nangarhar, a volatile province that borders Pakistan.
The Islamic State (IS) extremist group has also gained a foothold in eastern Afghanistan in recent years. | Road Crash | January 2017 | ['(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)'] |
Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi sacks Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr, blaming him for the current economic crisis and famine in the country. Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed is appointed as the new Prime Minister. | DUBAI (Reuters) - Yemen’s Western- and Gulf-backed president sacked his prime minister on Monday, blaming him for the economic crisis in a country devastated by war, according to a statement carried by the loyalist SABA state news agency.
President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi appointed Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed to replace Ahmed bin Dagher, who was to be investigated over the “negligence of his government”, the statement said.
Yemen is one of the poorest Arab nations and as a result of the war, three-quarters of its population, or 22 million people, require aid and 8.4 million are on the brink of starvation.
Its northern half including the capital Sanaa is largely controlled by the northern Shi’ite Houthi rebel movement, while Hadi, whom a Saudi-led Arab military coalition is trying to restore to power, contests much of the south with separatist groups.
“This (the dismissal) was a result of negligence by the government in the recent period with respect to the economy and to administrative services,” the statement said.
Saeed has been minister of public works in the cabinet, which operates from Saudi Arabia, since last year.
Bin Dagher has been at odds with the southern separatists and their main backer, the United Arab Emirates, a member of the Saudi-led coalition, which has been fighting the Houthis since 2015.
Bin Dagher tweeted his congratulations to Saeed.
Most Yemenis now live in Houthi-controlled territory, while Hadi government controls the south, backed by a Saudi-led coalition of Arab troops.
The Yemeni currency, the riyal, has lost more than half its value against the dollar since the start of the war. Authorities sought to boost liquidity last year by printing money when it stood at around 250 to the dollar, but it has now plunged in value to about 700 to the dollar.
U.N. special envoy Martin Griffiths said this month that the United Nations was discussing an emergency plan to stem the fall and restore economic confidence.
Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi; Editing by Kevin Liffey
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
| Financial Crisis | October 2018 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The widow of Anthony Ashley–Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, and her brother, are found guilty of the murder of her husband. | Anthony Ashley-Cooper's third wife, former nightclub hostess Jamila M'Barek, 45, had denied paying her brother Mohammed to murder her husband.
They had claimed the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, who had homes in Hove and London, died during a drunken row.
His badly-decomposed body was found in a remote ravine in the Alps in 2005.
I don't understand how people can place no value on human life, and I truly pity them
Nicholas Ashley-Cooper
Sex and money murder tale
The prosecution said Ms M'Barek paid her brother 150,000 euros (£105,000) to kill the earl, because he was in the process of divorcing her and denying her the chance to inherit valuable properties in France and Ireland.
The 66-year-old playboy aristocrat went missing from his hotel on the French Riviera on 5 November 2004. The body was found five months later.
Mr M'Barek, 43, admitted killing him, but said he strangled him "accidentally".
"I did everything I could to try and save him - I gave him mouth-to-mouth," he told the court in Nice.
Ms M'Barek denied she had married the Earl for money, saying she had always been prosperous and marrying him was a "curse".
Mohammed and Jamila M'Barek said the earl died in a drunken row
Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, the late peer's second son and now the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, said he did not believe Ms M'Barek ever loved his father.
"I believe that she is manipulative and scheming, and ultimately an evil person," he said.
The 29-year-old sat in court throughout the four-day hearing with his mother Christina Cassell and aunt, Lady Frances Ashley-Cooper.
"During this trial we have heard the words of Mohammed and Jamila and we have seen the evidence brought before us," he said.
"It further confirms the type of people we thought they were - cold, deceitful, and without compassion for a man they murdered and betrayed.
"I don't understand how people can place no value on human life, and I truly pity them."
Speaking after verdict his said: "I believe justice was done and we are satisfied with the 25 year sentences given to both defendants.
"During the trial we heard a lot of excuses and I don't think we saw any remorse or compassion from the accused, but I was expecting that from the kind of people they are."
Franck de Vita, Ms M'Barek's lawyer, said it was a "bad day for justice", and added that his client would be launching an appeal. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | May 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
The San Francisco Giants defeat the Texas Rangers to win the 2010 World Series 4–1. | ARLINGTON, Texas -- The San Francisco Giants, who had not won a World Series since moving West in 1958 and whose fans adopted the word "torture" as a team slogan, are baseball's new champions.
Ace Tim Lincecum pitched eight innings, allowing only three hits and one run while striking out 10, and until the seventh inning was matched by Rangers ace Cliff Lee out-for-out, as he had allowed only three hits and no walks through six. But Lee's shutout streak ended in the seventh when he allowed a three-run homer to shortstop Edgar Renteria.
Rangers rightfielder Nelson Cruz responded with a solo homer in the bottom of the seventh to cut the Giants' lead to 3-1 in Monday's Game 5, but that's as close as Texas would get, as it lost by that score after closer Brian Wilson recorded the final three outs for the save.
The Giants won the series four games to one.
"It's a euphoric feeling that's so hard to describe," manager Bruce Bochy said. "For us to win for our fans, it's never been done there, and with all those great teams.
"And what was neat through all this is Willie McCovey and Willie Mays, Will Clark, J.T. Snow, Shawon Dunston, all those guys that played on World Series teams, they were in the clubhouse, they were pulling for these guys. They wanted them to win, and the players felt that along with the fans."
Bochy had dubbed this team "misfits and castoffs" for the patchwork way his lineup was constructed of players released (Pat Burrell), dumped in a waiver trade (Cody Ross, who later won the National League Championship Series MVP) or generally unwanted in free agency (Aubrey Huff). Even Renteria (World Series MVP) was thought to be an overpaid, underperforming signing.
"It's been a team effort," Lincecum said. "Everybody's been a hero on a different day. What a great [expletive] team."
Huff and second baseman Freddy Sanchez had been active for a combined 20 seasons without even reaching the playoffs before this year.
"That all goes away," Sanchez said. "We're in this game for one reason and that's to win a World Series."
San Francisco's rotation, on the other hand, was the team's hallmark, and the four pitchers who started games in the postseason were entirely homegrown, having been drafted by the Giants and developed in their farm system.
Lincecum is a former two-time Cy Young winner, who won four games in the playoffs. No. 2 starter Matt Cain didn't allow an earned run in 21 1/3 innings, the third-longest streak of any postseason in history. Jonathan Sanchez was brilliant down the stretch for the Giants and in their first-round series against the Braves, though he faltered in his last two starts. Rookie starter Madison Bumgarner pitched eight brilliant shutout innings to win Game 4. Each is signed for at least two more seasons.
"We have a pretty good scouting eye," San Francisco general manager Brian Sabean said earlier this week, "and through development our pitching has become the gold standard and the foundation of the organization."
There will be offseason questions of whether to keep certain impending free agents like Huff and infielder Juan Uribe and how to generate a more consistent offense, but a lot of the pieces are in place.
For Renteria, it was his second home run of the series and his second World Series-winning RBI; his single in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series scored the winning run for the Marlins.
"Both are the same feeling, same emotions," Renteria said. "It's unbelievable being in that situation, and I enjoyed both World Series."
The hyped matchup between aces Lee and Lincecum went asunder in Game 1 -- rather than the expected low-scoring affair, the Giants won 11-7 in a game with 18 runs, 25 hits, six errors and 12 pitchers used. On Monday, the rematch lived up to the hype. Neither team had a baserunner even reach second base through the first six innings.
It was in the seventh that San Francisco broke through. Ross and Uribe singled, and then Huff laid down a sacrifice bunt -- something he had never successfully done in his 11-year career. After Burrell struck out, Renteria homered, after having told teammate Andres Torres in the dugout he would do so.
"I got confidence in me, but I was joking like I'm going to get it out," Renteria said. "But it went out. But I got confident, looking for one pitch, and if he throws I'm going to hit it back to the middle. So he tried to throw the cutter, and the cutter stay in the middle and that's why it go out."
The Giants franchise had won five previous titles but none since 1954 when they still called New York home. The 2010 squad features a two-time Cy Young winner but no other true superstars, only productive players and a couple of young future stars, including rookies in catcher Buster Posey and Bumgarner.
They are on the verge of being able to make a several-year run deep into the playoffs, having realized this young talent sooner than most expected. Few saw them as legitimate playoff contenders until they won 15 out of 18 games in late July to jump from fourth place in their division to second. They didn't clinch a playoff berth until the very last day of the regular season.
Cain had the honor of carrying the championship trophy into the jubilant visitors' clubhouse. With champagne and beer splashing all around him, he shouted, "Pass that thing around!" The players each took a turn hoisting the trophy high above his head, much like the hockey victors' tradition of passing the Stanley Cup. | Sports Competition | November 2010 | ['(Sports Illustrated)', '(BBC)'] |
Turkish authorities detain 55 military and intelligence agency personnel over suspected links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen. | ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey detained 55 military and intelligence agency personnel on Wednesday over suspected links with U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen and his network, accused by Ankara of orchestrating a failed coup in July, media reports said.
In the latest of a stream of raids targeting those suspected of ties to the putsch, police carried out operations in 31 provinces after prosecutors issued detention warrants for a total of 101 suspects, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
On July 15, a rogue faction within the military staged an attempted coup in which more than 240 people were killed. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, denies government accusations he was behind the action.
Subsequently Turkey declared a three-month state of emergency which it extended by another three months this week and the head of Turkey’s Constitutional Court stressed the importance of returning to a state of normality.
“Naturally, the aim is to eliminate the threat against the democratic constitutional order, basic rights and freedoms as soon as possible, so as to return to a normal state,” court chairman Zuhtu Arslan said on Wednesday.
Turkey has already sacked or suspended more than 100,000 civil servants, teachers, judges, prosecutors and others. Some 32,000 people, including soldiers and journalists, have been formally arrested.
The security crackdown has alarmed rights groups and Western allies who fear President Tayyip Erdogan may be using the failed coup as a pretext to curtail all dissent and intensify action against suspected sympathizers of Kurdish militants.
Ankara wants the United States to detain and extradite Gulen so that he can be prosecuted in Turkey on a charge that he masterminded the attempt to overthrow the government.
Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Daren Butler and Ralph Boulton
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | October 2016 | ['(Reuters)'] |
More bodies are found on Malaysia's highest peak Mount Kinabalu with the total death from the earthquake at 13 with most casualties from Malaysia and Singapore. , | Six Singapore primary school students and one teacher are among the 16 people so far confirmed killed by an earthquake that rocked Malaysia's Mount Kinabalu, Malaysian officials said.
Singaporean foreign minister K Shanmugam confirmed the bodies of six students, aged 12 and 13, had been identified.
The government also said a teacher and a Singaporean adventure guide perished, while another student and a teacher remained missing.
"Looking at the photos of these children, such young lives, full of promise, snuffed out," Mr Shanmugam said in a Facebook posting.
Twenty-nine Singaporean and international students and eight teachers from Singapore's Tanjong Katong Primary School (TKPS) were on a school excursion, climbing the popular peak, when Friday's magnitude-6.0 quake triggered massive landslides on the mountain.
The earthquake on South-East Asia's highest peak triggered a "river of stones" set loose by the large tremor.
An 80-member rescue team was dispatched on Sunday morning to search a section of trail on the popular climbing peak that was obliterated in rockfalls.
Authorities have so far given few details on the victims or the scenes encountered by search crews on the mountain in Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo island, saying the poor state of some remains made identification difficult.
But Malaysia's The Star Online has released a photograph it claims is a list of the dead and missing, "posted in the search and rescue operations room", which displays the details of seven Malaysians, nine Singaporeans, and one each from the Philippines, Japan and China.
The details of a severely injured Singaporean is also separately listed.
Singapore's Straits Times newspaper said some of the Singaporean students were taking a route to the summit, known as the Via ferrata, that traversed a steeply sloping rock face in which climbers are tethered to ropes attached to the surface.
The quake would have left people on that section exposed to a hail of stones and boulders.
The Times said 19 TKPS pupils arrived home from Kota Kinabalu on Saturday afternoon to the relief of relatives and friends.
Singapore's education ministry said two other pupils and one teacher, who require more medical attention in regional capital Kota Kinabalu, will return to Singapore shortly.
The local Kinabalu Today news portal quoted rescue personnel saying that full recovery of remains could be impossible as some were pinned under massive boulders, or possibly swept to their deaths from the peak.
Australian climber Vee Jin Dumlao, who is now safe after being stranded on Kinabalu, told the ABC that the sight of death was in plain sight during their perilous descent.
"When I saw the corpses, lying uncollected in the rock fall, that was probably the point when I realised that things were actually very, very bad," she said.
Masidi Manjun, tourism minister for Sabah state, said on Twitter that search teams would focus on the section that he said has been "dubbed 'river of stones' when [the] earthquake struck early Friday which rendered the track impassable, trapping climbers".
Crews and officials engaged in search and rescue efforts have been kept on edge by aftershocks, including a Saturday afternoon tremor that Malaysian officials rated at magnitude-4.5.
The Sabah minister has also had to field criticism from climbers that search and rescue efforts were ineffective for hours after the Friday quake.
Climber Vee Jin Dumlao labelled the rescue effort "a farce".
She said stranded climbers had to wait nine hours for help, with bad weather being an obstacle for only some of that time.
She said despite the clear weather, rescue officials told the group they would not be lifted out until the next day.
"At 4:30pm, it was decided that even though the tremors were still continuing, they were not as strong and we just had to take the risk and make our way down the mountain with the guides' help," she said.
Supplied: Vee Jin Dumlao
Mrs Dumlao said the group guides were far more helpful than government rescue teams.
"The mountain guides were the heroes. They risked life and limb and made some difficult decisions that ultimately saved our lives, and had neither help nor recognition from the authorities," she told the ABC.
Mr Manjun responded to criticisms Sunday afternoon on Twitter saying, "It's easy to pick on weaknesses of search and rescue effort and I'm sure they are many. We'll talk about them during post-mortem. Now is not the time to blame."
Climbing has been suspended at Mount Kinabalu for at least three weeks so authorities can make repairs and assess safety risks.
Around 20,000 people complete the relatively easy climb each year.
ABC/AFP
| Earthquakes | June 2015 | ['(AP via NBC News)', '(AFP and ABC Australia)'] |
A policeman is killed and 11 others are injured in a grenade attack on a church in the Kenyan town of Garissa near the border with Somalia. | A grenade attack on a church in a police compound in eastern Kenya has killed one police officer and injured at least 11 other people, reports say.
The man who died was serving as pastor of the targeted church, in Garissa town near the border with Somalia. Most of the wounded are also reported to be police officers; some of whom were airlifted to hospital in Nairobi.
In July, 15 people were killed in raids on churches in Garissa, and suspicion fell on the al-Shabab militant group.
Police blamed the Somalia-based group and its sympathisers for the attack, and said they were angry over Kenya's role in a UN-backed intervention force.
Kenya's capital Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa have suffered a series of grenade attacks since Kenya sent troops into Somalia last October.
Witnesses were quoted as saying that the grenade in Sunday's attack was thrown from outside the compound, and landed on the iron-sheeted roof of the church while the officers and their families were inside attending a prayer session.
"It is believed to be a motor thrown or a grenade because it penetrated the roof before landing within the crowd. There is confusion," one police officer at the scene was quoted by Kenya's The Standard as saying.
Gunfire was also reportedly heard at the scene of the explosion.
Kenya's Red Cross said 11 wounded people were taken to hospital in Garissa, with three evacuated by air to Nairobi for further treatment.
Regional police chief Philip Tuimur said a major operation was under way to track down the attackers.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion will once again fall on al-Shabab.
In September, one child was killed and three seriously injured in a grenade attack on a church in Nairobi.
A mob later rounded on Somalis living near the church, injuring 13 people with sticks and stones.
| Armed Conflict | November 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
At least 14 people are killed during a prison riot in Matamoros in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. | Police in Mexico say at least 14 inmates have been killed in a prison riot in Matamoros, in Tamaulipas state, close to the US border.
Local media say rival gangs fighting for control of the prison attacked each other with a variety of sharp weapons.
Soldiers and police eventually regained control of the penitentiary.
The prison system is struggling to cope with the large number of drug offenders jailed in President Felipe Calderon's battle against powerful drug cartels.
Many prisons are overcrowded and allegations of corruption are widespread.
Last month, prosecutors accused prison officials at a jail in Gomez Palacio in Durango state of allowing inmates to leave the prison at night to carry out revenge killings, even providing them with the weapons to carry out the attacks.
Smuggling routes
Police spokesman Hector Walle told Reuters news agency the inmates in Matamoros used homemade weapons in the fight, which quickly spiralled out of control.
Matamoros, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas, has seen an increase in violence as rival drug cartels fight for control of the smuggling routes into the United States.
The region is at the centre of a violent battle for territory between the Gulf cartel and the Zetas, who used to work as hitmen for the Gulf cartel but have since become their rivals.
The Mexican Centre for Research and National Security (Cisen), says more than 28,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since December 2006.
| Riot | August 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
At the 25th anniversary celebrations of Hamas in Gaza, Hamas leader in exile Khaled Mashal, who arrived in Gaza for the first time ever, declared in a speech he held at a mass rally that the Palestinian people will never compromise with Israel's existence and that the organization intends to gradually conquer the entire region which now includes both the State of Israel and the Palestinian territories, and would establish one Islamic state in that region. (Washington Post') | JERUSALEM — In a fiery speech Saturday before a mammoth rally in Gaza City marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, the political leader of the militant Islamist group, pledged that it would never recognize Israel and called for an Islamic Palestinian state on the territory of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Meshal spoke during his first visit to Gaza, a triumphant tour after a recent eight-day war between Hamas and Israel, and 15 years after he survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan.
A sea of green flags filled Katiba Square in Gaza City as Meshal and the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, walked out of a giant replica of a long-range Hamas M-75 rocket set up on a stage with a mock-up of the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Tens of thousands gathered for what was billed as both an anniversary and a victory celebration after last month’s conflict, during which Hamas fired rockets toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Meshal, who has led Hamas from exile, used the occasion to reiterate the group’s long-held principles, calling for “armed resistance” to eliminate Israel.
“Palestine, from the river to the sea, from north to south, is our land,” Meshal said, “Not an inch of it can be conceded.”
“We cannot recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s occupation of Palestine,” he said. “There is no legitimacy to occupation, and therefore no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take.”
“Liberating Palestine, all of Palestine, is a duty, a right and a goal,” he added.
As for Jerusalem, “we will liberate it inch by inch, stone by stone, Islamic and Christian holy places,” he said. “Israel has no right in Jerusalem.”
The recent recognition of Palestine as a non-member observer state at the United Nations was a “small step but a good one,” Meshal said, but he asserted that armed action took precedence over diplomacy.
“Liberation first, then the state,” he said. “The real state is the product of liberation, not the product of negotiations.”
“Holy war and armed resistance are the real and right path to liberation and recovery of rights,” he declared, adding that that while diplomatic efforts could also serve the cause, they had “no value without resistance.”
Meshal’s message stood in stark contrast to the strategy of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the rival Fatah faction that is dominant in the West Bank. Abbas led the successful U.N. bid, has negotiated with Israel and rejects violence.
Still, Meshal urged Abbas to follow through with a reconciliation agreement signed last year between Hamas and Fatah, calling the U.N. vote a boost to faltering unity efforts.
After the reconciliation accord, Meshal endorsed a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and unarmed “popular struggle” advocated by Abbas, but he did not renounce violence or commit to ending the conflict with Israel once that state was achieved. | Famous Person - Give a speech | December 2012 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The Philippines suspends trade relations with North Korea to comply with a recent United Nations Security Council resolution over its repeated missile tests. | MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines has suspended trade relations with North Korea to comply with a U.N. Security Council resolution over its repeated missile tests, Manila’s foreign minister said on Friday.
The United States and other Western countries have asked the United Nations to consider tough new sanctions on North Korea after its test last week that it said was of an advanced hydrogen bomb.
“We can say we have suspended trade relations with North Korea,” Foreign Minister Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters after a meeting with the U.S. ambassador on cooperation on an anti-drugs program.
“We will fully comply with UNSC resolution including the economic sanctions.”
Tension on the Korean peninsula has escalated as North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, has stepped up the development of weapons in defiance of U.N. sanctions.
It has tested a series of missiles this year, including one that flew over Japan, and conducted its sixth and biggest nuclear test on Sunday.
The Philippines is North Korea’s fifth-largest trade partner, with bilateral trade from January to June this year worth $28.8 million, according to the state-run Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.
On an annual basis, North Korea imported $28.8 million of products from the Philippines in 2016, an increase of 80 percent from the previous year, while Manila’s imports from Pyongyang surged 170 percent to $16.1 million.
According to the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the main exports to North Korea in 2015 were computers, integrated circuited boards, bananas and women’s undergarments.
“The U.N. Security Council is quite clear,” Cayetano said.
“Part of these are the economic sanctions and the Philippines will comply. We have been communicating with the DTI secretary and I think it was yesterday and the other day, we have gotten direction from the (presidential) palace to support the U.N. Security Council.”
Cayetano said the trade ban covered raw computer chips from the Philippines. | Tear Up Agreement | September 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Goalkeeper Kodjovi Obilalé, shot in the Togo national football team attack prior to the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations in Angola, is to return to France after emergency surgery in Johannesburg. | Togo goalkeeper Kodjovi Obilale will return to France after being treated in a South African hospital for gunshot wounds he received when the team's bus was ambushed in Angola in January, a medical official said on Monday.
Obilale underwent surgery in Johannesburg after being evacuated from Angola following the attack on the bus carrying the national team to the African Nations Cup. "The bills have been paid and there are already plans afoot to repatriate the player back to France, where he will continue to receive health care," said Fraser Lamond, medical director of health assistance company International SOS.
The date of Obilale's return had yet to be finalised, he added.
Two members of Togo's soccer delegation and the bus driver were killed when gunmen opened fire. Seven people were injured in the attack, which was claimed by the FLEC, a rebel group fighting for secession in the Angolan province of Cabinda.
Obilale, Togo's reserve goalkeeper who plays for French fourth division side Pontivy, was shot in the back and abdomen.
The Togolese government recalled the team for three days of mourning after the attack, and the country was later banned from the next two African Nations Cups for withdrawing their team. | Famous Person - Sick | March 2010 | ['(Radio Netherlands Worldwide)', '(Reuters South Africa)'] |
The 2016 Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight. | The 2016 Perseid meteor shower will peak late tonight, and if you can't watch it in person, a plethora of live webcasts have you covered.
Earth has been passing through the trail of Comet Swift-Tuttle for the past few weeks, and will reach the heart of the debris -- causing a peak rate of meteors burning up in Earth's atmosphere -- overnight Aug. 11-12.
If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, head outside after the moon sets (around 12-1 a.m. depending on your location) for the ultimate shooting-star views. But if you're in for a cloudy, rainy night, live somewhere with too much light pollution or just want to head in early for the night, there are lots of live webcasts to tune in to and still experience the shower. [Perseid Meteor Shower 2016: When, Where & How to See It]
Slooh Community Observatory will host a marathon 4-hour-long broadcast starting tonight at 8 p.m. EDT, which you can watch live on the Slooh website. The webcast will incorporate live views of the meteors from observatories in four different countries: Spain's Canary Islands; Washington, Connecticut in the United States; the United Kingdom; and Canada's Thunder Bay.
You can also watch the Perseids meteor shower webcast on Space.com, courtesy of Slooh. The observatory will also discuss the best ways to watch, how to catch meteor photos and the history behind the constellation Perseus, the shower itself and Comet Swift-Tuttle.
Tomorrow, starting at 9 p.m. EDT, Slooh will continue to cover the Perseids with the help of Weathernews Japan.
"With December's Geminids spoiled by a full moon, these Perseids will be the best shower of 2016," Slooh host Bob Berman said in a statement. "Add to that the juicy peril of its parent comet, Swift-Tuttle, the most hazardous object in the known universe, and you have all the ingredients for a 4-star spectacle."
NASA will host its own live webcasts starting at 10 p.m. EDT both Thursday and Friday for any space enthusiasts with obstructed views.
Also covering Thursday night's meteor shower peak, the Virtual Telescope Project, run by astronomer Gianluca Masi in Italy, will stream a live show starting at 9 p.m. EDT. Meanwhile, the Bareket Observatory in Israel will also host a webcast starting at 7 p.m. EDT.
Because the Perseids are in outburst this year, there might be as many as 200 meteors per hour streaking across the sky tonight. So whether you plan to watch outside late tonight or follow a live webcast, get ready: It's going to be quite a show. | New wonders in nature | August 2016 | ['(CBS News)', '(Space.com)'] |
The JAXA probe Akatsuki successfully enters orbit around Venus five years after the first attempt. This mission is Japan's first successful mission to another planet. The orbital injection was achieved using the probe's attitude control thrusters, a feat which has never been done before. | Space exploration rarely gives second chances, but the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) took advantage of a big one today. The Agency has confirmed that its Akatsuki space probe has successfully made it into orbit around the planet Venus on its second attempt. The first try was way back on December 7, 2010, when a malfunction of the main engine sent the spacecraft back into orbit around the Sun.
The unmanned spacecraft successfully fired its auxiliary reaction control system (RCS) thrusters at 23:51 GMT under automatic control for a 20 minute burn. The maneuver was monitored by Japan's Usuda Deep Space Center and the Canberra Deep Space Network tracking stations. After completing the burn, Akatsuki rotated into a new position to execute a second maneuver on command from Earth in case the first was insufficient, but this subsequently proved to be unnecessary.
The Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter or Planet-C project was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan on May 21, 2010 atop an H-IIA 202 rocket along with the IKAROS solar sail craft. Tasked with studying the Venusian atmosphere in hopes of predicting its behavior, it has three infrared cameras, an ultraviolet imager, a lightning and airglow camera, and an ultra-stable oscillator for radio observations.
Today's maneuver was made necessary due to the accident that occurred on Akatsuki's first attempt. During its orbit insertion burn, communications went into blackout as expected when it passed behind the planet. However, the spacecraft failed to re-establish contact as programmed and mission control later discovered it was off course and drifting in safe mode.
Telemetry from the orbiter indicated that the main hydrazine/nitrogen tetroxide engine had shut down three minutes too early, sending the Akatsuki back into heliocentric orbit. Engineers later determined that the problem lay in a faulty helium valve that forced too much oxidizer into the engine's combustion chamber. This caused it to quickly overheat, damaging the engine.
To salvage the mission, JAXA put the spacecraft into hibernation and worked out a plan to use the eight RCS thrusters to alter Akatsuki's trajectory and send it on a course that would bring it back to Venus. The plan worked.
JAXA says it will spend the next two days establishing the parameters of the new orbit before starting planetary observations. | New achievements in aerospace | December 2015 | ['(Gizmag)', '(Spaceflight Now)'] |
The U.S. Senate passes a legislation that would allow victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to file lawsuits seeking damages from Saudi Arabia despite Saudi threats to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy. | WASHINGTON — A bill that would let the families of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the terrorist plot passed the Senate unanimously on Tuesday, bringing Congress closer to a showdown with the White House, which has threatened to veto the legislation.
The Senate’s passage of the bill, which will now be taken up in the House, is another sign of escalating tensions in a relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia that once received little scrutiny from lawmakers.
Administration officials have lobbied against the bill, a view that the White House spokesman Josh Earnest reiterated after the vote. And the Saudi government has warned that if the legislation passes, it might begin selling off up to $750 billion in Treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they face a danger of being frozen by American courts. Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the warning to lawmakers and the administration while in Washington in March.
Many economists are skeptical that the Saudis would deliver on such a warning, saying that a sell-off would be hard to execute and would do more harm to the kingdom’s economy than to America’s.
Questions about the role Saudi officials might have played in the Sept. 11 plot have lingered for more than a decade, and families of the victims have used various lawsuits to try to hold members of the Saudi royal family and charities liable for what they allege is financial support of terrorism.
But these moves have been mostly blocked, in part because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in American courts.
The Senate bill carves out an exception to the law if foreign countries are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill American citizens within the United States. If the bill were to pass both houses and be signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the Sept. 11 suits.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat and a sponsor of the bill, said the legislation would help the families of the victims seek justice. “For the sake of the families, I want to make clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that every entity, including foreign states, will be held accountable if they are found to be sponsors of the heinous act of 9/11,” he said shortly before the bill’s passage.
“If the Saudis did not participate in this terrorism, they have nothing to fear about going to court,” he said. “If they did, they should be held accountable.”
Mr. Schumer said he believed that Democrats would override a veto from Mr. Obama. He also said he believed that Saudi Arabia’s threat to pull its assets, a concern of the administration, was “hollow,” adding, “It will hurt them a lot more than it hurts us.”
The National Archives released a series of memos written by Sept. 11 Commission staff members, a compilation of numerous possible connections between the hijackers and Saudis inside the United States. The document appears to be a glimpse into what is still inside the classified 28 pages of the congressional inquiry into the 2001 attacks.
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said the legislation was written in such a way that Americans would not be subject to legal action taken by other nations. “I do believe that there’s going to be some saber rattling, some threats, but I think that they are hollow,” Mr. Cornyn said.
In a move intended to address some White House concerns, the bill’s sponsors included a new provision that would allow the attorney general to put a hold on individual court cases if the administration can show that it is negotiating with the defendant government to resolve the claims.
But a release on Tuesday from Mr. Schumer’s office said the administration would need to provide details about the talks and a timetable for their resolution.
Mr. Earnest said on Tuesday that White House officials would seek to negotiate with Republicans and Democrats on alternatives to the legislation that might be acceptable to the president, but he added, “I don’t know if that’s possible at this point.”
Earlier this month, Mr. Jubeir said during a news conference that the proposed legislation was “stripping the principle of sovereign immunities” and turning international law “into the law of the jungle.”
The legislation is moving through Congress as the Obama administration considers whether to declassify a portion of a 2002 congressional investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi government officials and other Saudi citizens living in the United States had a hand in the terrorist plot.
Those conclusions have yet to be released publicly, but recently the National Archives posted a separate document on its website that appears to offer a glimpse at what the still-classified 28 pages contain.
The document, dated June 6, 2003, is a series of memos written by Sept. 11 commission staff members compiling numerous possible connections between the hijackers and Saudis in the United States.
The document was first disclosed publicly by 28pages.org, an advocacy website devoted to pushing for the declassification of the redacted section of the congressional inquiry.
The Sept. 11 commission, which began its work after the congressional inquiry, found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” Al Qaeda or the 9/11 plotters.
Last month, the commission’s co-chairmen, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, issued a statement saying that the 28 pages “were based almost entirely on raw, unvetted material that came to the F.B.I.” — much of it ultimately deemed inconclusive by the Sept. 11 panel.
“Accusations of complicity in that mass murder from responsible authorities are a grave matter,” they wrote. “Such charges should be levied with care.”
. | Government Policy Changes | May 2016 | ['(LA Times)', '(Reuters)', '(NY Times)'] |
Two to three days of freezing weather and heavy snow kills at least 27 children in Jowzjan Province, Afghanistan. | Heavy snowfall and freezing weather has killed 27 children in a remote district of northern Afghanistan, an official says.
Fifty centimeters of snow blocked roads in Darzaab in northern Jawzjan Province as temperatures plunged to minus 10 degrees Celsius, district Governor Rahmatullah Hashar said on January 26.
Hashar said the deaths occurred over the past two or three days, adding that all of the children were under the age of 5.
The fact that access for villagers has been cut off means the toll could rise, he also said.
However, the provincial governor's spokesman, Reza Ghafoori, said aid would be delivered.
Each winter, heavy snowfall, subzero temperatures, and avalanches kill scores of people in Afghanistan, where poor infrastructure makes it difficult for rescuers to reach isolated areas. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | January 2017 | ['(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)', '(Khaskbahar Hindi)'] |
The French government approves a draft law that would raise the retirement age to 62 from the age of 60 that has been enshrined since 1982. (RTÉ) | The French government has approved a draft law that would raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.
The bill, drawn up by Labour Minister Eric Woerth, would rescind the right to retire at 60, enshrined since 1982. It will pass to parliament in September.
Meanwhile Mr Woerth announced that he was resigning as treasurer of the governing centre-right UMP party.
He has been under pressure over claims of illegal donations to Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.
Both he and Mr Sarkozy have denied they received any illegal funding from Liliane Bettencourt, the heiress to the L'Oreal cosmetics empire and one of the world's richest women. | Government Policy Changes | July 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(France24)'] |
Protests take place at Burma's embassies worldwide on occasion of Aung San Suu Kyi's 64th birthday. | Activists across the world have marked the 64th birthday of Burma's detained opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, with vigils and protests.
Celebrities including author Salman Rushdie and actors George Clooney and Julia Roberts have signed an online petition demanding that she be freed. The EU also agreed to boost sanctions on Burma's military rulers, and renewed calls for her release. Ms Suu Kyi has been under detention for much of the past 19 years. Announcing the sanctions, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "Europe agreed today to step up sanctions and take further targeted measures against the Burmese regime." Speaking after a summit of all 27 EU member states in Brussels, Mr Brown described Aung San Suu Kyi as "perhaps the most renowned prisoner of conscience in the world". A joint statement agreed by EU leaders said that unless Ms Suu Kyi and 2,000 other political prisoners were released, the credibility of elections scheduled for Burma in 2010 would be undermined. Global actions
Ms Suu Kyi is currently on trial accused of breaking the terms of her detention. She was charged after an American man swam to the house where she is being held, and stayed there overnight. Observers say the charges - which carry a maximum punishment of five years in jail - are designed to keep Ms Suu Kyi imprisoned until after next year's election. While she is on trial, Ms Suu Kyi is imprisoned in Rangoon's Insein jail - a notorious facility where many political prisoners are held. Nyan Win, a close aide of Ms Suu Kyi, said he took flowers, chocolate cake and lunch boxes full of spiced rice to the jail, so she could share the food with prison staff. There was also a small celebration at the Rangoon headquarters of her political party, the National League for Democracy. Ms Suu Kyi's supporters there released balloons and small birds, and made offerings of food to Buddhist monks in her honour. Burmese exile groups have launched a website called "64 for Suu" and invited celebrities, politicians and members of the public to send a 64-word birthday message to Ms Suu Kyi.
Aung San Suu Kyi's supporters in Manila made a birthday cake and spelled out the words "not guilty" with hundreds of red roses
Protesters in at least 20 cities - from Geneva to Kuala Lumpur - arranged events to mark her birthday, with calls for her to be set free. In his message, British tycoon Richard Branson called her a "shining light for us all". Another message came from a group of women Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Guatemalan rights activist Rigoberta Menchu and US anti-landmine campaigner Jody Williams. They said: "Your imprisonment and trial are a stark illustration of the brutality and lawlessness of the Burmese military regime." Ms Suu Kyi has been under house arrest and banned from seeing all but a small group of people for 13 of the past 19 years. | Protest_Online Condemnation | June 2009 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(BBC)'] |
President-elect Donald Trump announces that his team has made a deal with Carrier Corporation that would save around 1,000 jobs at an Indiana factory. Carrier had planned to move production from a key factory in that state to Nuevo León, Mexico. | The incoming Trump Administration and United Technologies (UTX) have reached an agreement that will keep close to 1,000 jobs at Carrier Corp., which is owned by UTX, in Indiana.
Carrier had planned to move production from a key factory in that state to Mexico, taking with it the roughly 1,400 jobs of those who work at the Indiana plant.
But shortly after CNBC revealed that Donald Trump was expected to travel to Indiana on Thursday to announce that a deal had been reached, Carrier itself confirmed the agreement.
We are pleased to have reached a deal with President-elect Trump & VP-elect Pence to keep close to 1,000 jobs in Indy. More details soon.
Later still, the President-elect tweeted that it was a “big day on Thursday for Indiana.”
I will be going to Indiana on Thursday to make a major announcement concerning Carrier A.C. staying in Indianapolis. Great deal for workers!
Big day on Thursday for Indiana and the great workers of that wonderful state.We will keep our companies and jobs in the U.S. Thanks Carrier Under a deal negotiated by Vice President-elect Mike Pence and UTX CEO Greg Hayes, the company will now keep most of those jobs in Indiana, sources close to the matter told CNBC. While terms of the deal are not yet clear, the sources indicated there were new incentives on offer from the state of Indiana, where Pence is governor, that helped clear a path for the agreement.
While UTX was seeking the savings that would come from moving some production to Mexico, people familiar with the situation indicated that the savings were not worth incurring the wrath of the incoming administration, including the potential threat to the significant business that UTX currently conducts with the U.S. government, largely in the form of orders for jet engines and other defense-related equipment.
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee and Trump’s chief of staff, called it a great deal.
Trump had made the expected departure of the Carrier jobs a key theme in his campaign to capture the White House, using it as an example of the type of trade relationship that hurt U.S. workers.
On Thanksgiving Day, Trump tweeted that he was making progress on negotiating a deal with UTX. CNBC broke the story of the agreement first on Twitter. Trump Admin and $UTX reach agreement on keeping close to 1000 factory jobs in Carrier plant in Indiana- sources.
Deal terms to keep Carrier jobs in Indiana include new inducements from state. Deal spear headed by former Indiana Gov Pence.
@realDonaldTrump will visit Indiana on Thursday to announce deal to keep most of Carrier jobs in Indiana.- sources.
The close to 1000 jobs being kept by $UTX at Carrier in Indiana are from the roughly 1400 that were expected to be lost in move to Mexico. | Sign Agreement | November 2016 | ['(The New York Times)', '(CNBC)'] |
The Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States announces the arrest of an employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency whom they have charged with spying on the behalf of China. | A former US intelligence officer has appeared in court in Seattle charged with attempting to spy for China.
Ron Rockwell Hansen, 58, was arrested by the FBI on Saturday on his way to a Seattle airport for a flight to China.
The justice department says Mr Hansen attempted to pass on information and received at least $800,000 (£600,000) for acting as a Chinese agent.
He agreed in a brief court appearance to be returned to his home state of Utah to face charges.
Mr Hansen, who lives in Syracuse, Utah, was charged with attempting to gather or deliver national defence information to aid a foreign government. Other charges - there are 15 in total - include acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China, bulk cash smuggling, structuring monetary transactions and smuggling goods from the US.
If convicted of attempted espionage, Mr Hansen faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Assistant Attorney General John Demers called Mr Hansen's alleged actions "a betrayal of our nation's security" and an "affront to his former intelligence community colleagues".
John Huber, US attorney for the state of Utah, called the allegations "very troubling".
According to court documents cited by the justice department, Mr Hansen served in the US Army as a warrant officer with a background in signals intelligence and human intelligence, before being recruited by the DIA as a civilian intelligence case officer in 2006. The justice department says Mr Hansen, who is fluent in Mandarin and Russian, held top secret clearance "for many years" and travelled regularly between the US and China in 2013-17. He is alleged to have attempted repeatedly to regain access to classified information after he stopped working for the US government, thereby alerting authorities to his actions.
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a branch of the Department of Defense, responsible for analysing and disseminating military intelligence.
The agency's primary responsibility is providing foreign military intelligence for US combat missions. It was established in 1961 and now has about 17,000 employees.
The arrest comes at a challenging time for relations between the two countries. On Saturday, US Defence Secretary James Mattis accused China of attempting to intimidate its neighbours by deploying missiles to disputed islands in the South China Sea.
A Chinese military official dismissed the comments as "irresponsible".
Trade talks currently taking place between the two countries in Beijing have been overshadowed by a looming start date for US tariffs on Chinese goods.
Late last month, the White House announced plans to place a 25% tariffs on $50bn (£37bn) worth of Chinese imports, a significant escalation in a trade war between the two countries.
Mr Hansen is the latest in a string of former US intelligence officers caught up in spying cases related to China: | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | June 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
Tests on the 5,000–year–old burnt human bones of 25 people found at Stonehenge suggest that ten came from more than 100 miles away in West Wales. | Tests show 5,000-year-old remains found at the world heritage site came from more than 100 miles away in west Wales Last modified on Thu 2 Aug 2018 16.25 BST
The bones of people buried at Stonehenge, who died and were cremated about 5,000 years ago, have given up their secrets: like the bluestones, which form part of the famous prehistoric monument, they came from west Wales, near the Preseli Hills where the stones were quarried.
The remains of at least 10 of 25 individuals, whose brittle charred bones were buried at the monument, showed that they did not spend their lives on the Wessex chalk downland, but came from more than 100 miles away. Examination of the remains showed they were consistent with a region that includes west Wales, the most likely origin of at least some of these people.
Although the team, led by scientists from the University of Oxford with colleagues in Paris and Brussels, cannot prove that the remains are of people who actually built the monument, the earliest cremation dates are described as “tantalisingly” close to the date when the bluestones were brought into the earlier ditch and bank monument to form the first stone circle.
More attention has been paid to how and when Stonehenge was built – from the earliest earth works and totem pole-like timber posts to the final creation of the famous silhouette of the post and lintel circle of the gigantic sarsen stones – than to the people who built it. This is partly due to the difficulty in extracting evidence from the early human remains.
The new discovery, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, is the result of success in extracting strontium isotopes – which can reveal where the individuals spent the last years of their lives – from cremated bone, something which had until recently been thought impossible.
Christophe Snoeck, who led the team while studying for his doctorate at Oxford, revealed the experiments followed a test pyre built in a college backyard using a pig foot and a pig shoulder begged from a local butcher. The tests on the late Neolithic bones followed, and the results bore out Snoeck’s conviction that although so much was destroyed or altered by cremation, including the tooth enamel usually used for isotope tests, the heat of a pyre that could reach 1000C could also crystallise the bone, sealing in the isotopes
“As a chemical engineer in love with archaeology, this looked like the perfect challenge,” Snoeck told the Guardian, speaking from a conference in Chile. “Cremation indeed destroys all organic matter including DNA, but the inorganic matter survives.”
“Clearly when it comes to light chemical elements such as carbon and oxygen these are heavily altered, but for heavier elements such as strontium – about seven times heavier than carbon – no alteration was observed. On the contrary, thanks to the high temperatures reached, the structure of the bone is modified, making the bone resistant to post-mortem exchanges with the burial soil.”
It was known that Stonehenge was used as an early cremation cemetery, but not who was buried there. The tests were all on tiny pieces of skulls which were buried in the “Aubrey holes” (named for the 17th-century naturalist John Aubrey who first spotted them), a circle of 56 pits outside the stone circle now showing only as marks in the turf. It used to be thought that the pits held timber posts, but recent excavations have found bluestone chips suggesting they may have held the first circle of the bluestones which were then repeatedly rearranged for centuries.
The bones were excavated in the 1920s by Colonel William Hawley, who re-identified the Aubrey holes, but to the chagrin of generations of later scientists he reburied them in one of the pits instead of depositing them in a museum. They were re-excavated in 2008.
The earliest bones have been dated to about 3000 BC, and then cover a range of around 500 years. John Pouncett, a lead author of the study, said: “The earliest dates are tantalisingly close to the date we believe the bluestones arrived, and though we cannot prove they are the bones of the people who brought them, there must at least be a relationship. The range of dates raises the possibility that for centuries people could have been brought to Stonehenge for burial with the stones.”
The revelation sheds new light on the people who built Stonehenge and regarded it as a special place in its earliest centuries. The huge sarsen stones were comparatively easy to deliver to Stonehenge, merely having to be dragged 20 miles across Salisbury plain. It’s known that the bluestones came from Preseli, but arguments have raged over how. Were they dragged overland, shipped around the coast, swept east by glaciers, or flown by Merlin the magician as the medieval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth insisted?
The glacier theory was abandoned when the actual quarry sites were discovered in 2015, complete with traces of the stonemasons’ cooking fires. However, the discovery added a further mystery to the already layered history of Stonehenge: the stones were quarried centuries before they arrived at Stonehenge, leading some to believe that they originally formed a monument in Wales which was then moved more than 100 miles east, with stupendous effort and for unguessable reasons.
The new discovery would have brought joy to the heart of Prof Geoffrey Wainwright, former chief archaeologist of English Heritage and a passionately patriotic Welshman, who died last year after a lifetime trying to prove that his countrymen created the monument as well as providing the stones.
In 2008 he and Prof Tim Darvill made worldwide headlines when they announced their conviction that the bluestones – spotted dolerite, blue and sparkling with quartz stars when freshly quarried – were regarded by some to this day as having healing powers and that Stonehenge therefore functioned as “the Lourdes of prehistoric Europe”. | New archeological discoveries | August 2018 | ['(160\xa0km)', '(The Guardian)'] |
Storm Gertrude impacts the British Isles, with 90mph winds knocking out power lines and causing travel disruption. | The latest in a succession of storms since Christmas reaches Scotland and is expected to travel south throughout the day
A gust of 132mph has been recorded at the top of Cairngorm as Storm Gertrude sweeps the country, causing power cuts and travel disruption. A rare red Met Office alert is in place for Orkney and Shetland with dangerous conditions expected throughout Friday. More than 13,000 homes have been left without power. Gusts of 91mph were recorded in South Uist, while on the mainland the Forth Road Bridge and Inverbervie in Aberdeenshire were hit by winds of 69mph. The Forth, Tay and Kessock bridges are all closed while ferry and train services have been affected. Speeds are expected to reach around 65mph in the Borders and the North East of England later in the day and pushing 80mph in North Yorkshire. Around 8,500 properties in Scotland lost electricity due to Storm Gertrude. Scottish Hydro said engineers were working to reconnect supplies in Aberdeenshire, Perthshire, the Western Isles, Skye and Oban but repairs would depend on the weather. Bridge closed due to very strong winds
In Northern Ireland, around 5,000 properties were left without power after high winds battered the region throughout the night. Severe gales, which gusted at up to 70mph, brought trees down on top of power lines and broke electricity poles. Emergency services were called out to two lorries blown over on the A96 near Huntly and on the M9 near Dunblane in the early hours. The extent of any injuries is not known. Drivers also had to avoid a trampoline blown on to the Newtonhill flyover near the A90 in Aberdeen at around 6am. Police Scotland said a member of the public moved it from the road and officers were not needed. A force spokesman advised people to peg down trampolines and garden furniture in high winds. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has almost 40 flood warnings in place covering Ayrshire, Tayside, west central Scotland and the Highlands. A landslip on the A82 at Letter Finlay between Spean Bridge and Invergarry caused a 150- mile (241km) diversion for journeys between Fort William and Inverness. Fallen trees are affecting many routes and the Forth, Tay and Kessock bridges have been closed. P&O Ferries said the Pride of Hull ferry, from Rotterdam, had been unable to berth this morning due to "extreme weather conditions". The ferry, which was due to arrive at the port in Hull at 7am, will attempt to berth again at around 2.30pm. In a tweet, the company said: "Due to extreme weather conditions in Hull, the Pride of Hull is unable to berth. A further attempt will be made when the weather improves."
A spokesman for P&O Ferries said the ferry had experienced winds of 60 knots this morning, which he described as "rare". He added that passengers on the evening service to Rotterdam would not be affected by this disruption. Met Office amber "be prepared" warnings are in place for Northern Ireland, Scotland and north west and north east England. Yellow "be aware" warnings for rain, snow and ice are in place across much of the UK. #StormGertrude is currently affecting the UK. Here are the current highest wind gusts as of 07:00am
Forecasters said: "Winds are expected to widely gust 60-70mph, possibly up to 80mph along exposed coasts and over hills. "Be prepared for the likelihood of difficult driving conditions and disruption to travel, such as cancellation to ferry services and bridge closures."
A succession of storms since December has seen widespread flooding and major disruption to travel, with the latest front expected to continue through the weekend. All schools in the Northern and Western Isles have been closed and train and ferry services vastly reduced in Scotland. ScotRail is operating a limited service, with routes in the Highlands and west coast particularly affected. A828 Connel Bridge now closed. Large tarpaulin detached form HGV is in a dangerous position.
Operators said hundreds of engineers will be deployed across the network to inspect lines, repair damage and reopen routes as quickly as possible. Phil Verster, ScotRail Alliance managing director, said: "We will be withdrawing some services until the worst of the storm has passed. "The safety of our passengers and workforce is our top priority and we cannot run services on these lines until our engineers have thoroughly inspected the network for any damage." | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | January 2016 | ['(The Telegraph)'] |
Puerto Rico declares a state of emergency due to the ongoing Zika virus outbreak. At least 22 people have been reported to have been infected with the Zika virus in the U.S. territory. | -- As the Zika virus outbreak continues, including in wide swaths of Central and South America, concerns are growing, especially for pregnant women because the mosquito-borne virus has been linked with a serious birth defect called microcephaly, characterized by an abnormally small head and brain.
Here are the latest updates about the outbreak, which the World Health Organization has deemed a "global health emergency."
Puerto Rico has declared a state of emergency due to the ongoing Zika virus outbreak. The U.S. territory has at least 22 people who have been reported to have been infected with the Zika virus, health officials said.
The State Emergency and Disaster Administration is creating a task force for both federal and state officials to deal with the crisis.
Additionally, a price freeze has been ordered for products needed to prevent the disease, according to government officials.
In Puerto Rico, a pregnant woman in her first trimester was diagnosed with the disease, health officials said. In addition, a man has also been diagnosed with Zika and has developed a rare paralysis syndrome sometimes associated with viral or bacterial infection.
Called Guillain-Barre syndrome, it is an immunological reaction that has been associated with influenza, among other illnesses.
At least 22 people who have been reported to have been infected with the Zika virus in Puerto Rico, health officials said.
In a statement to ABC News, officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said they intend to "rapidly implement appropriate donor deferral recommendations" to safeguard the donated blood supply in the U.S.
Blood donor deferrals serve as an important measure to protect the United States blood supply," FDA officials said in a statement. "The FDA also intends to put in place recommendations to help maintain a safe blood supply in United States territories where the virus is present. In the meantime, we fully support the blood banking industrys voluntary recommendations that potential blood donors be deferred for 28 days after returning from travel to areas where Zika is endemic.
After the Zika virus was transmitted through sexual contact in Dallas, Texas, officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines today for travelers to and from outbreak regions.
The CDC advises men with a pregnant partner to use condoms if they have traveled to an area with "active Zika virus transmission."
Additionally, couples where a male partner who has traveled to an area with Zika transmission "may consider using condoms consistently and correctly during sex or abstaining from sexual activity," if they are concerned about sexual transmission of the Zika virus.
There are at least 54 people infected with the Zika virus in the U.S. In all except one case, the infection was acquired while out of the country, according to health officials.
In one case in Dallas, Texas, the virus is believed to have been transmitted through sexual contact from an infected traveler to a partner.
Florida has the highest number of cases in the U.S., with 12 people infected. Florida Gov. Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency in five counties and ordered thousands of tests that will help identify the disease.
Common symptoms of the Zika virus include fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Approximately one in five people infected with the virus show symptoms. Severe complications from the virus that require hospitalization are rare, according to the CDC.
The virus has also been associated with a rise of microcephaly birth defect cases.
The CDC is also investigating if a rare paralysis syndrome called Guillain-Barre is related to the virus. The syndrome is an immunological reaction that can also occur after other viral or bacterial infections.
The virus is transmitted mainly through the bite of the Aedes aegypti species of mosquito. This is the same type of mosquito that spreads dengue fever. The Aedes albopictus species has also been identified as a potential carrier.
Before the current outbreak, the virus had been found mainly in tropical settings in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. An outbreak of the disease in Brazil led to an alert by the Pan American Health Organization last May.
| Disease Outbreaks | February 2016 | ['(ABC News)'] |
Belgium is to provide iodine pills to all its citizens, around 11 million people, to protect against radioactivity in the event of a nuclear accident at either of Belgium's ageing nuclear power plants, the Tihange Nuclear Power Station and Doel Nuclear Power Station, according to Health Minister Maggie De Block. Germany has recently called for the Belgian government to close the nuclear power plants over safety fears. | Brussels (AFP) - Belgium is to provide iodine pills to its entire population of around 11 million people to protect against radioactivity in case of a nuclear accident, the health minister was quoted as saying Thursday.
The move comes as Belgium faces growing pressure from neighbouring Germany to shutter two ageing nuclear power plants near their border due to concerns over their safety.
Iodine pills, which help reduce radiation build-up in the thyroid gland, had previously only been given to people living within 20 kilometres (14 miles) of the Tihange and Doel nuclear plants.
Health Minister Maggie De Block was quoted by La Libre Belgique newspaper as telling parliament that the range had now been expanded to 100 kilometres (60 miles), effectively covering the whole country.
The health ministry did not immediately respond to AFP when asked to comment.
The head of Belgium's French-speaking Green party, Jean-Marc Nollet, backed the measures but added that "just because everyone will get these pills doesn't mean there is no longer any nuclear risk," La Libre reported.
Belgium's creaking nuclear plants have been causing safety concerns for some time after a series of problems ranging from leaks to cracks and an unsolved sabotage incident.
Last week Germany asked that the 40-year-old Tihange 2 and Doel 3 reactors be turned off "until the resolution of outstanding security issues".
The reactor pressure vessels at both sites have shown signs of metal degradation, raising fears about their safety. They were temporarily closed but resumed service last December.
Belgium's official nuclear safety agency (AFCN) rejected the German request, saying the two plants "respond to the strictest possible safety requirements."
Sajad Hassan sat at his professor's hospital bedside for three nights, doing most of the talking as his friend and mentor breathed through an oxygen mask and struggled with a suspected COVID-19 infection. “I could visibly see fear in his eyes,” Hassan recalled. Two days later Dr. Jibraeil was dead, one of nearly 50 professors and non-teaching staff at AMU, one of India's top universities, who fell victim to the coronavirus as it ripped through through the country in April and May. AMU's tragedy was repeated across India as schools suffered similar blows to their faculty, and the loss of their knowledge — and in many cases friendship and guidance — has been devastating to the academic community.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos via GettyMyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s charity and business combo venture to make and sell COVID-19 masks has cost him millions of dollars, according to the increasingly far-right conservative figure.Today his company is sitting on millions of unsold face coverings, which he now despises and wants to burn.“I can’t give them away,” Lindell told The Daily Beast in a phone interview this week. “I tried to. No one wants the things anymore.”Lindell, who clai
Richard Barnett, a self-described white nationalist, was arrested days after he was photographed with his feet on Nancy Pelosi's desk.
While working her job at Starbucks, the daughter of Miami Gardens’ police chief was allegedly threatened with a gun over an order mix-up — the gunman was given his bagel without cream cheese, police say.
Georgia, which voted for Biden in November, and sent two Democrats to the US Senate in January, has emerged as a battleground state.
There’s no rest for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. After hashing it out with fellow policymakers, now he's talking things out with lawmakers. The Fed Chief back on Capitol Hill - virtually, that is - tops the Reuters Business Calendar for the week of June 21.1. The Fed's learning momentsMarkets get another dose of Mr Powell on Tuesday. He will testify before a House committee delving into quote the "Lessons learned" about The Federal Reserve’s response to the global crisis. The Fed has thrown trillions of dollars at shoring up the economy. Powell's testimony comes with the Fed now ready at least to start thinking about how and when to pull back some of that extra help, given the strength of this economic rebound.Summit Place Financial Advisors President Liz Miller:"The Fed updating its economic dot plot, taking into account that we are seeing arguably a stronger opening than anyone expected in the spring of 2021, and therefore an expectation that rates will start moving up in 2023." 2. Keeping an eye on the gauge But any movement in rates or the Fed's bond-buying program will still largely depend on the data....particularly the big "I" word: inflation. The Fed’s favored inflation gauge comes out on Friday. The Core Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, excluding food and energy, otherwise known as core PCE, is expected to show a year-over-year surge of 3.5 percent for the month of May. It posted the biggest annual surge in nearly 30 years the month before. 3. Big Tech under the microscope Going back to Washington.....There's a vote on Capitol Hill on Wednesday that could mark the beginnings of a Big Tech break-up. Lawmakers on The House Judiciary Committee will vote on six anti-trust bills aimed at limiting the power of America's tech giants. Two of the bills take aim at how big companies like Amazon and Alphabet, the parent of Google, create platforms for other businesses to use...and then compete against those same businesses. Another bill would force tech companies to let consumers take their data with them when they transfer to a competing tech platform. Any of the bills that pass the committee vote would then have to be approved by the full House of Representatives.4. A real deal bandwagonReady....set.....click.....Are consumers ready for a mid-year online shopping spree? Amazon kicks off what it is calling “two days of epic deals” when it launches Prime Day, which - actually - isn't just one day. This year it’s Monday and Tuesday June 21st and 22nd. Not to be outdone, Walmart and Target are ready to go toe-to-toe with Amazon and are starting their online discounts a day earlier.5. Buckling up at the box officeBuckle your seat belts. Hollywood is about to go into hyper drive. "F9: The Fast Saga" comes out Friday June 25th with enough fast-winding twists and turns to give you whiplash. This is the latest installment in the blockbuster car-racing Fast and Furious franchise. The previous eight films have brought in some $5 billion globally, according to promotional materials. The whole gang is back, led by Vin Diesel, but cast newcomers John Cena and Cardi B join the chase....hopefully shaking things up on the big screen and at the box office.
In an interview with McClatchy, Anthony Fauci discusses the Delta variant and his plans to eventually return to research.
Rep. Ted Lieu, a Catholic, said the move was "nakedly partisan" and said "next time I go to Church, I dare you to deny me Communion."
Rumours abounded on Friday night that China's top spycatcher had defected to the US, amid a growing focus in Washington on the theory that Covid-19 escaped from a Wuhan laboratory. Dong Jingwei, vice minister of state security, was reported to have flown from Hong Kong to the US in February with his daughter. There was no confirmation of the rumoured development from either the US or China. Dr Han Lianchao, a former Chinese foreign ministry official who is now a pro-democracy activist in the US,
The urine test could help detect brain cancer earlier than traditional scans, improving patient survival.
The group of tubers passed over the approximately eight-foot-high Duke Energy dam along the Dan river while on a floating trip in North Carolina.
Missouri has become the latest state to throw down a broad challenge to the enforcement of federal firearms laws, as Republican-controlled state legislatures intensify their fierce political counterattack against President Joe Biden’s gun control proposals. A bill signed by Gov. Mike Parson over the weekend — at a gun store called Frontier Justice — threatens a penalty of $50,000 against any local police agency that enforces certain federal gun laws and regulations that constitute “infringements
The PA health minister said the doses were supposed to expire in July or August, but expired this month instead.
Much to the surprise of a puzzled pundit corps, history may well conclude that, while President Joe Biden and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin produced no big-deal breaking news headline, their summit may prove to be one of the 21st century’s pivotal events.
A Tory MP is facing trial accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008, it can now be revealed. Imran Ahmad Khan, 47, the Conservative MP for Wakefield, West Yorkshire, is alleged to have groped the teenager in Staffordshire. Mr Ahmad Khan, who was elected at the 2019 general election, appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday by video-link from his lawyers' office. He was named on Friday after reporting restrictions were lifted. Mr Ahmad Khan has had the Tory whip suspe
The border closure will now extend into its 16th month since the start of the pandemic.
Brussels has signalled it could back down and avert a trade war with the UK as on Friday it welcomed the Government's request for a three-month extension for British sausages to be sold in Northern Ireland. Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission vice president, told an audience in Bruges that he was "convinced there is still a window for productive political dialogue" before the ban on chilled meats comes into effect in July. His comments came 24 hours after it was confirmed that Lord Frost, th
Rebekah Vardy has accused Coleen Rooney of “putting two and two together and making seven” in the latest round of the Wagatha Christie legal battle. Mrs Rooney, wife of England’s top scorer Wayne, accused fellow footballer’s wife Mrs Vardy of leaking stories to tabloid press about her after she turned detective using her own social media accounts. In a dramatic social media post in October 2019, Mrs Rooney detailed how she posted a series of fake stories about her family on her Instagram, and se
Teachers should drop the terms boys and girls in favour of “learners”, and mix up the sexes in PE classes, Stonewall has told schools. The controversial LGBT charity is urging teachers to ditch all gendered language and gendered uniforms and suggests that children should compete against the opposite sex in sport. A series of guidance documents state that uniform policies should "give the option to wear a skirt as well as the option to wear trousers". One of Stonewall’s guides said that its work
Daredevil Alex Harvill, 28, crashed his motorcycle while practicing to perform a 351-foot jump at an airshow in Washington state on June 17. | Environment Pollution | April 2016 | ['(AFP via Yahoo News!)'] |
Under the terms of a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Elon Musk and Tesla, Inc. agree to pay $20 million each to financial regulators, and Musk is expected to resign as chairman, but will remain as chief executive. | The Securities and Exchange Commission reached a settlement of fraud charges on Saturday with Tesla Inc. and Elon Musk that forces Musk’s removal as chairman of the Tesla board and the payment of $40 million in penalties.
Musk will pay $20 million of the penalty personally, without using insurance or other assistance, and will be ineligible to be re-elected chairman for three years. Tesla will pay the other $20 million and must name two new independent directors, one of which can be the new chair. The SEC filed a complaint against Musk on Thursday afternoon that alleged when he tweeted on Aug. 7 that he would consider taking Tesla
TSLA,
+1.94%
private at $420 per share — a substantial premium to its trading price at the time — Musk knew that the potential transaction was uncertain and subject to numerous contingencies. Instead, Musk proclaimed that funding for the transaction was “secured,” and that the only remaining uncertainty was a shareholder vote. According to the SEC, Musk had not discussed specific deal terms, including price, with any potential financing partners, and his statements about the prospective transaction lacked an adequate basis in fact. Musk’s misleading tweets caused Tesla’s stock price to jump by more than 6% on Aug. 7, and led to significant market disruption, including hundreds of pages of complaints filed with the SEC, according to reporting by The Outline, whose reporters said they had obtained 147 pages of complaints about Musk from investors in Tesla. See: Tesla investors complained to the SEC — and here’s what they said
Read also:Why legal experts say the SEC has a strong case against Musk
The SEC also charged Tesla on Saturday with failing to have in place the required disclosure controls and procedures relating to Musk’s tweets, a charge that Tesla also has agreed to settle and which will result in comprehensive corporate-governance modifications and other reforms at Tesla. In addition to Musk’s removal as chairman of the Tesla board, to be replaced by an independent chairman, Tesla will also be required to appoint two new independent directors to its board. If one of the new directors is also chairman, it could be only two new board members total.
The chairman of the SEC, Jay Clayton, took the unusual step of putting out his own statement after the settlement was announced Saturday, saying it is “in the best interests of our markets and our investors.” He stressed that the agency seeks to punish bad actions as a deterrence while not punishing investors for the sins of an executive.
“It often is the case that the interests of ordinary shareholders — who had no involvement in the misconduct — are intertwined with the interests of offending officials and the company,” Clayton wrote, specifically bringing up cases in which the “skills and support of certain individuals may be important to the future success of a company.” At the SEC, Clayton said, “the interests of ordinary investors are at the front of our minds and, in matters involving misconduct, we seek to serve those interests to the extent practicable while also ensuring that we remediate and deter misconduct.”
Musk was expected to remain a member of the board of directors under terms of the settlement, which are subject to court approval. A Tesla spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Saturday.
Musk and Tesla agreed to settle the charges against them without admitting to nor denying the SEC’s allegations.
Joshua Mitts, an associate professor at Columbia Law School, told MarketWatch that the Saturday settlement was a “win-win.”
“The SEC,” he said, “achieves its goal of punishing and deterring securities fraud. Elon is only required to step down as chairman of Tesla’s board. And, most importantly, Tesla’s shareholders are better off [with] the appointment of two independent directors and the new committee of independent directors. That is really a key step, which shows the SEC is putting shareholders first.”
Urban and rural areas will be remade, and a renovation boom will help the economy and jobs market.
| Organization Fine | September 2018 | ['(Market Watch)', '(HuffPost)'] |
California Proposition 8, a referendum that amended the State Constitution, passes and defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, thus ending same–sex marriage in California. | UPDATE: Voters approve Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriages. With more than 95% of the vote counted, the measure leads 52.1% to 47.9%. A measure to once again ban gay marriage in California led Tuesday, throwing into doubt the unions of an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who wed during the last 4 1/2 months.
FOR THE RECORD: Proposition 8: A chart in some editions of Wednesday’s Section A that contained vote results for Proposition 8, the measure to ban gay marriage in California, said the figures were the latest as of 12:25 p.m. Pacific time. They were the latest as of 12:25 a.m. — As the measure, the most divisive and emotionally fraught on the state ballot this year, took a lead in early returns, supporters gathered at a hotel ballroom in Sacramento and cheered.
“We caused Californians to rethink this issue,” Proposition 8 strategist Jeff Flint said.
Early in the campaign, he noted, polls showed the measure trailing by 17 points.
“I think the voters were thinking, well, if it makes them happy, why shouldn’t we let gay couples get married. And I think we made them realize that there are broader implications to society and particularly the children when you make that fundamental change that’s at the core of how society is organized, which is marriage,” he said.
But in San Francisco at the packed headquarters of the No on 8 campaign party in the Westin St. Francis Hotel, supporters of same-sex marriage refused to despair, saying that they were holding out hope for victory.
“You decided to live your life out loud. You fell in love and you said ‘I do.’ Tonight, we await a verdict,” San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said, speaking to a roaring crowd. “I’m crossing my fingers.”
Elsewhere in the country, two other gay marriage bans, in Florida and Arizona, were well ahead. In both states, laws already defined marriage as a heterosexual institution. But backers pushed to amend the state constitutions, saying that doing so would protect the institution from legal challenges.
Proposition 8 was the most expensive proposition on any ballot in the nation this year, with more than $74 million spent by both sides.
The measure’s most fervent proponents believed that nothing less than the future of traditional families was at stake, while opponents believed that they were fighting for the fundamental right of gay people to be treated equally under the law.
“This has been a moral battle,” said Ellen Smedley, 34, a member of the Mormon Church and a mother of five who worked on the campaign. “We aren’t trying to change anything that homosexual couples believe or want -- it doesn’t change anything that they’re allowed to do already. It’s defining marriage. . . . Marriage is a man and a woman establishing a family unit.”
On the other side were people like John Lewis, 50, and Stuart Gaffney, 46, who were married in June. They were at the San Francisco party holding a little sign in the shape of pink heart that said, “John and Stuart 21 years.” They spent the day campaigning against Proposition 8 with family members across the Bay Area.
“Our relationship, our marriage, after 21 years together has been put up for a popular vote,” Lewis said. “We have done what anyone would do in this situation: stand up for our family.”
The battle was closely watched across the nation because California is considered a harbinger of cultural change and because this is the first time voters have weighed in on gay marriage in a state where it was legal.
Campaign contributions came from every state in the nation in opposition to the measure and every state but Vermont to its supporters.
And as far away as Washington, D.C., gay rights organizations hosted gatherings Tuesday night to watch voting results on Proposition 8.
“I am nervous,” Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said from a brewery in the nation’s capital. “This is the biggest civil rights struggle for our movement in decades. . . . The outcome weighs incredibly heavily on the minds of every single person in the room.”
Eight years ago, Californians voted 61% to define marriage as being only between a man and a woman.
The California Supreme Court overturned that measure, Proposition 22, in its May 15 decision legalizing same-sex marriage on the grounds that the state Constitution required equal treatment of gay and lesbian couples.
Opponents of Proposition 8 faced a difficult challenge. Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, said California voters “very, very rarely reverse themselves” especially in such a short time. Both sides waged a passionate -- and at times bitter -- fight over whether to allow same-sex marriages to continue. The campaigns spent tens of millions of dollars in dueling television and radio commercials that blanketed the airwaves for weeks.
But supporters and opponents also did battle on street corners and front lawns, from the pulpits of churches and synagogues and -- unusual for a fight over a social issue -- in the boardrooms of many of the state’s largest corporations.
Most of the state’s highest-profile political leaders -- including both U.S. senators and the mayors of San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles -- along with the editorial pages of most major newspapers, opposed the measure. PG&E, Apple and other companies contributed money to fight the proposition, and the heads of Silicon Valley companies including Google and Yahoo took out a newspaper ad opposing it.
On the other side were an array of conservative organizations, including the Knights of Columbus, Focus on the Family and the American Family Assn., along with tens of thousands of small donors, including many who responded to urging from Mormon, Catholic and evangelical clergy.
An early October filing by the “yes” campaign reported so many contributions that the secretary of state’s campaign finance website crashed.
Proponents also organized a massive grass-roots effort. Campaign officials said they distributed more than 1.1 million lawn signs for Proposition 8 -- although an effort to stage a massive, simultaneous lawn-sign planting in late September failed after a production glitch in China delayed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of signs.
Research and polling showed that many voters were against gay marriage, but afraid that saying so would make them seem “discriminatory” or “not cool,” said Flint, so proponents hoped to show them they were not alone.
Perhaps more powerfully, the Proposition 8 campaign also seized on the issue of education, arguing in a series of advertisements and mailers that children would be subjected to a pro-gay curriculum if the measure was not approved.
“Mom, guess what I learned in school today?” a little girl said in one spot. “I learned how a prince married a prince.”
As the girl’s mother made a horrified face, a voice-over said: “Think it can’t happen? It’s already happened. . . . Teaching about gay marriage will happen unless we pass Proposition 8.”
Many voters said they had been swayed by that message.
“We thought it would go this way,” Proposition 8 co-chair Frank Schubert said. “We had 100,000 people on the streets today. We had people in every precinct, if not knocking on doors, then phoning voters in every precinct. We canvassed the entire state of California, one on one, asking people face to face how do they feel about this issue.
“And this is the kind of issue people are very personal and private about, and they don’t like talking to pollsters, they don’t like talking to the media, but we had a pretty good idea how they felt and that’s being reflected in the vote count.” | Government Policy Changes | November 2008 | ['(Los Angeles Times)'] |
A United States court overturns the conviction of Andrew Auernheimer , who was sentenced to 41–months in prison in 2010 for hacking the AT&T website, stealing millions of iPad user e–mails. | Andrew Auernheimer, known online as “weev,” has won an appeal against his conviction for exploiting a vulnerability in AT&T’s website to collect the email addresses of Apple iPad users. The 2010 incident earned him a 41-month prison sentence.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned the verdict on Friday, finding that the venue where Auernheimer was charged and prosecuted was not appropriate because the alleged offenses did not happen there. It did not consider the other grounds for the appeal.
In June 2010, Auernheimer, a member of a Web security group called Goatse Security, together with a man named Daniel Spitler, exploited a vulnerability on the AT&T website to collect the email addresses of 114,000 new Apple iPad owners who had registered their devices with the telecommunication provider. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | April 2014 | ['(known as weev)', '(PC World)'] |
Jiroemon Kimura, who had been the world's oldest living person and the verified longest lived man ever, dies in the Japanese city of Kyōtango. | Tokyo: Japan's Jiroemon Kimura, recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest man in recorded history, has died at the age of 116.
Kimura died of natural causes in the hospital in his hometown of Kyotango, western Japan, at 2.08am on Thursday, the local government said.
Jiroemon Kimura: was the last man alive to have been born in the 19th century.Credit:AP
A date for his funeral is yet to be set.
Born on April 19, 1897, when Queen Victoria still reigned over the British Empire, Kimura dodged childhood killers such as tuberculosis and pneumonia that kept life expectancy in Japan to 44 years around the time of his birth. He became the oldest man in recorded history on December 28, 2012, at the age of 115 years and 253 days. The oldest woman in recorded history, France's Jeanne Calment, died in 1997 at the age of 122.
"He has an amazingly strong will to live," Kimura's nephew Tamotsu Miyake, 80, said in an interview in December. "He is strongly confident that he lives right and well."
Kimura was also the world's oldest living person. That title now goes to Misao Okawa of Japan, who was born on March 5, 1898, according to a list of the world's oldest people compiled by the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group at UCLA. The previous record-holder for male longevity, Christian Mortensen of California, died in 1998 at the age of 115 years and 252 days.
Kimura was among 20 Japanese on the research group's list of 56 people verified to be age 110 or older, highlighting the challenges facing Japan as its population ages. A combination of the world's highest life expectancy, the world's second-largest public debt and a below-replacement birthrate is straining the nation's pension system, prompting the government to curb payouts, raise contributions and delay the age of eligibility.
Japan's average life expectancy at birth is 83 years, a figure projected to exceed 90 for women by 2050. The number of Japanese centenarians rose 7.6 percent from a year earlier to 51,376 as of September, and there are 40 centenarians per 100,000 people in the country, which has the world's highest proportion of elderly, according to Japan's health ministry.
Born in the 30th year of Japan's Meiji era, Kimura was only the third man in history to reach 115 years of age, according to Guinness. He was one of just four male supercentenarians, or people 110 years or older, known to be alive as of December, Guinness said at the time.
The third of six children, Kimura was born as Kinjiro Miyake in Kamiukawa, a fishing and farming village sandwiched between the mountains and the Sea of Japan. His parents, Morizo and Fusa Miyake, were farmers who grew rice and vegetables.
Only two years earlier, Japan's success in the First Sino-Japanese War had established the nation as the dominant power in East Asia. Kimura was 6 years old when Orville and Wilbur Wright made their historic first flight in a powered aircraft in North Carolina.
According to Kimura's nephew Tamotsu Miyake, the 115-year- old's birthday is actually March 19. Records say he was born April 19 because an official misprinted the month when records from merging towns were consolidated in 1955, the nephew said.
After finishing school at the age of 14 as the second-best student in his class, Kimura worked at local post offices for 45 years until his retirement in 1962 at the age of 65. He also worked at a government communication unit in Korea in the 1920s, when the peninsula was under Japanese rule, and returned to marry his neighbour Yae Kimura.
As his wife's family didn't have a male heir, he changed his name to Jiroemon Kimura, making him the ninth person in the family to bear the name. After retiring, he enjoyed reading newspapers and watching sumo wrestling on television. He sometimes helped his son farm until he was about 90 years old, his grandson's widow, Eiko Kimura, said in an interview in December.
Kimura was a disciplined, serious man when he was younger, Miyake said. Even when he drank with his brothers, he would sit straight and keep quiet, Miyake said.
His wife, Yae, died in 1978 at the age of 74. Four of Kimura's five siblings lived to be more than 90 years old, and his youngest brother, Tetsuo, died at 100, Miyake said.
Kimura lived with Eiko in a two-story wooden house he built in the 1960s. He never suffered from serious diseases, was still able to communicate and spent most of his time in bed, Eiko said in December.
"Grandpa is positive and optimistic," she said. "He becomes cheerful when he has guests. He's well with a good appetite."
Kimura's living descendants as of December included five children, 14 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren and 13 great- great-grandchildren. | Famous Person - Death | June 2013 | ['(AFP via New Strait Times)', '(The Age)'] |
Iran releases 140 people detained in its post–election unrest as the supreme leader orders a prison where jailed protesters were killed be closed. | Iran released 140 people detained in Iran's post-election turmoil on Tuesday and the supreme leader ordered the closure of a prison where human rights groups say jailed protesters were killed.
The pro-reform opposition has been contending for weeks that jailed protesters and activists were being held in secret facilities and could be undergoing torture. Authorities appear to be paying greater attention to the complaints after the son of a prominent conservative died in prison – reportedly the same one ordered to be closed.
The opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, sharply condemned the wave of arrests and deaths, saying the Iranian people "will never forgive them".
The last official word of the number of people in prison from the crackdown was around 500, announced several weeks ago, and arrests have continued since. The heavy crackdown was launched to put down protests that erupted following the June 12 presidential election, in which hard-line incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner but which the opposition says was fraudulent.
Among those detained are young protesters, as well as prominent pro-reform politicians, rights activists and lawyers. At least 20 people were killed, according to police, though rights groups say the number is likely far higher.
A parliament committee investigating prisoners' conditions visited Tehran's main prison Evin on Tuesday, and during the visit 140 detainees connected to the protests were released, said Kazem Jalili, a spokesman for the committee, according to the semiofficial ISNA news agency.
Another 150 remain in Evin because weapons were found on them when they were arrested, he said. The names of those released were not immediately known. There was no new word on the current total in prisons around the country.
The head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, promised on Monday that the public prosecutor would review the situation of all the post-election detainees within a week and decide whether to release or bring them to trial, the state news agency IRNA reported.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, meanwhile, ordered the closure of Kahrizak prison, on Tehran's southern outskirts, Jalali told the Mehr news agency. "It did not possess the required standards to ensure the rights of the detainees," he said. The closure order was announced Monday in the official IRNA news agency, though the prison was not identified.
Human rights groups have identified at least three protesters they say died after being detained at Kahrizak, though the reports could not be independently confirmed. Kahrizak appeared to have little role as a detention centre before the election unrest, but since then many of the detainees are believed to have spent time there. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | July 2009 | ['(The Daily Telegraph)', '(Press TV)'] |
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont is sworn in as the President pro tempore of the United States Senate, making him third in the United States presidential line of succession. | Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) was officially sworn in as the third in line for the presidency as President Pro Tempore of the Senate Tuesday.
The change became necessary after the senior-most Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) — the former Pro Tempore — died Monday afternoon. Inouye was the second longest-serving senator in U.S. history.
Vice President Biden came to the Senate to swear Leahy in as Pro Tempore, despite Dec. 18 being the anniversary of the day Biden’s wife and child died more than 30 years ago.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Biden told him he would make it to the Senate for the event anyway because it was important to him. Biden served with Inouye as a senator before being elected vice president.
Before being sworn in, Leahy spoke about Inouye, saying he couldn’t on Monday because he was “overcome with emotion.”
“I looked in my desk, which I inherited from Dan Inouye and saw his signature … I looked at that, and I was overcome with emotion so I did not speak then,” Leahy said. “We all know he gave his everything to the Senate.”
After swearing Leahy in, Biden commented that the moment must be “bittersweet” for Leahy.
Inouye was sworn in after Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) died in 2009.
Inouye died Monday at the age of 88. He had been hospitalized earlier this month at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for respiratory complications.
The Senate passed two resolutions Tuesday, S. Res. 622 and 623, which notified the House and president of the new Pro Tempore. | Government Job change - Election | December 2012 | ['(The Hill)'] |
A Russian Air Force Ilyushin Il-20 reconnaissance plane with 14 servicemen on board disappears from radar over the Mediterranean Sea during the missile attack on Syria's Latakia Governorate. A U.S. official claims the Syrian Army inadvertently shot it down while attempting to intercept missiles, while Russia detected a missile launch from a French FREMM multipurpose frigate. | Russia has said Syria shot down one of its military planes - but laid the blame for the deaths of the 15 personnel on board with Israel.
The defence ministry said Israeli jets put the Il-20 plane into the path of Syrian air defence systems on Monday after failing to give Moscow enough warning of a strike on Syrian targets.
The Il-20 disappeared off the radar at about 23:00 local time (20:00 GMT).
The Israel Defence Force (IDF) has expressed "sorrow" over the deaths.
However, in a statement released on Twitter, it added: "Israel holds the [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad regime, whose military shot down the Russian plane, fully responsible for this incident."
It went on to say its jets were back in Israeli airspace by the time the missiles were launched.
Israel - which also blamed Iran and Hezbollah - rarely acknowledges carrying out strikes on Syria, but an Israeli military official recently said it had hit more than 200 Iranian targets in Syria over the past 18 months.
The Israeli government is concerned by what it calls Iran's "military entrenchment" in Syria, as well as shipments of Iranian weapons to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside Syrian government forces.
The details are murky, and Russia's account of the incident has yet to be verified.
Monday's incident is reported to have occurred about 35km (22 miles) from the Syrian coast as the Ilyushin Il-20 aircraft was returning to Russia's Hmeimim airbase near the north-western city of Latakia.
Russia's Tass news agency says the Il-20 plane "disappeared during an attack by four Israeli F-16 jets on Syrian facilities in Latakia province".
Reports on Syrian state media spoke of an attack in the area shortly before the plane disappeared. According to Sana news agency, the military said it had intercepted "enemy missiles coming from the open sea towards the city of Latakia".
Syrian television also reported explosions over the sky in Latakia just before 22:00. Thirty minutes later, the Sana Facebook page reported that Syrian air defences had responded to enemy missiles.
In a statement, Russia said Israel's "irresponsible actions" were to blame, saying it was given less than a minute's warning ahead of the strikes, which was not enough time to get the military surveillance plane out of the way.
"The Israeli planes deliberately created a dangerous situation for surface ships and aircraft in the area," a defence ministry spokesman said. The spokesman accused Israeli pilots of "using the Russian airplane as a cover", putting it "in the line of fire coming from Syrian air defence systems". The plane, the spokesman continued, was shot down by a Syrian missile.
"As a result of the irresponsible actions by the Israeli military, 15 Russian servicemen have died," the spokesman said. It is not possible to verify any of these claims.
The IDF said its jets were targeting Syrian military facilities "from which systems to manufacture accurate and lethal weapons were about to be transferred on behalf of Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon".
It added the Syrian anti-aircraft missiles were "inaccurate" and "extensive". What's more, it claimed its jets were back in Israeli airspace by the time the missiles were launched.
The statement also accused the Syrian military of failing "to ensure that no Russian planes were in the air", adding it would share the relevant information with Moscow.
In an earlier phone call on Tuesday, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman the blame "fully rests with Israel", adding that Russia "reserves the right to take further steps in response". Russia later summoned the Israeli ambassador to its foreign ministry.
A search-and-rescue operation is under way.
Analysis by Jonathan Marcus, BBC Defence Correspondent
Russia's anger is real. But the question is, are the Russians attributing blame fairly? The charges are two-fold. Long-standing and up to now effective information-sharing broke down. The Israeli Air Force has Russian-speaking air traffic controllers able to communicate with their Russian opposite numbers. But Moscow says they were informed of the Israeli raid with only one minute's notice. Secondly Russia charges - more seriously - that the Israelis used the large radar signature of the Ilyushin turbo-prop to mask their own aircraft. But the radar signatures of the relatively slow Ilyushin and four nimble F-16 jets are radically different. Furthermore, the Syrian air defences should have known the Russian plane was in-bound, whatever the Israelis were doing.
There may be several contributory factors in this tragedy. Russia cannot publicly castigate its Syrian allies. In private things may be rather different.
Russia began military strikes in Syria in 2015 after a request from President Bashar al-Assad, who has stayed in power despite seven years of civil war which has so far killed more than 350,000 people.
The Russian military said in April of this year it had also spent 18 months helping to rebuild the air defence system, according to the UK's Guardian newspaper.
Hmeimim is Russia's main base for air strikes on rebel groups in Syria - strikes that have enabled President Assad's forces to recover much lost ground since 2015.
Russia says its air strikes only target "terrorists", but activists have said they mainly hit mainstream rebel fighters and civilians.
According to The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, at least 7,928 civilians and 10,069 combatants have been killed in Russian strikes. Russia has also suffered personnel losses, including the deaths of 39 people when a Russian military transport plane crashed as it attempted to land at Hmeimim in March. | Air crash | September 2018 | ['(CNN)', '(Reuters)', '(BBC)'] |
Hundreds of people are feared dead after a boat carrying people from Libya to Italy capsizes in the Mediterranean Sea. Twenty–eight people have been rescued. | Updated Monday morning with survivor's comments
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is to hold urgent talks with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi today following the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean which left hundreds of migrants dead.
Reports indicated that a large fishing boat was carrying between 600 and 700 migrants when it capsized 120 miles south of Lampedusa on Saturday-Sunday night, but a Bangladeshi survivor reportedly told the Italian authorities there were 900 on board. He said some of them had been locked int the boat's hold by the people smugglers.
Eighteen units of the Italian Navy, merchant ships and two Maltese patrol boats are continuing their search for possible survivors.
Prime Minister Renzi told a press conference that 28 survivors and 24 dead people had been picked up.
The small numbers make more sense if hundreds of people were locked in the hold, because with so much weight down below, "surely the boat would have sunk," said General Antonino Iraso, of the Italian Border Police, which has deployed boats in the operation.
Prosecutor Giovanni Salvi said a survivor from Bangladesh described the situation on the fishing boat to prosecutors who interviewed him in a hospital. The man said about 300 people were in the hold when the fishing boat overturned, and that about 200 women and dozens of children also were on board.
Mr Salvi stressed that there was no confirmation yet of the man's account and that the investigation was ongoing.
Mr Iraso said the sea in the area is too deep for divers, suggesting that the final toll may never be known.
"How can it be that we daily are witnessing a tragedy?" asked Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, who met with his top ministers ahead of tomorrow's European Union meeting in Luxembourg, where foreign ministers have added the issue of migrants to their agenda.
Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela said an Italian vessel carrying the survivors and the corpses will be coming to Malta. It will arrive early this morning. The corpses will be carried ashore and the vessel will then take the survivors to Italy.
Dr Muscat is to meet Mr Renzi in Rome before an urgent EU foreign ministers' meeting which will be held in Luxembourg.
The meeting was requested by French President Francois Hollande, who discussed the situation with Mr Renzi on the phone. However since then both Italy and Malta have called for a summit meeting.
"If confirmed this would be the worst disaster of recent years in the Mediterranean," Hollande said on Canal+ television.
Rescue and disaster prevention efforts will need "more boats, more over flights and a much more intense battle against people-trafficking," Hollande said
The emergency was declared at about midnight when the migrants are believed to have moved to one side of the boat, capsizing it, when a merchant ship approached.
The survivors were picked up by a Portuguese merchant ship and scores of bodies were seen.
"They are literally trying to find people alive among the dead floating in the water," Dr Muscat said when speaking at a PL activity this morning. A minute's silence was observed during the event.
The incident bears similarities to another case last week when some 400 migrants are believed to have perished.
Meanwhile, more migrant boats were intercepted today and the Italian coastguard issued new video footage of one such interception.
| Shipwreck | April 2015 | ['(Times of Malta)'] |
A photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals a companion star that survived the explosion of a supernova in galaxy NGC 7424. This brings strong evidence to a theory according to which Type IIb "stripped-envelope" supernovae are due to stellar companions capturing hydrogen from the progenitor star's envelope before its explosion. | April 27 (UPI) -- The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the best evidence yet that double-star systems host supernovas.
Seventeen years after astronomers first spotted a supernova 40 million light-years away in the galaxy NGC 7424, a Hubble photograph revealed a second star, the supernova's surviving companion.
"We know that the majority of massive stars are in binary pairs," Stuart Ryder, researcher at the Australian Astronomical Observatory in Sydney, said in a news release. "Many of these binary pairs will interact and transfer gas from one star to the other when their orbits bring them close together."
The companion in Hubble's image was more than just a spectator to the action 17 years ago. The companion is a cosmic criminal, guilty of theft. Millions of years before its companion exploded a fire death, the star was creating instability in the primary star by siphoning off hydrogen from its stellar envelope, the layer that shuttles energy from the core to the star's atmosphere.
As a result of millions of years of theft, the primary star demise, dubbed SN 2001ig, was classified as a Type IIb stripped-envelope supernova, an explosion characterized by a lack of hydrogen.
Most scientists thought Type IIb stripped-envelope supernovas originated in single star systems, their out envelopes blown away by strong stellar winds. But over the years, astronomers have struggled to find the primary stars responsible for such explosions.
"That was especially bizarre because astronomers expected that they would be the most massive and the brightest progenitor stars," said Ori Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Also, the sheer number of stripped-envelope supernovas is greater than predicted."
Astronomers now think as many as half of all Type IIb stripped-envelope supernovas may originate in binary star systems.
The revelation might not have happened if SN 2001ig occurred just a little farther away. The stellar system sits right on the edge of Hubble's photographic limits. The companion is so faint, it likely would be invisible to Hubble if it was a few more light-years away. A bit of luck allowed for the breakthrough.
"We were finally able to catch the stellar thief, confirming our suspicions that one had to be there," said Alex Filippenko, astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley. | New achievements in aerospace | April 2018 | ['(UPI)'] |
A suicide bomber attacks a government building in Taji, 15 kilometres north of the capital Baghdad, killing 22 and injuring 44 others. Nineteen of the dead are members of the Sahwa militia opposed to al-Qaeda in Iraq, who were waiting for their monthly salaries. | A suicide bomber struck members of a militia opposed to Al Qaeda north of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 22 people and wounding 44, officials said. The blast was the latest in a string of attacks against security forces and civilians. More than 200 Iraqis have been killed since the beginning of the year. In Monday’s bombing, the attacker mingled with men gathering to collect their salaries outside the militia’s headquarters in Taji, about 12 miles north of Baghdad. Three Iraqi soldiers and 19 members of the Sunni militia, known as the Awakening Council, were killed, police officials said. The militia was formed from Sunni fighters who switched sides and joined American and Iraqi government forces to fight Al Qaeda at the height of the insurgency. | Armed Conflict | February 2013 | ['(Reuters)', '(The New York Times)'] |
At least 70 people are killed and more than 150 injured in suicide bombing at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar Shrine in Sehwan, Sindh, Pakistan; 50 of the injured are in critical condition, medical emergency has been declared in the hospitals of Hyderabad, Dadu and Jamshoro. , | More than 70people including women and children were martyred and over 250sustained critical injuries in a suicide attack at the shrine of Sufi Saint Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan Sharife on Thursday, medics and police said.
Thousands of devotees from across the country arrive at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar every Thursday.
Police have confirmed it was a suicide blast.Police officials in Sehwan said the blast took place inside the shrine with the Assistant Superintendent of Police Rashid stating it was a suicide bombing.
The News reporter Imdad Soomro said the condition of more than 50 pilgrims is critical, the number of death toll could rise as there is only one small hospital in the area.
However, emergency has been declared in the hospitals of Hyderabad, Dadu and Jamshoro.
Police and security forces have cordoned off the area.
DG ISPR in his tweet said Army and Rangers personnel have been moved with medical support.
Hyderabad CMH is ready to receive casualties, the Major Gen. Asif Ghafoor said.
#COAS directed imed assistance to Sehwan blast victims. Army /Rangers moved incl medical support. Hyderabad CMH ready to receive casualties.
A spokesman for medical charity Edhi said the attackerappeared to have targeted the womens wing of the shrine, andaround 30 children accompanying their mothers were dead.
Islamic State (Daesh) , the Middle East-based militant group,claimed responsibility for the attack, the groups affiliatednews agency AMAQ reported.
Senior police officer Shabbir Sethar told Reuters from alocal hospital that the death toll was likely to rise."At least 72 are dead and over 150 have been injured,"Sethar said by telephone.
Television footage from the famous Lal Shahbaz Qalandarshrine in the town of Sehwan Sharif showed army and paramilitarymedical teams reaching the site and injured people being takento nearby hospitals in ambulances and a military helicopter.
"We were there for the love of our saint, for the worship ofAllah," a wailing woman told a television channeloutside the shrine, her headscarf streaked in blood."Who wouldhurt us when we were there for devotion?"
The attack comes as the Pakistani Taliban and rival Islamistmilitant groups carry out their threats of a new offensive.The violence has shattered a period of improving security,underscoring how militants still undermine stability in thecountry.
The high death toll at the shrine makes it one of the worstattacks in Pakistan in recent years.In August last year, at least 74 people, mostly lawyers,were killed in a suicide bombing of a hospital in thesouthwestern city of Quetta.
In November, an explosion claimed by Islamic State rippedthrough a Muslim shrine in southwestern Pakistan, killing atleast 52 people and wounding scores.
SINDH SUFIS
At a crossroads of historic trade routes, religions andcultures, the southern province of Sindh where the shrine islocated has always been a poor but religiously tolerant region,helping to shield it from much of the violence morecommon in other parts of Pakistan.
The countrys powerful military, which has cracked down oninsurgent groups in recent years leading to a sharp drop inmilitant violence, vowed a swift, decisive response.
"Each drop of nations blood shall be revenged, and revengedimmediately.No more restraint for anyone," Army Chief QamarBajwa said in a statement.
Shortly after the blast, the army announced it was closingthe border with Afghanistan with immediate effect for securityreasons.
Insurgents operate on either side of the neighbourslong and porous frontier.Different militant groups, often trying to outdo each other,say they are responsible for the bombings.
In the case of the Quetta hospital blast, both a faction ofthe Pakistani Taliban - Jamaat-ur-Ahrar - and Islamic Stateclaimed responsibility.Jamaat also said it was responsible for a bombing in theeastern city of Lahore earlier this week that killed 13 people.
In a separate incident late on Thursday, gunmen on amotorbike killed three policemen and one civilian in the city ofDera Ismail Khan.
"STAND UNITED
"The bomber entered the shrine as crowds massed on Thursday,a statement from the Sindh police spokesman said.Rescue officials said dozens of wounded people were beingferried in private cars to hospitals.
The nearest major hospitalwas nearly an hours drive away in Dadu district.Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif quickly condemned the bombing,decrying the assault on the Sufi religious minority.He vowed to fight militants, who target thegovernment, judiciary and anyone who does not adhere to theirstrict interpretation of Sunni Islam.
"The past few days have been hard, and my heart is with the victims," Sharif said."But we cant let these events divide us,or scare us.We must stand united in this struggle for thePakistani identity, and universal humanity.
"An ancient mystic branch of Islam, Sufism has been practisedin Pakistan for centuries.Lal Shahbaz Qalander is Pakistans most revered Sufi shrine,dedicated to a 13th-century saint in SehwanSharif.
Thursdays are an especially important day for local Sufis,meaning that the shrine was packed at the time of the blast. | Armed Conflict | February 2017 | ['(Dawn News)', '(The News)'] |
Jamaican health officials confirm the country's first case of the Zika virus in a 4-year-old child who recently returned from a trip to Texas. | Jamaican health officials?confirmed the Caribbean nation's?first case of the Zika virus Saturday?in?a 4-year-old child who recently returned from a trip to?Texas.
The child, who has now recovered, began showing symptoms Jan. 17 after visiting the U.S. state, Jamaica's Ministry of Health?said in a statement.
It's unclear whether the child picked up the virus in Jamaica or Texas.?The ministry said it is investigating the case to determine the source of the infection.
The virus?has been associated with a sharp jump in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads, mainly in Brazil. It is also linked to increases in Guillain-Barre syndrome, in which the immune system attacks the nervous system, causing paralysis.
Jamaican Health Minister?Horace Dalley said in the?statement that the childs parents and family have been contacted and briefed by a team from the ministry. No other family members are ill at this time, according to the statement, first reported by Nationwide Radio's Abka Fitz-Henley.
Dalley said he plans to?provide a full update on the case Monday.
The mosquito-borne infection?has been detected in some 24?countries and territories in the Americas since Brazil reported its first case in May, Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said this week.
WHO will hold?an emergency meeting on Monday to determine how to?confront the Zika virus, which Chan said?is "spreading explosively" in the Americas.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has?urged pregnant women to postpone travel to Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Martin, Suriname, Samoa, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.
The CDC recommends?women who have recently traveled to these places during their pregnancy be screened and monitored for the virus.
All three of the USA's biggest airlines are allowing?some customers?to cancel or postpone trips if theyre flying to areas affected by Zika. American, United and Delta each made the move this week amid rising concerns about the spread of the?virus.
Zika virus not causing outbreaks in continental U.S.
Jamaica already mounted a campaign to advise people, particularly pregnant women, to take extra precaution to avoid being bitten by the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which transmit?the Zika virus.
The health ministry's website??which features?the words "Be Aware, Zika is near" crawling across the top of the screen??warns Jamaicans to: "Be prepared. Do your part by preventing mosquito breeding."
Experts: USA must prepare now for Zika virus
Although a number of returning U.S. travelers have been infected with the Zika virus while visiting Latin America, the?virus is not causing outbreaks in the continental U.S., health officials said this week.
Thirty-one Americans in 11 states and Washington, D.C., have been diagnosed with a Zika infection contracted while traveling abroad, said Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of the Zika cases is a pregnant woman in New York City, which has two other cases.
Those are isolated cases, however, and very different from the Zika epidemic in Brazil, which had an estimated 1 million Zika infections by the end of last year. Right now, people on the U.S. mainland are contracting?the virus?only after they have traveled to an area with a Zika epidemic.
Travelers frequently contract diseases, from malaria to measles, while abroad. The CDC diagnosed 14 returning travelers with Zika from 2007 to 2014. None of these cases sparked outbreaks.
Zika spreads best in tropical areas because warmth helps the virus reproduce, said?Gonzalo?Vazquez-Prokopec,?an assistant professor in the department of environmental sciences?at Emory College in Atlanta.
That explains why the mosquitoes that spread Zika virus have gained a foothold in two U.S. territories Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. | Disease Outbreaks | January 2016 | ['(USA TODAY)'] |
North and South Korea fail to agree on further family reunions, after the North linked the prospect with humanitarian aid deliveries. | SEOUL - SOUTH and North Korea failed to reach agreement on Friday on holding more family reunions after Pyongyang sought humanitarian aid from Seoul, officials said.
The two sides 'failed to bridge differences on their stances on further reunions' but agreed to arrange more talks, an official with Seoul's unification ministry told Yonhap news agency.
'The North asked for humanitarian aid from the South. We told them that we will review it after returning (to the South),' the official said.
Earlier reports said the North was seeking 'reciprocity' in return for holding more reunions of families separated since the 1950-53 war.
The talks at the North's town of Kaesong were the second to be held this week after months of hostility.
During a meeting on Wednesday on another issue, the North made a rare apology to the South for causing a cross-border flood that killed six people. But Pyongyang also test-fired five missiles on Monday. On Thursday its navy accused the South of sending warships across the disputed sea border and warned of possible armed clashes.
As part of a series of conciliatory gestures which began in August, the communist state restarted a reunion programme suspended for almost two years. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | October 2009 | ['(Korea Times)', '(Straits Times)'] |
James A. Fields Jr. is sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to 29 hate crimes for driving his car into a crowd of protestors, killing one and injuring 28, at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. | James Alex Fields, driver in deadly car attack at Charlottesville rally, sentenced to life in prison
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Follow NBC News The driver who plowed his car into a group of counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, killing one and injuring dozens, was sentenced Friday to life in prison on federal hate crime charges.
James Alex Fields Jr. pleaded guilty to 29 of 30 hate crime charges in March in a plea deal to avoid the death penalty for murdering civil rights activist Heather Heyer and injuring more than 30 others when he intentionally mowed them down with his car on a one-way street on Aug. 12, 2017.
The 30th charge, which included a possible death sentence, was dropped. U.S. Attorney General William Barr directed and permitted prosecutors not to seek the death penalty.
Heyer's mother, Susan Bro, said at the sentencing that she wanted Fields to spend the rest of his life in prison, but also hopes he "can heal someday and help others heal."
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Bro's statement was one of more than a dozen given by survivors and witnesses during the hearing.
Fields appeared stoic, stared straight ahead and didn't look at any of the people who spoke. He apologized before the judge handed down his sentence.
Rosia Parker said she was standing a few feet away from Heyer when the 32-year-old paralegal was struck. She looked right at Fields and told him he "could have done anything else but what you did."
"So, yeah, you deserve everything that you get," Parker said.
Prosecutors have said that Fields intended to kill more people in the cluster of counterprotesters and had a history of racist and anti-Semitic behavior.
Gasps could be heard Friday among a packed courtroom, which included Heyer's mother, when prosecutors told the judge that a classmate of Fields had testified that during a high school trip to a German concentration camp, Fields had remarked: "This is where the magic happened."
Prosecutors said they were told Fields was "like a kid at Disney World" during that trip. They had earlier said that Fields had revered Adolf Hitler, keeping a picture of him next to his bed.
"Anyone who commits a crime motivated by hatred for the race, color, religion, national origin or other protected trait of any person should be on notice: the United States government will use its enormous power to bring perpetrators to justice, and we will continue to do so for as long as it takes to rid our nation of these vile and monstrous crimes," Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband said in a statement.
In a statement released after the sentencing, Keegan Hankes, interim research director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, called Fields "a remorseless killer and a domestic terrorist" who "helped define one of the many flashpoints of violent white supremacy in the Trump era."
“Though Fields’ sentencing may prevent him from committing future acts of public violence, the trauma he has already inflicted upon his victims, their families and their communities will likely never fully heal," Hankes said.
Fields' lawyers had asked U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski to consider sentencing Fields to "less than life."
"No amount of punishment imposed on James can repair the damage he caused to dozens of innocent people. But this Court should find that retribution has limits," defense attorneys wrote in a sentencing memo.
The lawyers had appealed during sentencing for Urbanski to take the Ohio man's mental health issues and troubled youth into account. Fields' attorneys said he was raised by a paraplegic single mother and suffered "trauma" living with the knowledge that his Jewish grandfather had murdered his grandmother before taking his own life.
Fields is also convicted of state charges, including first-degree murder, five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding, and one hit and run count for injuring dozens of others with his vehicle. He is set to be sentenced on those charges July 15, and a jury has already recommended life in prison plus 419 years.
That jury found that Fields had purposefully rammed his Dodge Challenger into the crowd of counterprotesters following the rally. The "Unite the Right" protesters were there in part to fight the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Heyer died from blunt force injury to the chest.
Star Peterson, one of the injured, had to undergo five surgeries on her right leg and uses a wheelchair and cane. Marcus Martin, a friend of Heyer's, was hit by Fields' car while pushing his wife out of the way and suffered a broken ankle, destroyed ligaments and twisted tibia.
President Donald Trump faced backlash when he blamed "both sides" for the violence at the protest, which critics saw as a failure to condemn racism and white nationalism, further adding to racial tensions raised by the case. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | June 2019 | ['(CNN)', '(NBC News)', '(The Washington Post)'] |
The storm causes power outages to 550,000 customers in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, and 375,000 people in 22 counties have been ordered to evacuate. | When Hurricane Michael made landfall as a high-end Category 4 storm on the Florida Panhandle Wednesday, buildings along the coast were smashed to pieces, storm-surge flooding lapped at the eaves of beach houses, and an Air Force base sustained extensive damage.
One death has been reported in the Panhandle. A Greensboro man was killed when a tree crashed on his home, Gadsden County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Anglie Hightower told the Associated Press.
From Panama City, through Mexico Beach — where the storm made landfall — and into Apalachicola, houses were swamped or blown apart, roofs were ripped off, boats sank, and trees toppled in the high winds.
Tyndall Air Force Base, which sits across the bay from Panama City, posted on its Facebook page that the base sustained extensive damage. A wind gust of 129 mph was measured at the base. No injuries were reported. Base personnel had been ordered to evacuate on Monday. The Facebook post said evacuees should plan on being away for an extended time.
The damage extended far inland as well. In Marianna, about 55 miles from Panama City, social media posts showed buildings with collapsed walls and torn off roofs. The police department lost its roof, too. Michael arrived in the city with gusts up to 102 mph.
Officials in Tallahassee, the state capital, tweeted that initial assessments of storm damage were showing lots of downed power lines, power poles, and trees.
As of 10:30 p.m. EDT, more than 331,000 homes and businesses were without power statewide, most of which were in the areas impacted by the storm, according to PowerOutage.us. The total number of customers without power in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia topped 550,000.
Images from Mexico Beach showed widespread devastation with homes reduced to kindling and roofs lying in the middle of U.S. 98. Storm surge lapped at roof eaves.
Patricia Mulligan was in a condo on Mexico Beach when Michael slammed into the town. “You can’t drive a car anywhere, you can’t do anything because it’s littered with houses, pieces of houses,” Mulligan told the New York Times. She said her brother's condo was destroyed as were other units nearby. “They’re not there. It’s gone,” she said.
Several storm trackers tweeted that they were shocked by the devastation.
Mark Suddath wrote, "Walking thru Mexico Beach to receive my GoPro cam and I’m telling you, it’s DEVASTATED. Truly devastated. Some buildings completely swept clean - only slabs."
Earlier he had written, "Drove from Panama City almost to Mexico Beach and I can tell you this is the worst damage from wind that I have ever seen! Absolutely catastrophic!"
Josh Morgerman wrote, "It's hard to convey in words the scale of the catastrophe in Panama City. The whole city looks like a nuke was dropped on it. I'm literally shocked at the scale of the destruction."
Tweets from a resident of Panama City showed a bank where the windows were blown out and two middle schools had major roof damage. Drone video showed the roof peeled back from the gymnasium at Jinks Middle School.
Vance Beu, 29, was staying with his mother at her Panama City apartment when a pine tree stabbed through the roof. Beu told AP the roar of the storm sounded like a jet engine as the winds accelerated.
"It was terrifying, honestly. There was a lot of noise. We thought the windows were going to break at any time. We had the inside windows kind of barricaded in with mattresses," Beu said.
Kaylee O'Brien was crying as she sorted through the remains of the apartment she shared with three roommates. Four pine trees had crashed through the roof of her apartment, nearly hitting two people.
Facebook photos showed chunks of U.S. 98 that were washed away by the storm surge.
The walls collapsed at the Pawaday Inn, a pet grooming and boarding business in Panama City. A Miami Herald reporter tweeted that the dogs survived, but a cat drowned after being trapped.
In Panama City Beach, WJHG-TV employees were told they could evacuate the station if they felt unsafe, but a few remained inside the building, according to reporter Danielle Ellis. The station lost power a few hours later.
The Panama City News Herald lost power and stayed in operation using a backup generator, but did not have internet access at the office, the Associated Press reported.
Bay Medical Sacred Heart in Panama City tweeted that hospital "sustained damage including windows blown out, cracking of an exterior wall, and roof damage." The tweet said emergency generators were working, and patients had been moved to safer areas.
In Port St. Joe, about 12 miles southeast of Mexico Beach, a church lost its steeple and much of its roof, parts of buildings were torn away, and pine trees snapped like matchsticks.
Port St. Joe's Mayor Bo Patterson remained in his home seven blocks from the beach during the storm. "It feels like you don't know when the next tree is going to fall on top of you because it's blowing so ferociously," he told Reuters by telephone. "It's very, very scary. We have trees being uprooted, heavy, heavy rain."
Further east, Apalachicola saw a lot of damage too. Sally Crown, who rode out the storm in her house, ventured out after the storm had passed.
"It's absolutely horrendous. Catastrophic," Crown told AP. "There's flooding. Boats on the highway. A house on the highway. Houses that have been there forever are just shattered."
"There are so many downed power lines and trees that it's almost impossible to get through the city," Apalachicola Mayor Van Johnson said.
The Wakulla County Sheriff's Office said parts of the county, which sits on the coast south of Tallahassee, had seen storm surge of 9 feet. The winds were dying down and crews were beginning to access the damage.
Hours before landfall, reports of damage and flooding were relayed from the coast. Residents who refused to evacuate were cut off when bridges were closed, including along St. George Island, where some called for help Wednesday morning but were told crews would not be able to reach them, a National Weather Service storm report said.
Wednesday morning, Florida Gov. Rick Scott shared dire advice: "The time to evacuate has come and gone ... SEEK REFUGE IMMEDIATELY."
"Unfortunately, Hurricane Michael has become a hurricane of the worst kind," FEMA Administrator Brock Long told reporters.
The Florida Highway Patrol said it pulled its troopers away from coastal areas because it was too dangerous to keep them in those areas.
"We have done everything we can as far as getting the word out," said Franklin County Sheriff A.J. Smith told the AP. "Hopefully more people will leave."
More than 375,000 people along the Gulf Coast in 22 counties were ordered or urged to evacuate, officials said.
All airports along the Florida Panhandle closed throughout the storm, and flights were canceled. Tallahassee International Airport tweeted late Wednesday that the airfield had reopened but priority was being given to relief flights. Commercial flights were set to resume midday Thursday, the airport said.
In Bay County, first responders were no longer able to respond to emergencies as of Wednesday morning, but the Panama City Fire Department would continue responding to life-threatening emergency calls that came from within the city limits, the county said in a tweet.
"There’s no way to put a silver lining on this," said Jim Cantore, storm tracker for The Weather Channel, Wednesday morning while reporting live on Panama City Beach.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in Florida to free up as many resources as possible for storm and emergency response.
Rescue teams and utility trucks descended on the region by the hundreds from all over the country as they prepared to help with the aftermath.
"We have a pit in our stomachs, too," National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham said during a Wednesday morning interview on The Weather Channel.
Evacuation orders were expanded for additional areas in the path of the storm on Tuesday. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for Okaloosa Island and Holiday Isle Tuesday afternoon, and voluntary evacuations were in place for residents in flood-prone areas of Pasco County.
FloridaDisaster.org has a complete list of areas under mandatory and voluntary evacuations.
"If you decide to stay in your home and a tree falls on your house or the storm surge catches you and you’re now calling for help, there’s no one that can respond to help you," warned Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan during a news conference Monday. "That’s the criticality of following directions."
Scott said more than 3,500 Florida National Guard members were activated for storm response. He added that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was ready to deploy and the Department of Transportation was monitoring the situation.
All bridges leading to and from coastal islands were closed Wednesday morning. With road closures expected to be a fluid situation, officials urged residents to follow updates on the Department of Transportation's Twitter page.
"This is the worst storm that the Florida Panhandle has seen in more than 100 years," said Scott.
Florida State University, Florida A&M University and Tallahassee Community College all announced that campuses would be closed Tuesday through Friday. FSU opened the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center as a shelter for students and faculty.
Leon County Schools posted a tweet Monday saying all schools would be closed through the rest of the week. Bay District Schools will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, the Panama City News Herald reported. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | October 2018 | ['(The Weather Channel)'] |
The death toll from flooding in South Africa rises to 70 and more than 8,000 families are homeless. Five other nearby countries – Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe – are threatened by killer heavy rains. | The death toll from South Africa's floods has continued to rise, follows weeks of heavy rains that began in December. Seventy people have died and more than 8,000 families have been forced to leave their homes. Five other countries in the region, from Mozambique to Namibia, are on alert for further floods. Some of the biggest rivers in the region, the Zambezi and the Okavango, are at about twice their normal levels.
South Africa has declared eight of its nine provinces disaster areas. Co-operative Government Minister Sicelo Shiceka said the flood damage was estimated at $51m (£32 million).
At least 10 people have also died in floods in neighbouring Mozambique and more than 10,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.
Relief workers fear a repeat of the kind of disaster that struck Mozambique in 2000, when massive floods killed 800 people. Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe have also been affected by heavy rains, says Elizabeth Byrs, of the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The UN is warning that there is an increased risk of cholera, which is endemic in some countries. Meteorologists say southern Africa's floods are caused by a natural cycle called the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which has also been linked to recent flooding in Australia and the Philippines. | Floods | January 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Protestors in Beirut continue their protests against the government due to a lack of effective garbage collection in the city during one of the hottest summers on record. | Thousands took to the streets in Martyrs' Square in the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Saturday for the second week in a row to demand government accountability and solutions for a mounting garbage crisis.
Also for the second week in a row, the diehard protesters were dispersed by force. As the sun set and the families went home, a faction of protesters tried to break through barricades protecting the government palace. Police chased them down with batons, clearing the entire downtown and arresting stragglers.
Hours earlier, the mood was different. Clerics in flowing robes stood alongside scantily clad 20-somethings snapping selfies. Parents brought their young children and grandmothers linked arms. Even people in wheelchairs and visibly pregnant women braved the crowds. Homemade signs abounded.
They came despite the violent dispersal last weekend. The government has opened an investigation into the use of excessive force, including rubber bullets and live ammunition fired in the air by the security forces. Some of the protesters arrived still bearing their bruises.
Jean Moukazel, a construction contractor, said he was beaten by the police last weekend, but that didn't stop him or his wife from returning to demand that the government step down. He says leaders have failed to provide even the most basic services, like water and electricity.
"The only thing Lebanese had was hope and dreams," Moukazel said. "And now they're dreaming about leaving the country, and that's why they're demonstrating. We want [the government's] resignation to create a new government and parliament so we can have a hope of having a new Lebanon — the Swiss of the Middle East, as it was a long time ago."
He says he worked outside Lebanon for 25 years, but he wants to fight for his future in his own country. He thinks the demonstrations will keep growing.
"Last week was smaller: Saturday, Sunday bigger," he said. "Today much bigger, and tomorrow even bigger. It will grow. It's like a snowball."
Protests haven't just become bigger; they've become more organized, marching under the banner #YouStink. Organizers began their march Saturday in matching T-shirts, flanked by people on bicycles and scooters. Police cars and ambulances trailed behind.
"From north to south, from Bekaa to Beirut, a people united never die!" organizers shouted from megaphones amplified by trucks full of speakers. Women and men took turns leading protests, as demonstrators line-danced, drummed and chanted along.
The organizers are now calling for a sustainable solution to the garbage crisis and accountability for the interior minister and those who ordered force against demonstrators. #YouStink has promised more demonstrations in all parts of Lebanon on Tuesday if the first demands aren't met.
Other demonstrators aren't willing to wait, and have vowed to take to the streets again Sunday to demand that the entire government resign in one go.
One of them is Ali Dawi, who came with his baby boy slung around his chest. Dawi wants a new government of technocrats. He says that bringing his newborn to the protest is a statement.
"The money of this little boy has been taken by this bunch of corrupt politicians," he said. "His future is in danger much more if they remain."
But not everyone is so sure. With the Syrian civil war raging next door, some worry that demonstrations here could unleash sectarian violence in a deeply divided country.
"Even if we did 100 years of peaceful protests, this regime won't go down except with violence," said Khodr Sobah as he watched the march pass by.
Flanked by his wife and three young daughters, Sobah said he supports the demonstrations but has little hope that they will continue peacefully.
"Those political leaders stuck to their chairs won't go in the name of peace or civility," he said. "Even if all the Lebanese people took to the streets and told them to."
Sobah pointed out that many current political leaders were born out during the violence of the country's 15-year civil war.
"All of these politicians came to power by blood," he said. "They're all ex-warlords, and they won't go except by blood."
In the Lebanese capital Beirut, bars and restaurants shuttered their doors tonight in solidarity with anti-government protests that have grown over the last week. NPR's Alison Meuse reports that demonstrators are calling for nationwide protests on Tuesday if their demands over garbage collection and government corruption aren't met.
That's the sound of thousands of demonstrators marching to downtown Beirut. Lebanese protesters are giving the government 72 hours to find a sustainable solution to the garbage collection crisis. They also want accountability from the government for firing rubber bullets on demonstrators last week when hundreds were injured. The government is investigating the excessive use of force, but they haven't solved the garbage issue. Lebanon's main dump is beyond capacity, and uncollected trash has been piling up in people's neighborhoods. That's the spark that brought people to the streets demanding the government resign.
JOAAN MOURKAZEL: The only thing that the Lebanese had is hope - hope and dreams. And now they do not have it. They are dreaming about leaving the country. So that's why we are demonstrating. We want their resignation to create a new government, a new parliament, so we can have the hope of having a new Lebanon, the Swiss of the Middle East, as it was before a long time ago.
MEUSE: That's Joaan Mourkazel, a construction worker. He says he was beaten by police last week. But that didn't stop him from coming today.
MOURKAZEL: Last week was smaller - Saturday, Sunday bigger - today, much bigger and tomorrow, even bigger. It will grow. It's like a snowball.
MEUSE: Protests haven't just become bigger. They've become more organized. Activists have dubbed the movement You Stink. Today, organizers marched in matching You Stink T-shirts, flanked by bikes and scooters. Police cars and ambulances followed behind.
MEUSE: People from all walks of life joined. Even pregnant women and people in wheelchairs braved the crowds. One father, Ali Dawi, had his baby boy slung around his chest. He says that bringing his baby is a statement.
ALI DAWI: Well, the money of this little boy has already been taken by this bunch of corrupt politicians. His future is in danger much more if they remain.
MEUSE: But not everyone is so sure. With the Syrian conflict raging next-door, some worry that demonstrations here could unleash sectarian violence. Khodr Sobah joined the protest with his wife and four young girls. He says he'd like things to stay peaceful, but he's not counting on it. He points out that the politicians they're trying to remove were born out of Lebanon's 15-year civil war.
KHODR SOBAH: (Speaking Arabic).
MEUSE: He says "All of these politicians came to power by blood. They're all ex-warlords, and they won't go except by blood." Late tonight, protesters tried to break through barricades protecting Lebanon's government palace. Police once again used force to clear the square. | Protest_Online Condemnation | August 2015 | ['(NPR)'] |
The U.S. Navy orders an investigation into its Pacific Fleet following the collision, which is the fourth crash involving a U.S. Navy ship in the past two years and the second in the past two months. | The US Navy has ordered a worldwide "operational pause" of its fleet after a destroyer collided with a tanker near Singapore, leaving 10 sailors missing.
Five other sailors were injured in the crash involving the guided missile destroyer USS John S McCain.
Officials are also conducting a "comprehensive review" of the Pacific fleet following Monday's incident.
It was the fourth crash involving a US Navy ship in a year, and the second in the past two months. Navy Adm John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, said in a statement: "This trend demands more forceful action. "As such, I have directed an operational pause be taken in all of our fleets around the world."
The pause, which will be staggered across the fleets, will last one to two days and could begin within a week, he later told reporters.
The operational pause and review of the Pacific fleet - which the USS John S McCain belongs to - are in addition to a separate ongoing investigation into the latest incident.
The USS John S McCain was sailing east of Singapore when the collision with the Liberian-flagged vessel occurred.
It was reported before dawn at 05:24 local time on Monday (21:24 GMT on Sunday) and took place east of the Strait of Singapore, as the American vessel went for a routine port stop in Singapore.
The destroyer sustained damage to her port side, which is the left-hand side of the vessel facing forward.
The tanker it collided with, Alnic MC, sustained damage to a tank near the front of the ship 7m (23ft) above the waterline, but none of its crew was injured and there were no oil spills.
At 182m (600ft), the tanker is slightly longer than the 154m-long US destroyer.
US military helicopters as well as the Singaporean and Malaysian navies and coast guards are conducting search and rescue operations.
Malaysian Navy chief Admiral Kamarulzaman said a message had been sent to fishing vessels along the Johor and Pahang coasts to keep a look out.
A Malaysian Navy spokesman later told a news conference: "The waves are between 0.5m and 1.5m, so the sea is quite rough and can be very challenging if you don't have a life jacket."
The US Navy said four of the injured sailors had non-life threatening injuries and were medically evacuated to a Singapore hospital. The fifth person did not require further medical attention.
The US Navy 7th Fleet later issued a statement saying the USS John S McCain had arrived at Singapore's Changi naval base.
The Alnic MC made its way to the Raffles Reserved Anchorage in Singapore.
One crew member of the oil tanker told Reuters over the phone that the vessel sustained some damage to a valve. The ship was carrying nearly 12,000 tonnes of oil from Taiwan to Singapore, the news agency reported.
The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said: "There is no report of oil pollution and traffic in the Singapore Strait is unaffected."
Two serious collisions with merchant vessels; some 17 crew members dead or missing; and two guided missile destroyers of the US Seventh Fleet out of action for months - good reason then for a thorough review. But are these unconnected episodes or part of a broader systemic failure? This is what the new review will have to find out. Analysts and former officers note the high tempo of operations. The US Navy - despite its size - is just not large enough, they say, to do everything that is asked of it. Training inevitably suffers. And the dramatic growth in merchant shipping - the real measure of our globalised world - means the sea-lanes are now more crowded than ever. For years the US Navy has had no obvious peer competitor. And some fear that it may be losing its edge. US Senator John McCain tweeted that he and his wife were praying for the sailors.
The vessel was named after his father and grandfather, both admirals in the Navy.
"I agree with Admiral Richardson that more forceful action is urgently needed to identify and correct the causes of the recent ship collisions," he added. US President Donald Trump has also put out a tweet about the accident.
Thoughts & prayers are w/ our @USNavy sailors aboard the #USSJohnSMcCain where search & rescue efforts are underway. https://t.co/DQU0zTRXNU
This is the fourth time in a year that a US navy vessel has been involved in an accident. Just two months ago, seven US sailors were killed when the USS Fitzgerald collided with a container ship in Japanese waters near the port city of Yokosuka. Those who died were found in flooded berths on board the ship after the collision caused a gash under the warship's waterline.
The US Navy said last week that about a dozen sailors would be disciplined, and the commanding officer and other senior crew would be taken off the ship.
In May, a guided missile cruiser collided with a South Korean fishing vessel, while in August last year a submarine collided with an offshore support vessel.
| Shipwreck | August 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
Health officials announced that a 21–year–old woman from Bishop, California had died June 20th at Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, Nevada from cardiac arrest caused by the rare brain–eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri. | Brain-eating amoeba are blamed in the death of a 21-year-old California woman. Health officials confirmed the unidentified woman reported to the Northern Inyo Hospital on June 16 with symptoms that mimicked meningitis. However, as her condition continued to deteriorate, she was later diagnosed with a rare infection caused by Naegleria fowleri.
As reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Naegleria fowleri, commonly referred to as "brain-eating amoeba," rarely infect humans. Unfortunately, they can cause a devastating infection called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis.
Naegleria fowleri, which thrive in warm freshwater, enter the body through the nose.
According to the CDC, infections are rare, as the contaminated water must be forced into the nasal cavity. However, risky behaviors, including diving, submerging the head, and irrigating the sinuses, should be avoided.
Once inside the nose, Naegleria fowleri travel to the brain, where they destroy tissue.
During Stage 1, patients experience fever, severe headache, nausea, and vomiting. During Stage 2, symptoms escalate to include altered mental state, coma, hallucinations, and seizures, and a stiff neck.
As reported by Fox News, the unidentified California woman began experiencing symptoms on June 16. Six days later, she was dead.
Although the CDC has verified four survivors in the last 37 years, primary amebic meningoencephalitis is generally fatal.
It is unclear how the California woman contracted the brain-eating amoeba. However, health officials said they are fairly certain she was "infected on private land," which is not accessible by the general public. | Famous Person - Death | July 2015 | ['(Reno Gazette–Journal)', '(Inquisitr.com)'] |
After winning the Spanish Grand Prix with driver Pastor Maldonado, the British Formula One team Williams suffers a fire in its pit garage, leaving 31 people injured. |
Williams's celebrations of a first Grand Prix victory in eight years have been marred by injuries to 31 people following a fire in the team's garage.
Three of four injured Williams team members were among a total of seven people requiring hospital treatment.
Four Caterham mechanics and a Force India team member, who had suffered smoke inhalation, were among those treated at the track's medical unit.
The incident is believed to involve a Kers unit, which sparked a fuel fire.
Caterham, who occupied the garage next to Williams in the Circuit de Catalunya pit lane, explained one of those injured had a minor hand injury, with three others suffering respiratory issues.
A Williams spokesperson said: "Four team personnel were injured in the incident and subsequently taken to the medical centre. Three are now receiving treatment at local hospitals for their injuries, while the fourth has been released. The team will monitor their condition and ensure they receive the best possible care.
"The team, the fire services and the police are working together to determine the root cause of the fire."
The fire occurred after Williams's group photo commemorating Pastor Maldonado's victory, the Grove-based team's first since Juan Pablo Montoya's win in the 2004 Brazil Grand Prix.
Founder Frank Williams, whose family attended the race in celebration of his recent 70th birthday, was led to safety. "I was there when [founder] Frank Williams was giving his speech to everyone," said Williams reserve driver Valtteri Bottas.
"I felt an explosion from behind, somewhere from the fuel area, and everyone ran out quickly."
Mechanics from several teams joined Williams's pit crew in attempting to extinguish the flames which sent smoke billowing across the paddock.
Maldonado's car was parked elsewhere awaiting post-race checks during the blaze, but the FW34 of team-mate Bruno Senna, who crashed out after 12 laps, was in the garage at the time. | Fire | May 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Forces loyal to Ivory Coast's internationally recognised President Alassane Ouattara seize further towns and move into the biggest city Abidjan. , | (CNN) -- Forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized president of Ivory Coast, attacked the residence of disputed incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and took control of state-run TV early Friday morning, a spokesman for Ouattara told CNN.
Gbagbo's residence is near the state-run television station taken over by Ouattara forces in the early morning hours Friday, said Patrick Achi, the Ouattara spokesman. Gbagbo apparently was not there.
The takeover occured less than three hours after a Gbagbo spokesman appeared on the same network declaring that Gbagbo had no intention of leaving the presidential palace, according to a witness who saw the broadcast. The presidential palace is not Gbagbo's personal residence and is located elsewhere.
Gbagbo has refused to cede power after a disputed November election.
The takeover of the government network, which had previously been accused of inciting violence against protesters opposed to the Gbagbo government, came as Ivory Coast's internal war appeared to enter a decisive and final phase, with forces loyal to Ouattara making a final push to oust a defiant Gbagbo. Ouattara on Thursday declared a curfew in Abidjan as forces loyal to him moved closer to taking control of the city. The curfew, Ouattara said, will remain in effect until Sunday. Also Thursday, Ouattara's interior minister announced on radio that the air and sea borders of the country would be sealed until further notice.
The curfew, however, did not seem to be universally recognized as Abidjan residents reported hearing sounds of heavy gunfire Thursday night.
"It seemed there was a battle going on," said Diallo Ibrahim, adding that the "heavy gunfire" appeared to subside by midnight Thursday. Ibrahim, an accountant, said he watched the Gbagbo spokesman appear on TV and declared that Gbagbo would not leave the presidential palace. After the announcement, however, the station went dark, Ibrahim said.
Ouattara's spokesman, Patrick Achi, told CNN earlier Thursday that rebel forces were patrolling some streets of Abidjan and were fast closing in on Gbagbo. It will be only "hours, maybe days" before Gbagbo falls, Achi said. "The army does not want to fight for Laurent Gbagbo."
Residents in Abidjan told CNN that people were frightened at the prospect of an all-out war and were huddled in their homes Thursday. At sunset, they could still hear the sound of gunfire outside. Smoke could be seen in some parts of the city.
"We can tell the fighting has gone to another level," said one resident who did not want to be named because of security reasons. "We are watching to see what will happen next."
Humanitarian agencies warned Abidjan is on the brink of catastrophe.
"The international community must take immediate steps to protect the civilian population," said Salvatore Sagues, Amnesty International's researcher on West Africa.
Choi Young-jin, head of the United Nations' mission in Ivory Coast, said on France Info radio that U.N. peacekeepers have taken the place of army and police who abandoned Gbagbo on Thursday.
Choi said that the siege laid on the Abidjan hotel where Ouattara was confined has been lifted.
Ouattara was recognized as the winner of a November presidential election but had been holed up in the U.N.-protected Golf Hotel since then as the political stalemate led to escalating violence and turmoil.
Meanwhile, Gbagbo's army chief, Gen. Philippe Mangou, asked for asylum at the residence of the South African ambassador, the South African government said Thursday. Achi said it was a sign that the armed forces now stand fully behind Ouattara.
Republican Forces wrested control of much of the capital, Yamoussoukro, and other key cocoa-producing and port cities earlier in the week before marching to Abidjan, the commercial center of Ivory Coast.
Ouattara issued a statement saying that despite numerous attempts to end the violence, Gbagbo had refused. He said Ivory Coast is now at a turning point in its history and called for unity.
"In order to end the escalating violence in our country, the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast have started to put in place, in accordance with their missions, the protection of people and their property against the militia men and mercenaries paid by Laurent Gbagbo," Ouattara said.
"They have decided to restore democracy and to respect the vote of the people," he said. "In every city where they went, they were greeted in jubilation."
Human rights agencies have documented the deaths of 462 people -- some in heinous fashion -- and the displacement of more than 1 million from their homes.
Many residents in Abidjan fear Gbagbo will not go down easily.
Koffi Kouakou, a citizen of Ivory Coast who now lives in South Africa, said his family members were stocking up on food and waiting for the battle they feel is inevitable.
"Everybody is calling it the battle of Abidjan," said Kouakou. "There will be a battle and people will be killed, unfortunately. Nobody knows when it is going to happen but it will happen soon."
Concerned about the rising tide of violence, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Wednesday to impose sanctions on Gbagbo, his wife and three associates, as well as give U.N. peacekeepers more authority to protect civilians.
The U.N. resolution demands that Gbagbo step down immediately and that all state institutions, including the military, accept Ouattara as president. It also authorizes U.N. peacekeepers "to use all necessary means to carry out its mandate to protect civilians under imminent threat of violence."
The resolution imposes targeted sanctions and travel bans on Gbagbo, his wife, Simone, and three others: Desire Tagro, Pascal Affi N'Guessan and Alcide Djedje.
The resolution accuses all five of "obstruction to the peace and reconciliation process" and of rejecting the legitimate election of Ouattara. All but Laurent Gbagbo are accused of "public incitement to hatred and violence." | Armed Conflict | March 2011 | ['(Reuters)', '(CNN)'] |
The Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement addressing global warming, comes into effect. | The accord requires countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Some 141 countries, accounting for 55% of greenhouse gas emissions, have ratified the treaty, which pledges to cut these emissions by 5.2% by 2012. But the world's top polluter - the US - has not signed up to the treaty.
The US says the changes would be too costly to introduce and that the agreement is flawed. Large developing countries including India, China and Brazil are not required to meet specific targets for now. 'Out of control'
The ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto, where the pact was negotiated, is hosting the main ceremony marking the treaty's coming into force.
Russia ratified the treaty in November 2004 - the crucial moment making the treaty legally binding.
Russia's entry was vital, because the protocol had to be ratified by nations accounting for at least 55% of greenhouse gas emissions to become valid. This target was only met after Russia joined. But the head of the UN Environment Programme, Klaus Toepfer, said Kyoto was only a first step and much hard work needed to be done to fight global warming.
"Climate change is the spectre at the feast, capable of undermining our attempts to deliver a healthier, fairer and more resilient world," he said.
Recent projections on planet warming made terrifying reading, he said, painting a vision of a planet that is "spinning out of control."
He said it would be Africa which bore the burden of the world's failure to act.
Individual targets
The protocol, which became legally binding at midnight New York time (0500 GMT) on 16 February, demands a 5.2% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from the industrialised world as a whole, by 2012.
Not just hot air - more than 140 countries have signed up
Each country has been set its own individual targets according to its pollution levels.
Growing developing countries China and India are outside the framework, a fact pointed out by US President George W Bush when he abandoned Kyoto as one of his first acts when taking office in 2001.
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi issued a statement welcoming the treaty but also calling on non-signatories to rethink.
"From now, we have to build a system in which more nations will work together under the common framework to stop global warming," he said.
Environmentalists held protests around the world to mark the treaty coming into force - with many targeting the US.
Speakers at the official ceremony include Nobel Peace prize winner Wangari Maathai.
Ms Maathai, an ecologist and Kenya's deputy environment minister, said the Kyoto Protocol would require not just efforts from governments and businesses, but also a change in the way people lived.
Tough goals
But even for countries that have signed up to Kyoto, meeting the goals could be difficult.
Canada, one of the treaty's first signatories, has no clear plan for reaching its target emission cuts. Far from cutting back, its emissions have increased by 20% since 1990.
And Japan is also unsure it will be able to meet its legal requirement to slash emissions by 6% from 1990 levels by 2012.
"Japan will make all efforts to respect the rules of the Protocol," said Takashi Omura, of the Japanese environment ministry. "It will neither be easy nor insurmountable." | Sign Agreement | February 2005 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters)'] |
A female student at Alpine High School in Texas, U.S., shoots herself dead in what appeared to be an "active shooter" event, resulting in a student and police officer being injured. | ALPINE, TEXAS — A 14-year-old girl died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound Thursday after shooting and injuring another female student inside a high school in West Texas, according to the local sheriff.
Authorities did not release a possible motive for the gunfire that erupted shortly before 9 a.m. at Alpine High School in Alpine, a town of 5,900 about 220 miles southeast of El Paso. The shooting was followed by a series of unrelated threats made by a male caller that added to the chaos of the day and diverted law enforcement from the high school.
"That's ridiculous for someone to call in something like this when we've got this situation going on," Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson told radio station KVLF.
The sheriff said the family of the girl who died had moved to Alpine about six months ago. She was a freshman at the school.
Dodson said the injured student ran outside seeking help and was taken to a hospital with injuries that weren't considered life threatening.
Dodson said a U.S. Homeland Security officer who was responding to the incident was shot in the leg when a U.S. marshal who also was responding accidentally discharged his weapon. The injured officer was transported to a hospital in Odessa, Texas.
The shooting at the high school prompted a lockdown at Alpine's three public schools, which were later evacuated.
Alpine police Chief Russell Scown said even after the shooter was found mortally wounded in a bathroom at the school, it wasn't immediately clear that she was the assailant. Emergency responders at one point thought two shooters may have been involved.
The school district declined comment, saying it would release a statement later.
Law enforcement officials were also dealing with threats made in the wake of the shooting. They said they don't believe there was a connection between the threats and the shooting at the high school.
Authorities said threats were phoned in to an Alpine hospital and to Sul Ross State University, which is about a mile from the high school. Officers and bomb-sniffing dogs had to search for explosives in each building of the university, Dodson said. None were found.
"Right now, we think we've got some nut, who in the midst of one of our most emotional times here at our school started calling in these threats," Dodson said at an afternoon news conference, adding, "Basically, he's what we're looking for right now."
There was also a threatening note left at a motel in Marathon, Texas, about 30 miles east of Alpine.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said earlier that he's monitoring developments in the Alpine shooting and promised to provide support for law enforcement agencies investigating the matter.
| Famous Person - Death | September 2016 | ['(The Chicago Tribune)'] |
Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas calls for early legislative elections to end the stalemate in creating a national unity government with the Hamas party. | Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Saturday called for early elections, amid increased violence between political factions and the collapse of talks on forming a unity government.
Abbas called for presidential and legislative elections to end the stalemate between his Fatah party and the ruling Hamas party, the Palestinians' two major political movements, which are locked in a worsening power struggle.
The announcement came in an impassioned speech that was broadcast on television. (Watch Abbas promise to let Palestinian people decide )
Hamas immediately rejected the idea, and it was not clear if the ruling party would participate in the elections. "This is a real coup against the democratically elected government," senior Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri told the Reuters news agency.
Abbas also said that Palestinians would not be drawn into civil war, noting the violence that has erupted in recent days, including an attack on the Palestinian prime minister and street battles in Gaza and the West Bank.
In the latest violence, 13 Palestinians were injured in clashes between Hamas and Fatah supporters in Gaza, nine in the town of Khan Younis and four in the town of Rafah, according to Palestinian security sources. Earlier in his remarks, Abbas said he didn't want his Fatah party to be part of a Hamas-led government, and said he had the constitutional right to dissolve the government.
Abbas said the people must be the moderators of what happens next in Palestinian politics.
"We need to lift the siege, everyone must work together to achieve this objective," the president said.
Millions in aid from the West was cut off after Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, won elections in January. Hamas also refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo reacted positively to Abbas' proposal.
"While the elections are an internal matter, we hope this helps bring the violence to an end and the formation of a Palestinian Authority committed to the Quartet principles," she said.
The Mideast Quartet includes the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union, which have been trying to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, traveling in the Middle East Saturday, backed Abbas' election announcement and urged the international community to support him, according to wire service reports.
Abbas said the elections would take place within three months. However, Saeb Erakat, chief Palestinian negotiator, said that preliminary work needs to be done by the Palestinian election committee. Then a time frame can be recommended to Abbas who would issue a decree for the elections.
Erakat said he thought elections would not take place before mid-2007. Abbas' announcement, from his West Bank headquarters, was met by loud applause from hundreds of supporters, The Associated Press reported.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, hundreds of supporters of Abbas' Fatah movement rushed into the street in celebration, with dozens of gunmen firing in the air as the crowd chanted, "Go, go, we are with you until liberation," the AP reported. The problems spiked Thursday when Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya was attacked as he tried to re-enter Gaza carrying millions of dollars for his people following a tour of neighboring countries. (Full story)
Hamas officials blamed Fatah, the former ruling party, for the attack on Haniya.
Abbas Saturday denied there was any conspiracy to kill Haniya, and said that Hamas supporters sparked the violence at that border crossing by bringing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to welcome their leader home.
Friday, tens of thousands of Hamas supporters took to the streets to protest the alleged assassination attempt on Haniya. Tensions boiled over into fighting in both Gaza and the West Bank. Medical sources said 38 people were hurt in the West Bank city of Ramallah. In Gaza City, masked gunman loyal to Hamas fought police allied to the Fatah party, The Associated Press reported. There were no reports of casualties. Haniya addressed a huge rally in Gaza City Friday celebrating the 19th anniversary of the Islamic Hamas movement, which ousted Fatah from power in January. | Government Job change - Election | December 2006 | ['(CNN)'] |
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani begins negotiations with Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in a bid to end the fighting in Najaf for three weeks. Sistani tells thousands of Iraqis heading to the holy city to wait on the outskirts of Najaf. Ayatollah Sistani calls a pause in fighting, telling protesters to stay home, and urging all forces to withdraw. US and Iraqi troops suspend attacks for 24 hours. | They came by the thousands, these unarmed Shiite demonstrators, answering the call of their spiritual leader to witness a peace he would try to bring to Najaf, his besieged city.
Initially, the return of supreme Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani looked like it might herald a return to fighting. But by Thursday evening, rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr agreed to a peace deal presented by Ayatollah Sistani to end three weeks of fighting in Najaf, according to a top aide to Sistani.
The five-point peace plan called for:
- Najaf and Kufa be declared weapons-free cities
- All foreign forces withdraw from Najaf
- Iraqi local police take charge of security
- The government to compensate those whose businesses and homes were damaged in the fighting
- A census to be taken to prepare for elections expected in the country by January.
"Mr. Moqtada al-Sadr agreed to the initiative of his eminence al-Sistani," Hamed al-Khafaf told reporters at a news conference outside the house where al-Sistani was staying here.
The deal came after a violent day that saw dozens of civilians killed in Kufa and Najaf. By Thursday afternoon, Sistani called for a pause, telling protesters to stay home and urging all forces to withdraw. US and Iraqi troops agreed to suspend military operations for 24 hours.
Before the cleric's convoy arrived from Basra Thursday, a mortar barrage from unknown attackers killed or wounded dozens of supporters of Sistani and Mr. Sadr at a mosque in nearby Kufa, where they were waiting to march into Najaf.
Soon after, another group of Najaf-bound marchers were caught in deadly crossfire that erupted between Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters and forces stationed at an Iraqi National Guard base.
Many Shiites - who make up some 60 percent of Iraq's population - saw the intervention of Sistani as a last chance to resolve the conflict without further damage or bloodshed.
In Najaf, fighting and tensions mounted Wednesday evening ahead of Sistani's return. The nervous police department raided the Najaf Sea Hotel, where most of the foreign and Arab press corps is staying.
At 9 p.m., dozens of armed policeman kicked down doors and fired weapons indoors, before leading reporters away in pickup trucks to the police station.
There, police chief Ghalib al-Jezairi criticized journalists for reporting on Sistani's peace initiative. Denying that Sistani had called for demonstrators to converge on Najaf, Mr. Al-Jezaari later apologized for the rough treatment his men had given journalists.
"Let's not forget they are under huge stress because of the night attacks on the police and the American raids on the Old City of Najaf. I hope you will excuse us for our behavior."
On Thursday morning, the city returned to a kind of normalcy once more. Cars plied the roads, and shops reopened in all but the embattled Old City section, where snipers and US troops kept Sadr's militia pinned down.
Then at 10 a.m., fighting within the Old City intensified.
Shells and heavy machine-gun fire from Bradley fighting vehicles could be heard a half-mile away from the shrine, and smoke filled the skies. The American cordon appeared to be growing tighter, now within a few hundred yards on all sides.
Those who have seen the Mahdi Army forces inside the Old City say they appear increasingly exhausted, and their numbers have dwindled.
Barely 10 minutes later, a series of mortar shells landed inside the nearby central mosque in the adjacent city of Kufa, controlled by the Mahdi Army. Ambulances carried about 15 wounded civilians to the Al Hakeem Hospital in Najaf. The hospital staff, already sapped by three weeks of relentless fighting, say there have been 26 recorded civilian deaths in the past 24 hours.
By noon, the city returned to a kind of siege. Demonstrators - all unarmed, according to journalists present on the scene - marched toward the US bases at the edge of Najaf, and were cut down by gunfire.
"Suddenly armed men joined our group and fired at the police," witness Hazim Kareem told Reuters at Najaf's hospital. "The police started firing everywhere."
For the remainder of the afternoon, Najaf police patrolled the streets looking for cars and buses with Baghdad license plates. With peace so close at hand, the city was in lockdown once more.
Now, whatever the final outcome for Mr. Sadr's encircled forces at the shrine, there are likely to be profound political consequences.
If the Iraqi government should give the go-ahead for a final attack - ignoring the 11th hour peace moves of Sistani - public opinion may turn against the government, and toward the waiting arms of radical movements like Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Whatever happens here, most experts agree that the supreme loser will be Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
"Let's give Allawi some benefit of the doubt here, and say that this attack wasn't his choice," says Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
"Probably Allawi has already lost. It wasn't his decision to launch an extended siege, that tugged on the heartstrings of [Shiites], many of whom don't like Sadr, but don't like the siege either and don't like the fact that the American military is at the head of the fight."
If anyone is strengthened, Mr. Dodge says, it is likely to be Sadr or Sistani. "If Sistani pulls this off in the end, then his moral and political weight is increased. If Sadr escapes Najaf, either to Kufa or to Sadr City, his political and military position is bolstered because he fought the Americans. For Allawi, it's more problematic. He has no army, a very doubtful police force, no [loyal following], no power at all. That's not his fault, that's just the hand he was dealt when he became prime minister."
Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, is more blunt. "The problem here is that getting Moqtada al-Sadr out of Najaf doesn't solve anything." If he emerges alive with Sistani, "Sadr could be seen as a defender of the Shiite movement."
If a peace initiative appears to be deliberately stalled, however, there could be political reverberations across the Shiite south.
In Baghdad Wednesday afternoon, Shiites from the Sadr City and Kadhimiya neighborhoods prepared to drive to Najaf to greet Sistani, and clerics from several Shiite parties piled into cars to take part in the negotiations.
"We left Baghdad this morning, coming to make a peaceful demonstration to help Sistani solve the problem between the Americans and Moqtada al-Sadr," said a middle-aged man who called himself Abu Muslim, aboard a bus full of protesters that made it to Najaf. "We want the Americans to go out of Najaf, and the Mahdi Army also."
Moments later, police arrived, firing their weapons into the air and arrested the Abu Muslim and some 50 other demonstrators, turning their bus around and taking it to the police station. Journalists nearby were detained, their cameras examined for pictures of the arrests, and later released.
| Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | August 2004 | ['(khaleejtimes)', '(CSMonitor)', '(Reuters)'] |
Federal district court judge Richard Leon rules the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of U.S. phone records is unconstitutional. This ruling has limited impact since it applies to only one case, and the NSA is scheduled to replace this protocol with a more targeted system the end of this month. | The force is the United States’ best partner in the country, but should Washington pay up?
This week in FP’s international news quiz: Biden’s diplomatic blitz, Aung San Suu Kyi on trial, and a billionaire boom.
Black and Indigenous citizens have been excluded from the country’s narrative of growth.
And why its problems will outlast both presidents.
The Cable:
Judge Orders Limits on NSA Spy Program 20 Days Before It Ends Judge Orders Limits on NSA Spy Program 20... Privacy advocates notched a major win Monday when a federal judge ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection of U.S. phone records was unconstitutional. The actual impact, though, will be extremely limited: The program in question is set to shut down in less than three weeks. The case in question was brought by the conservative legal activist Larry Klayman and resulted in a memorable December 2013 opinion from Richard Leon, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, that called the NSA’s phone record collection program “almost Orwellian.”
Privacy advocates notched a major win Monday when a federal judge ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection of U.S. phone records was unconstitutional. The actual impact, though, will be extremely limited: The program in question is set to shut down in less than three weeks. The case in question was brought by the conservative legal activist Larry Klayman and resulted in a memorable December 2013 opinion from Richard Leon, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, that called the NSA’s phone record collection program “almost Orwellian.”
The government appealed that ruling, and in August, after considering the case for nearly two years, the Second Circuit vacated Leon’s ruling, saying he had not adequately determined whether Klayman’s phone records had been collected by the NSA. The Second Circuit sent the case back to Leon, and Monday’s ruling is the judge’s angry reply to the appellate court and harshly criticizes it for slowrolling the case.
In it, Leon reaffirmed his earlier criticism of the law when he wrote that “this court simply cannot, and will not, allow the government to trump the Constitution merely because it suits the exigencies of the moment.” In a 43-page decision, Leon described the NSA intelligence collection program as a “sweeping and truly astounding program that targets millions of Americans arbitrarily and indiscriminately.” You can support Foreign Policy by becoming a subscriber.
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The NSA’s mass collection of so-called “telephonic metadata,” first revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, is slated to come to an end on November 29, when a transition period for NSA reforms mandated by the USA Freedom Act comes to an end. Leon acknowledged in his ruling that it would have little practical impact given the program’s short lifespan. Still, he said it was important for the judiciary to weigh in on the constitutionality of the program while it still had the chance.
“With the government’s authority to operate the bulk telephony metadata program quickly coming to an end, this case is perhaps the last chapter in the judiciary’s evaluation of this particular program’s compatibility with the Constitution,” he wrote. “It will not, however, be the last chapter in the ongoing struggle to balance privacy rights and national security interests under our Constitution in an age of evolving technological wizardry.”
Leon ordered the NSA to end the collection of the phone records of two plaintiffs in the case, attorney J.J. Little and his law firm, J.J. Little & Associates. Leon determined that the other plaintiffs in the case, including Klayman, had not offered sufficient evidence to prove that their telephone records had been scooped up by the NSA. Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at American University and a close observer of national security cases, told Foreign Policy that the opinion is unlikely to have any wider implications, and is one written for the history books.
The NSA declined to comment on the case, referring questions from reporters to the Justice Department. Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman for the department, said the government is reviewing the case. Late Monday, Justice Department lawyers filed an emergency motion to Leon requesting that he stay his ruling and said that filtering out Little’s records from the database will require shutting down the program. Implementing a technical solution to comply with Leon’s ruling will take months, the lawyers claimed in their filing.
Snowden had revealed the existence of the program in question when he provided a court order compelling Verizon Business Network Services to turn over in full and on a daily basis the telephone records of its customers. Leon’s ruling against the program in 2013 represented a landmark moment in the post-Snowden era of judicial pushback against government surveillance programs.
Anticipating a government appeal, Leon stayed his 2013 injunction against the NSA’s intelligence gathering, but it wasn’t until August of 2015, nearly two years after Leon issued his first ruling in the case, that the Second Circuit vacated Leon’s ruling and questioned whether Klayman could prove that the NSA had hoovered up his telephone records. Since Leon first weighed in on the case, it has been overtaken by events on Capitol Hill. In June, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, which ended the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone records by moving the storage of such records into the hands of telephone companies. Rather than querying their own databases containing such records, the NSA will, starting on Nov. 29, have to secure a court order in order to receive such telephone data from phone companies. The minor reforms contained in the Freedom Act came to be the most significant response to the firestorm of criticism generated by Snowden’s disclosures, and, even so, the NSA privately did not put up much of a fight to preserve the program. In the aftermath of Snowden, it came to be seen as a politically toxic program with few security benefits. An independent review of the program found that it had neither discovered nor helped disrupt any terrorist plots. Leon’s ruling Monday noted that it was little more than a principled statement in a debate that had largely overtaken his court. “The loss of constitutional freedoms for even one day is a significant harm,” he wrote. | Government Policy Changes | November 2015 | ['(Reuters)', '(Foreign Policy)'] |
New laws come into effect giving the People's Republic of China more control over the selection of the Dalai Lama. | Communist China has introduced new rules that appear aimed at controlling the selection of the next Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual head.
Most Tibetans believe that eminent monks, such as the Dalai Lama, are reincarnated after death.
China, which governs Tibet, will now have the final say over who can be selected as a reincarnated monk.
The current Dalai Lama is a thorn in China's side, which is probably why it is keen to select his reincarnation.
Seal of approval
Although the new regulations do not mention the Dalai Lama by name, they effectively prevent his followers in exile from choosing his reincarnation.
This ruling by the Chinese government will not go down well with Tibetan monks
Thubten Samphel, spokesman for Tibet's government in exile
"No outside organisation or individual will influence or control the reincarnation of living Buddhas [eminent monks]," states one article of the new regulations.
They also say that any reincarnation has to be approved by various levels of government.
In the case of the most pre-eminent monks, who would include the Dalai Lama, China's cabinet has to give its seal of approval.
Officials at China's State Administration for Religious Affairs declined to be interviewed by the BBC about who these new rules are directed against.
But it appears China wants to control the selection of the next Dalai Lama. The current, 14th Dalai Lama, is now 72.
Tibetans defiant
Since he fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, he has travelled the world.
He promotes the idea that Tibetans deserve real autonomy from Beijing.
This annoys China, which claims Tibet has been part of the motherland for eight centuries.
Chinese officials routinely refer to the Dalai Lama as a "splittist" intent on separating Tibet from China, which reasserted its control of the region in 1951.
Tibetans outside China say the new regulations will not affect the selection of next Dalai Lama.
"We believe this ruling by the Chinese government will not go down well with Tibetan monks," says Thubten Samphel, spokesman for the Tibetan government in exile.
He says choosing the child who is a reincarnation of an eminent monk can only be done by an organisation with spiritual authority, and that does not include China's Communist government.
Also, the spokesman, based in Dharamsala, India, says that the Dalai Lama has already said he will be born outside Tibet if he is not allowed to return there during his lifetime.
The new regulations raise the prospect of two Dalai Lamas in the future, a situation that already has a precedent.
When the Dalai Lama selected the 11th Panchen Lama - Tibetan Buddhism's second-most important monk - in 1995, China followed suit by naming its own and placing the Dalai Lama's choice under detention. | Government Policy Changes | September 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
Rescuers race to reach over 180 coal miners trapped in two flooded mines in Shandong province in China. | Rescuers were battling to reach more than 180 miners trapped by floods in eastern China, raising fears of more deaths in what is already the world's most dangerous mining sector.
Torrential rains triggered flash flooding which breached a river levee and sent water cascading into the mine in Shandong province via an old shaft, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Wang Ziqi, director of the Shandong coal mine safety administration board, said the trapped men had only slim chances of survival.
Officials earlier said 756 miners were underground when the water swept in. Of those, 584 were rescued, leaving 172 trapped.
The flooding on Friday afternoon (local time) followed hours of downpours, and rescue work was hampered by further rains which fell during the evening and Saturday.
By Saturday morning (local time), according to rescue headquarters cited by Xinhua, all working places underground had been inundated.
Senior officials from China's State Administration of Work Safety rushed to oversee rescue efforts at the Zhangzhuang mine in Xintai city, 450 kilometres south of Beijing.
The work safety authority said another nine people were trapped in a nearby mine after similar flooding while 86 were able to escape.
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| Mine Collapses | August 2007 | ['(AFP via ABC News Australia)'] |
The first legs of the 2012–13 UEFA Europa League round of 16 are held across Europe. Gareth Bale helps Tottenham to a 3–0 defeat of Inter Milan. | From the section Footballcomments355
Gareth Bale maintained his superb scoring form to put Tottenham in control of their Europa League last-16 tie against Inter Milan.
Bale glanced in a header from Gylfi Sigurdsson's cross early on but will miss the second leg after his fourth caution of the season for diving.
Sigurdsson turned in from close range after Jermain Defoe's shot was saved.
"I go to the Tottenham training ground a lot and he is very humble. He is not ready to move abroad but I don't think he will worry about the publicity his efforts are creating. I don't think he will disappear for the mega bucks."
Jan Vertonghen headed in a third from Bale's corner in the second half to give Spurs a comfortable advantage.
While manager Andre Villas-Boas will be pleased to see Bale continuing his impressive run with his 21st of the campaign, there were plenty of other positive signs from a dominant performance that led to a sixth win in seven matches.
Icelandic midfielder Sigurdsson was a constant threat on the left flank and, making his first start after a month out with an ankle problem, Defoe looked sharp in attack.
A 50th Tottenham goal, and an 11th in nine games for club and country, mean that Welshman Bale will never be short of plaudits.
But Tottenham will be without the winger, who scored three goals in a blistering performance in Spurs' 4-3 defeat in the San Siro in 2010, when they head to Italy next week, having been cautioned by Spanish referee Antonio Lahoz after going down under a Walter Gargano challenge in the area.
Bale has only failed to score in one of his last nine matches. He has opened the scoring in seven of those games.
At least the positives continue to vastly outweigh the negatives and after an intense opening from the hosts, Bale guided a header into the corner from a Sigurdsson ball from the left.
Inter were struggling to get out of their own half and after 17 minutes they were two behind.
A neat passing move from Spurs worked space for Aaron Lennon to pull back for Defoe, whose shot was blocked by goalkeeper Samir Handanovic only for Sigurdsson to touch in.
Sigurdsson crossed for Vertonghen to have a looping header tipped over before another ball from the left saw Bale head wide.
Inter had a chance to reduce the arrears just before the interval but Ricardo Alvarez clipped wide after being sent clear by Antonio Cassano.
And they were soon made to pay after the break.
Vertonghen should have turned in from a Bale free-kick, but the Belgian made no mistake when he met Bale's corner unmarked to head in.
Bale just missed after a typical surge forward before Handonovic turned around the post from Defoe.
Lennon was also denied a fourth when he put the ball through Christian Chivu's legs only to be blocked by Handanovic.
Tottenham's goalkeeper Brad Friedel was alert enough to to race out to deny Rodrigo Palacio after a quick free-kick from Esteban Cambiasso and Spurs head to Italy in a strong position. | Sports Competition | March 2013 | ['(BBC)', '(Eurosport)'] |
The United States Navy relieves vice admiral Joseph Aucoin as commander of the United States Seventh Fleet following four collisions in Asia this year that claimed the lives of 17 sailors. | WASHINGTON—The U.S. Navy removed the commander of the fleet that has suffered four recent collisions in Asia and the deaths of several sailors, the Pacific Fleet said in a statement.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the Navy was planning to remove Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin—the three-star commander of U.S. Seventh Fleet in Yokosuka, Japan—though officials had declined to comment.
In a short statement Wednesday, the Navy said Adm. Scott Swift, the commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, had relieved him “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command.”
Vice Adm. Aucoin was expected to retire in coming weeks, but under the Navy’s tradition of public accountability, commanders or ship captains are dismissed as soon as their superiors lose confidence in their leadership. His removal doesn’t represent a specific finding of fault against Vice Adm. Aucoin. Navy officials are investigating the role that training, manning and other internal fleet processes may have played in the collisions. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | August 2017 | ['(New York Times)', '(Wall Street Journal)'] |
At least 13 people are killed and at least 85 are injured in a fierce gun battle in Gaza. | At least 13 people have been killed and at least 85 injured in a fierce gun battle in Gaza, emergency services say.
Eyewitnesses say hundreds of Hamas fighters and policemen surrounded a mosque where followers of a radical Islamist cleric were holed up. Hamas fired rocket-propelled grenades at the mosque and stormed the leader's house in Rafah, near the Egypt border. It is thought that at least 100 supporters of the al-Qaeda-linked group, Jund Ansar Allah, were inside. At least one Hamas fighter was killed by a grenade fired from the mosque but most of those killed were supporters of the cleric. One child was also killed. The entire neighbourhood was sealed off as the shooting continued after dark - in what was one of the most violent incidents in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip since an Israeli offensive in December and January. It was not immediately clear if the mosque's imam, Abdul-Latif Moussa, was captured during the fighting. Fighting pledge
Earlier, during Friday prayers, hundreds of worshippers at Ibn-Taymiyah mosque declared Gaza an "Islamic emirate". Abdul-Latif Moussa and armed supporters swore to fight to the death rather than hand over authority of the mosque to Hamas. During his own Friday sermon, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, dismissed Mr Moussa's comments. "These declarations [of an Islamic emirate] are aimed towards incitement against the Gaza Strip and an attempt at recruiting an international alliance against the Gaza Strip. "And we warn those who are behind these Israeli Zionist declarations: the Gaza Strip only contains its people." Jund Ansar Allah (Army of the Helpers of God) gained some prominence two months ago when it staged a failed attack on a border crossing between Gaza and Israel. The group is very critical of Hamas, which seized Gaza in 2007, accusing the Islamist group of not being Islamist enough. Hamas has cracked down on al-Qaeda-inspired groups in the past, the BBC's Middle East correspondent Katya Adler says. Hamas is concerned they may attract more extremist members, and has forbidden anyone except what it describes as Hamas security personnel from carrying weapons in Gaza, our correspondent says. | Armed Conflict | August 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict." | Follow NBC News LONDON — A Congolese gynecologist and an Iraqi Yazidi woman who spoke out about her abuse at the hands of Islamic State militants were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, commending their work highlighting sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Denis Mukwege has spent much of his life helping victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, many of them in the country's long-running civil war. He has become a leading voice pressuring his own government and others for not doing enough to stop such abuses.
Nadia Murad was one of an estimated 3,000 Iraqi Yazidi women and girls who were kidnapped and raped or sexually abused at the hands of ISIS in 2014. After her escape she used her trauma as a platform to seek justice for the crimes against her community, becoming a United Nations goodwill ambassador in 2016.
Murad said she was honoured and humbled to be named a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
"I share this award with all Yazidis, with all the Iraqis, Kurds and all the minorities and all survivors of sexual violence around the world," she said in a statement to Reuters.
Mukwege dedicated his award to all women affected by rape and sexual violence.
"This violence committed on their bodies happens not only in our country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also in many other countries," he said at a news conference.
The committee's statement called Mukwege "the helper who has devoted his life to defending victims of wartime sexual violence." The committee said Murad "is the witness who tells of the abuses perpetrated against herself and others."
"We want to send out a message of awareness that women, who constitute half of the population in most communities, are used as a weapon of war," Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said after announcing the winners in Oslo, Norway.
"They need protection and the perpetrators need to be prosecuted for their actions," she said.
Their award comes a decade after the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1820, classifying the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. The committee received nominations for 216 individuals and 115 organizations for this year's prize.
"It is important to see the suffering of women, to see the abuses, and to achieve that, it's also important that women leave the concept of shame and speak up."
Mukwege founded the Panzi Hospital in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, an region devastated by a war that has claimed an estimated six million lives. This area has been plagued by an "epidemic of sexualized violence for twenty years," according to the Panzi Foundation, which Mukwege set up to support the hospital.
The Nobel Committee said that Mukwege's work has made him "the foremost, most unifying symbol, both nationally and internationally, of the struggle to end sexual violence in war and armed conflicts."
"He has repeatedly condemned impunity for mass rape and criticized the Congolese government and other countries for not doing enough to stop the use of sexual violence against women as a strategy and weapon of war," the committee said.
In 2014, Murad's village was captured by ISIS as it swept through Iraq and Syria. Militants massacred some 300 people as part of a brutal assault through the Sinjar region.
A U.N. panel would later class this as a genocide that "sought to erase the Yazidis through killings, sexual slavery, enslavement, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment."
Murad was captured, repeatedly raped and subjected to other forms of sexual abuse. She escaped and decided to take the rare step of speaking out about her trauma. In 2016 at the age of 23, became the U.N.’s first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking.
It was her campaigning that persuaded human rights lawyer Amal Clooney to take up the cause of the Yazidis. In 2016, NBC News' Cynthia McFadden sat down for an interview with Murad and Clooney, with the lawyer saying that "I met her and I just thought I can't walk away from this."
The Nobel Committee said that Murad had "refused to accept the social codes that require women to remain silent and ashamed of the abuses to which they have been subjected. She has shown uncommon courage in recounting her own sufferings and speaking up on behalf of other victims."
Sa'ib Kheder, a Yazidi member of Iraq's parliament, told NBC News that Murad's award was "a great achievement for Yazidis and Iraqis in general" and hoped it would help his community achieve justice.
"What Yazidis went through is considered as a genocide, so we hope that this is going to put some pressure on the government to deal with the Yazidis' issues," he said. "We hope the winning of Nadia Murad will help to push the government to help in finding those missing Yazidis and to rebuild their towns."
The government of Iraq also congratulated Murad on becoming a Nobel laureate.
Our deepest respect to @NadiaMuradBasee who was awarded the 2018 #NobelPeacePrize for her courageous campaigning on behalf of victims of sexual violence during conflict
Some commentators interpreted the prize as a nod to the #MeToo movement. Reiss-Andersen, the committee chair, said that while "Me Too and war crimes are not quite the same thing," she did draw some comparison.
"It is important to see the suffering of women, to see the abuses," she said. "To achieve that it is also important that women leave the concept of shame and speak up."
Nobel laureates do not know they've won before the prize is announced. Reiss-Andersen said the committee had tried to contact the winners but "we haven't managed to get through on the phone. If they are watching this, my heartfelt congratulations."
Soon after, previous Nobel Peace Prize laureates offered their congratulations.
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani women's education campaigner, who became the youngest ever winner in 2014, wrote on Twitter that Mukwege and Murad's "work saves lives and helps women speak out about sexual violence."
Congratulations to @NadiaMuradBasee and @DenisMukwege! Their work saves lives and helps women speak out about sexual violence. #NobelPeacePrize https://t.co/2AvNSwleR2
Last year's winner, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said in a statement that the pair "thoroughly deserve this honor through their incredible work."
Before the winner was announced, the group, known as ICAN, offered some advice.
"This is going to be a wild ride," it said in a Facebook post. "Don't worry if the website crashes (it happens to best of us…), if reporters are banging down your door, if you had other commitments that day. Just Breathe." | Awards ceremony | October 2018 | ['(NBC News)'] |