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Palestinians have condemned the latest plans for more Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, announced as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ended a US visit. | Palestinians have condemned the latest plans for more Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, announced as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ended a US visit.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israel was "digging itself a hole", while an Israeli MP said Mr Netanyahu had "decided to spit into Obama's eye". The announcement came as Barack Obama and Mr Netanyahu held unusually low-key talks at the White House on Tuesday. The trip was overshadowed by the worst crisis in US-Israeli ties for decades. The row flared two weeks ago when, during a visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden, Israel unveiled plans to build 1,600 homes in part of East Jerusalem. New apartments
Mr Netanyahu said he regretted the bad timing of the earlier announcement, but Washington branded it an insult. Minutes before Mr Netanyahu's fence-mending visit to the White House on Tuesday, it emerged the Jerusalem municipal government had approved the building of 20 new apartments. The project has been funded by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, a patron of Jewish settler groups. The development is planned for the site of an old hotel in occupied East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah area, a flashpoint neighbourhood. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said it cast doubt on Israel's credibility as a peace partner. "Israel is digging itself into a hole that it will have to climb out of if it is serious about peace," he said. Washington said it was seeking clarification on the latest plans. But Israeli MP Eitan Cabel - a member of the Labor Party, which sits in the governing coalition - accused Mr Netanyahu of a fresh insult to the US. "Netanyahu decided to spit into Obama's eye, this time from up close," Mr Cabel was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying. "He and his pyromaniac ministers insist on setting the Middle East ablaze." The Israeli anti-settlement watchdog, Peace Now, which discovered the latest building plan, said it could prove "devastating" for hopes of resuming peace talks, stalled for more than a year. But an Israeli Likud MP, MK Yariv Levin, was quoted as saying the building approval was the "translation of Netanyahu's words into deeds". It was an apparent reference to Mr Netanyahu's speech on Monday to an influential pro-Israeli lobby group in Washington, when he reasserted Israel's "right to build" in Jerusalem. Playing tough
The Israelis said there had been a "good atmosphere" during Tuesday's talks between Mr Netanyahu and Mr Obama. Israeli officials will no doubt, once again, try to portray this as a low-level bureaucratic decision which has no relationship to the high diplomacy between Israel and the US. Since the US has protested about this project, small as it may be, before, that is not really credible.
This may have come about - as with the Ramat Shlomo announcement - because right-wingers are seeking to make themselves look good to their own supporters by making Mr Netanyahu look bad. Conversely, sources in the Jerusalem municipality have accused the Israeli left of publicising the new building permits in order to "rekindle the situation on the ground".
But the BBC's Kim Ghattas in Washington notes the Israeli leader did not get the reception usually reserved for America's allies. There was no press conference, no lavish welcome, and the White House did not even release a picture of the meeting. It all signals that the US is playing tough, making clear it is upset with the Israeli government, says our correspondent. Last week Mr Obama said the approval of the plans for 1,600 homes in the Ramat Shlomo area of East Jerusalem was not helpful to the peace process. Palestinians want East Jerusalem for their future capital, but Israel insists the city cannot be divided. Nearly 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. The row also comes amid frayed ties between Israel and Britain. London announced on Tuesday it was expelling an Israeli diplomat over the forgery of British passports used by the suspected killers of a Hamas commander in Dubai. What are these? | Diplomatic Visit | March 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
An estimated half–million Italians protest in Rome's Circus Maximus against pending legislation that would legalize same–sex unions. The legislation would extend to civil unions the same rights they would have under marriage, including adoption of children. | Follow NBC News ROME — Hundreds of thousands of Italians descended on the capital city Saturday to protest a bill that would legalize same-sex unions across the country.
Lawmakers will vote next week on the proposals, which would give gay couples with civil unions — and unmarried heterosexual couples — the same rights as they would have under marriage, including the adoption of their partners' children.
“Italy can’t remain the tail-end in Europe in the field of civil and human rights,” Monica Cirinna, the bill’s author, told NBC News. “We can’t go to Europe to complain about economic problems if we carry such a heavy burden as the failure to recognize same-sex couples.”
Italy is the only Western European nation that doesn’t recognize same-sex civil unions or gay marriage, in part because of the heavy influence of the Catholic Church on government and public opinion.
Pope Francis last week warned that “there can be no confusion between the family willed by God and any other type of union.”
Many of those opposed to the change fear the law is a Trojan horse that would lead to full legalization of gay marriage. Some fear it could also open the way to loosening laws on surrogate motherhood, which is illegal in Italy.
Saturday's protest was billed by supporters as a "Family Day" in the name of traditional marriage. It has been backed by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, The Tablet reported.
Upwards of an estimated half-million people filled Rome's Circus Maximus venue, although organizers said as many as 2 million supporters attended the rally. That number could not immediately be verified by NBC News.
Rally-goers opposing the same-sex unions bill were adamant about their positions.
"We are against this law because children are not a given right," said Stefano Mariani. "Since the beginning of time, children have come from a mother, and a father."
"Two men can’t give birth to life, so you can’t call that a family. It’s selfish of them to want children just to satisfy their desires," added Pamela Burattini.
But last weekend, hundreds of thousands of supporters of the bill flooded more than 100 cities with rainbow flags.
A smaller group of supporters gathered in front of Senate in Rome on Thursday while the bill was being debated. Many held ringing alarm clocks, chanting: “Wake up Italy.”
“As an Italian, the right to officialize our relationship is the same as the right to exist,” said Andrea Masini, who was at the rally with his partner, Christophe Betmalle. “Our friends and families know us as a couple. Our nephews call us uncles. But for the state, we can only be two friends. Why shouldn’t we be officially recognized?”
Civil unions have been on the Italian government’s agenda in some form or another since 1988, but this is the first time a law has a real chance of being approved.
“Last year, the European Court of Human Rights has condemned Italy for failing to protect the rights of same sex couples,” said Gabriele Piazzoni, the leader of Italy’s LGBT association, ARCIGAY. “If a gay couple gets married abroad, comes to Italy, and their rights are not recognized, they can get sue the government for 5,000 euros. And the state has to give it to them, because Europe recognized it’s a violation of their rights. This is one of the reasons the government is proposing this law, because they are being pressured to do it by the European Union.”
The bill is widely expected to be approved in the Senate by Feb. 9, despite being opposed by large numbers of center-right opposition lawmakers and divisions within the ruling Democratic Party. | Protest_Online Condemnation | January 2016 | ['(AP via The New York Times)', '(Reuters)', '(NBC News)', '(The Local)'] |
A 200–car pileup in La Prairie, Quebec, Canada, kills two people and injures 69 others. | Two people have died and dozens of others were injured after a mass pileup on a Canadian highway involving 200 vehicles.
Two people have been killed and 69 injured after a 200-car pileup in snowy Canada.
The massive collision happened at 12.30pm on Wednesday on Highway 15 in La Prairie, Quebec.
Transport Minister François Bonnardel said snow and high winds at the time of the incident created white-out conditions and reduced visibility to zero.
“People were driving, there were strong winds ... and, suddenly, you couldn’t see anything,’’ he said.
“And then, well, the pileup started.”
Emergency personnel gather at the scene following a multi-vehicle crash on the south shore of Montreal in La Prairie, Quebec.
Two people were trapped in their cars hours after the crash and crews were still extracting people three hours later.
CBC News reported 15 people were taken to hospital, with nine people in a serious condition and 60 suffering from minor injuries.
About 150 people were taken by bus to a nearby community centre for treatment and to be picked up.
Vehicles involved included a school bus and a flammable tanker truck.
The pileup of vehicles stretched for about a kilometre.
“Pretty much everything with four wheels was involved,” said Sgt Marie-Michelle Moore with the Sûreté du Quebec.
Two people were killed in the massive pileup. Picture: Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press via APSource:AP
Numerous vehicles were mangled, including several large trucks.
A driver who identified himself as Kyle told CTV News he got hit by a bus and smacked into the retaining wall.
“As I was driving along... all I saw was red lights, brake lights, cars just hitting each other, trying to swerve out of the way,” he said.
An investigation into what initially caused the crash is ongoing.
The road is expected to remain closed until Thursday morning. | Road Crash | February 2020 | ['(News AU)'] |
A court in Denmark sentences a former public employee to six–and–a–half years in prison for embezzling $17 million in Danish government funds intended for the poor. She will not appeal the sentence, according to her lawyer. | COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A Danish court sentenced a former public employee on Tuesday to 6-1/2 years in prison for embezzling $17 million in Danish government funds earmarked to support the most vulnerable in society.
Britta Nielsen was arrested in Johannesburg, South Africa in November 2018 with piles of cash and charged with diverting 117 million Danish crowns in state funds intended for the poor to her own accounts over a 25-year period until 2018.
Nielsen, 65, who worked for the social affairs ministry for over 40 years until her arrest, admitted at her trial that the money, which among other things was spent on horses and a mansion in South Africa, became an addiction to her.
Nielsen’s lawyer, who during court proceedings blamed authorities for lax oversight of large amounts of government funds, said the sentence would not be appealed.
The verdict followed a government tax scandal and a money-laundering case involving Denmark’s biggest lender, Danske Bank.
The three cases have contributed to a decline in public trust in leadership in what has long been one of the world’s least corrupt countries.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | February 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
A man in Greensboro, Florida is killed by a tree that crashed through his home, becoming the first reported death from the storm in the United States. Later, a child is killed by a falling tree in Seminole County, Georgia. | One of the strongest storms in recorded history to hit the US has battered north-west Florida, flooding homes, washing out beaches and snapping trees.
Rescue services are beginning to assess the full impact of Hurricane Michael, which made landfall on Wednesday afternoon as a category four storm with 155mph (250km/h) winds.
At least six people have been killed, most of them in Florida.
Having weakened to a tropical storm, Michael has been hitting the Carolinas. Storm-surge warnings are still in place, the US National Hurricane Center says, and residents across the southern US have been warned of the continuing danger from downed powerlines, flash floods and landslides.
There are fears for people who ignored evacuation warnings in some of the areas now flooded.
Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were left without electricity in Florida, Alabama and Georgia.
Michael made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, at around 14:00 (18:00 GMT) on Wednesday.
It ranks among the most powerful hurricanes to hit the US in terms of wind speed and barometric pressure, comparable to Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Michael was so strong as it swept into Florida that it remained a hurricane for hours as it moved further inland, before being downgraded to a tropical storm.
Its rapid intensification caught many by surprise, although the storm later weakened.
Unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico turbo-charged the storm from a tropical depression on Sunday.
On Tuesday it was still a category two hurricane but by Wednesday morning it had reached borderline category five, the highest level.
Florida officials say at least four people died as a result of the storm in Gadsden County.
In Seminole County, Georgia, a metal car-shelter lifted by a gust of wind hit a mobile home, killing a girl of 11. And a man died when a tree fell on his car near Charlotte, North Carolina on Thursday.
Michael earlier reportedly killed at least 13 people as it passed through Central America: six in Honduras, four in Nicaragua and three in El Salvador.
The storm has knocked out power to more than 900,000 homes and businesses.
More than 370,000 people in Florida were ordered to evacuate but officials believe many ignored the warning.
The coastal city of Apalachicola reported a storm surge of nearly 8ft (2.5m).
"There are so many downed power lines and trees that it's almost impossible to get through the city," local mayor Van Johnson was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. Florida Governor Rick Scott said the US Coast Guard had carried out 10 missions overnight, saving at least 27 people.
"So many lives have been changed forever," he told reporters. "So many families have lost everything. This hurricane was an absolute monster."
Images from Mexico Beach show many homes submerged in water, and there was severe damage to buildings in the state's Panama City area.
A journalist with the Tampa Bay Times said neighbourhoods in that city "looked like a child's playroom after a massive tantrum".
A guide to the world's deadliest storms
Hurricanes are violent storms that can bring devastation to coastal areas, threatening lives, homes and businesses.
Hurricanes develop from thunderstorms, fuelled by warm, moist air as they cross sub-tropical waters. Warm air rises into the storm.
Air swirls in to fill the low pressure in the storm, sucking air in and upwards, reinforcing the low pressure.
The storm rotates due to the spin of the earth and energy from the warm ocean increases wind speeds as it builds.
When winds reach 119km/h (74mph), it is known as a hurricane - in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific - or a typhoon in the Western Pacific.
"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. Well, we're about to get punched in the face." Florida Mayor Bob Buckhorn, ahead of Hurricane Irma (2017)
The central eye of calmer weather is surrounded by a wall of rainstorms.This eyewall has the fastest winds below it and violent currents of air rising through it.
A mound of water piles up below the eye which is unleashed as the storm reaches land. These storm surges can cause more damage from flooding than the winds.
"Urgent warning about the rapid rise of water on the SW FL coast with the passage of #Irma's eye. MOVE AWAY FROM THE WATER!"Tweet from the National Hurricane Center
The size of hurricanes is mainly measured by the Saffir-Simpson scale - other scales are used in Asia Pacific and Australia.
| Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | October 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann resigns after seven and a half years in office; says he lost the backing of his Social Democrats party. | Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann abruptly resigned Monday, saying he had lost the backing of his Social Democrats party.
Faymann, 56, who heads the government but is appointed by the president, made the surprise announcement in a brief statement in Vienna. “I am thankful for seven and a half years and wish my successor much luck,” he said.
He has held the chancellor position since 2008 but been under pressure since his party's electoral collapse in the first round of presidential elections last month.
Voters in Austria, like elsewhere in Europe, have flocked to populist parties across the continent amid frustration over the region's refugee crisis.
Anti-immigrant candidate wins first round of Austria election
Austria's anti-immigration Freedom Party picked up 36% of votes in the first round. The Social Democrats' candidate finished second to last. The runoff is on May 22.
The Freedom Party's strong showing under leader Norbert Hofer marked the first time since 1945 that neither the centrist Social Democrats nor the conservative Austrian People's Party won enough votes to make it to the second round of presidential elections. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | May 2016 | ['(USA Today)'] |
Thirty-eight-year-old American Meb Keflezighi wins the Boston Marathon men's competition, making him the first American in 31 years to do so. | BOSTON — Their names were written on the corners of his racing bib. Martin. Sean. Krystle. Lingzi.
"They helped carry me through," Meb Keflezighi said after one of the most memorable victories in the Boston Marathon's 118-year history. Keflezighi became the first American man since 1983 to wear the laurel wreath. He did so when this city needed it the most.
With the backdrop of so much tragedy, in front of those gravely wounded in last year's attacks and in memory of the four killed last year, Keflezighi raised his arms in victory as he crossed the finish line at 2 hours, 8 minutes, 37 seconds. He looked up to the sky, then kissed the ground three times. He took a bow, then emotion won out as he put his hands over his face and broke into tears.
"As an athlete, you have dreams and today is where the dream and reality meet. I was just crying at the end," he said. "This is probably the most meaningful victory for an American, just because of what happened. It's Patriots Day."
Keflezighi's win was entirely unexpected. Turning 39 next month, his best days seemed to be in his past, especially given the Kenyan stronghold on the race. Since 1991, a runner from Kenya has won the men's race 19 times.
Throughout the race he kept thinking, "Boston Strong, Boston Strong, Meb Strong, Meb Strong." The strains of Aerosmith's Dream On, the tribute version, ran through his head. As the frontrunner throughout the race, Keflezighi was cheered by massive crowds from Hopkinton to Boylston Street.
"You got this, Meb," they shouted. "U-S-A," they chanted.
Keflezighi, wearing a red and white top and blue shorts, gave them a thumbs up or a fist pump in return. "I just used their energy," he said. "I take so much pride in being an American."
Keflezighi came to the United States at age 12 after his family, which includes 11 children, left the African nation of Eritrea to escape a life of poverty and a violent war with Ethiopia. When the family settled in San Diego, he spoke no English and had never raced a mile. His grades and athletic skills earned him a full scholarship to UCLA, he became a U.S. citizen in 1998 and ran for his country in three Olympics, winning a silver medal in 2004. In 2009, he won the New York Marathon, the first American to do so in 27 years.
"I've been a very fortunate person, from humble beginnings, from war-torn Eritrea, came as a refugee and the United States gave me hope," he said. He now lives in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., with his wife and three daughters.
On a day as sunny as the daffodils along the course, Keflezighi broke away from Josphat Boit, an American runner who was born in Kenya, midway through. By mile 17, Keflezighi had a minute lead over the pack. With three miles to go, the race belonged to Keflezighi until Wilson Chebet of Kenya began to close. Through Kenmore Square and onto Boylston Street, Keflezighi looked over his shoulder and pumped his fist. Chebet finished second followed by countryman Frankline Chepkwony.
Rita Jeptoo of Kenya defended her title in the women's race, setting a course record of 2:18.57. Shalane Flanagan set a fast pace early and finished seventh.
Keflezighi hugged Greg Meyer, the last American man to win the race, and he stopped by the medical tent to high five the first responders who rushed to the aid of so many when the blasts killed three and injured more than 260.
Last year, Keflezighi watched the race from the grandstand, leaving only about five minutes before the bombs went off. His brother was still there waiting for a few athletes running for Keflezighi's foundation to finish. "It was really tough. We were helpless, just started crying," he said.
He and his brother were reunited in a nearby hotel. "We both cried again today," Keflezighi said. "This time tears full of joy."
Three days earlier, Keflezighi stopped by the Harvard Club to speak to members of Team MR8, running to raise funds for the charity created in Martin Richard's name after the 8-year-old from Dorchester was killed last year. He met with Richard's father, Bill, and put his arm around his shoulder. Keflezighi has a daughter who's 8.
Like many who were near the finish line last year, Keflezighi has pondered the what ifs. How a few minutes, a change of position, made the difference between safety and harm.
"Martin was beyond his age," Keflezighi said. "To have that sign — 'No more hurting people. Peace' — says it all for me. ... His legacy will live on for a long time." | Sports Competition | April 2014 | ['(USA Today)'] |
At least eight people including six tourists die when trapped by a flood in the Nam Talu cave in Khao Sok national park in southern Thailand. | BANGKOK (Reuters) - Eight people, including four Swiss, a Briton and a 10-year-old German boy, drowned when a flash flood trapped them in a cave in southern Thailand, but a British woman survived, officials said on Sunday.
A Thai tourist guide and a boatman also drowned in the 500 meter (1,640 ft) deep Nam Talu cave in the Khao Sok national park, they said.
Police earlier said four of the tourists were Swedes.
The officials said that a 17-year-old British woman was found alive after a long search that began on Saturday night, park official Thirayudh Mungpaisal told Reuters.
“We found her in the cave, at the top part of the cave. We guess that the water pushed her up there and she couldn’t get down,” Thirayudh said.
The woman was slightly injured and recovering in hospital, he said, declining to give names.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Pichan Kalayasiri, speaking by telephone from Surat Thani province, where the forested park draws trekkers and bird watchers, confirmed the dead included four Swiss tourists.
The cave on the Rachaprpa reservoir is home to bats.
| Floods | October 2007 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Thousands of people protest in Islamabad in support of the suspended Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. | ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Thousands of people defied a citywide security crackdown in Islamabad Friday to rally outside the Supreme Court against the latest judicial hearing into alleged abuses of power by suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Police made more than 500 arrests at similar rallies held across the country.
Police placed coils of barbed wire across roads to prevent vehicles from approaching the white marble court complex where Chaudhry faced a panel of judges, The Associated Press reported. (Watch crowds rallying in support )
The hearing adjourned by midday and will reconvene on Wednesday.
Opposition parties have launched a "Save the Judiciary" movement in support of lawyers, who have been boycotting the courts in response to Chaudhry's removal by President Pervez Musharraf.
On March 9, Musharraf suspended Chaudhry, accusing him of misusing his powers. Chaudhry was subsequently placed under house arrest -- outraging many Pakistanis, in addition to the country's attorneys.
More than a dozen superior and civil court judges have resigned over the matter, along with a deputy attorney general, Nasir Saeed Sheikh.
Chaudhry was appointed to the court by Musharraf in 2005, but ran foul of Musharraf when he exercised independence from the government in a number of cases involving the disappearance of terror suspects and human rights activists.
The street protests have failed to attract the kind of crowds that could pose an immediate threat to Musharraf's rule, which began with a bloodless coup in 1999. | Protest_Online Condemnation | April 2007 | ['(CNN)'] |
Sudan and a breakaway faction of the Justice and Equality Movement of Darfur sign a peace treaty. | July 15, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan and a splinter rebel faction from Darfur have signed on Sunday a peace agreement in the Egyptian capital, the official SUNA reported today.
The Sudanese government and a breakaway faction from the Justice and Equality Movement, (JEM) led by Ibrahim Yahia Abdelrahaman, signed an agreement in Cairo according to which leadership of the former rebel faction would return to the Sudan and engage in dialogue for resolution of issues of difference.
Sudan has inked this deal with a small rebel faction while International mediators in the Darfur crisis, who met in Libya, discussed ways to bring all the Darfur rebel groups to negotiate with Khartoum to end the four year conflict.
The agreement also includes the return of refugees and IDPs to their villages and action for prevalence of security in Darfur.
Ibrahim Yahia, who is from the Massalite ethnic group, is the former governor of West Darfur state. He joined the JEM in 2004.
Mutrif Sideq, the first Undersecretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has signed on behalf of the government. He said the agreement stipulates remedy of the private and public condition of the returnees. He said the agreement also deals with the security matters and in some areas in Darfur and lay the foundation for the development of a number of areas in Darfur.
More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced in the Darfur region of western Sudan since 2003, when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. | Sign Agreement | July 2007 | ['(Sudan Tribune)'] |
Stock markets in Asia and Australia continue falls from Europe and the United States. | Asian stock markets have slumped on Friday, extending a global equity sell-off after Wall Street had its worst day in more than two years.
Japan's main index fell 3.7%, South Korea's also lost 3.7%, Australia's dipped 4% and Hong Kong's shed 4.6%.
European markets continued the sell-off, with the UK's benchmark FTSE 100 index and Germany's Dax index both down by about 2.5% in early trade.
Analysts warned that global markets could remain volatile in coming weeks.
"Fear is the major theme," David Cohen of Action Economics told the BBC.
"People were cautiously optimistic that we would get back on track in the second half of the year. But with the US recovery stalling and the possible repercussions for the global economy, stock markets have been under pressure for a while."
The sell-off in global equities in recent days has hit investors hard. Over the past nine trading sessions, the US S&P 500 stock index has lost $1.37tn (£843.6bn) from its total market value. In Europe, the UK's FTSE has seen £160.9bn ($261bn) wiped off its market value. In Germany, the Dax has shed 85.5bn euros (£74.2bn; $120.5bn), with France's Cac losing 13.6bn euros.
Early trading in Asia on Friday saw a broad sell-off of equities from across industries.
Carmakers and manufacturers, which get a large chunk of their revenue from exports to the US and Europe, led declines with Sony shedding 4.9% and Toyota down 3.8%.
Commodity firms were also under pressure and helped push China's Shanghai Composite Index 2.3% lower. The biggest producers of copper and aluminium, Jiangxi Copper and Aluminum Corporation of China, fell more than 3%. In Australia, the world's biggest mining company BHP Billiton slid 4%, while rival Rio Tinto dropped more than 5%.
Banks and real estate firms did not escape the negative mood, with HSBC down more than 4% in Hong Kong, and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China and China Vanke both down some 3%. The price of oil also dropped in New York. US light crude for September delivery fell 1% to $85.75 a barrel, extending Thursday's 6% tumble.
Even gold prices fell, bucking a trend that had seen investors flock to the metal, viewing it as a less risky asset and helping push prices to record levels. Gold dropped $3.71 an ounce to $1,644.19 on Friday, after setting a new record of $1,681 an ounce on Thursday. "Losses today have been indiscriminate," Ben Potter from IG Markets said in a report. "The big question on everyone's mind is: what will happen across European and US markets tonight and will there be any form of emergency policy response?"
Throughout 2011, global markets have been trying to absorb and process a number of significant shocks. The first half of the year saw a deadly earthquake and tsunami strike Japan, hurting the world's third-biggest economy just as it looked as if growth was picking up. At the same time, there was a spike in oil prices caused by the political unrest in North Africa and the Middle East. Bubbling away in the background the whole time were the growing debt problems in the US and the eurozone. However, despite these issues, analysts say many investors were optimistic that underlying global growth would be helped along by expansion in China and Asia's other fast-growing nations. That optimism seems to have dissipated in recent weeks as policymakers' failure to deal with the global fiscal problems was compounded by some weak economic data out of the US. Investors are now cautiously watching the outcome of US jobs data due out on Friday as an indicator of the strength of the economy.
Also, the efforts of governments and central banks to instil stability into the markets seem to have fallen short of their goal. On Thursday, in a move that many analysts called a short-term fix, Japan intervened in the currency market in an attempt to weaken the strong yen and buy some succour for exporters. Action Economics' Mr Cohen said people were losing hope that lawmakers would be able to get growth back on track.
"There is an underlying fear that central banks don't have any more tools," he said. On Thursday in the US, the Dow Jones index had its worst day since December 2008, closing down 512.76 points, or 4.3%, at 11,383.68. Wall Street's other leading indexes also slid, with the S&P 500 index falling 4.8% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq more than 5% lower.
Earlier in the day, Europe had been been under heavy selling pressure, with its main indexes losing more than 3%. This came after European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso warned that the region's sovereign debt crisis was spreading, sparking fears that Italy and Spain might become engulfed in the problems.
London's FTSE 100 index and Frankfurt's Dax had their worst day this year on Thursday, closing almost 3.5% lower. "People are throwing | Financial Crisis | August 2011 | ['(SBS)', '(BBC)'] |
Charles Taylor's defence lawyer Courtenay Griffiths is told not to speak, on a temporary basis, at Taylor's trial due to loss of temper; Griffiths apologises and is permitted to continue. | The lawyer of Liberian ex-leader Charles Taylor was temporarily banned from speaking at his war crimes trial after a row with a prosecutor. The judge sanctioned Courtenay Griffiths after he lost his temper in an argument and referred to one prosecution lawyer as a boy. Mr Griffiths later apologised and was allowed to resume speaking. Mr Taylor faces 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He denies the charges.
He was arrested in 2006 and his trial opened in 2007.
The former warlord is accused of arming Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels during the 1991-2002 conflict - a charge he denies.
Mr Griffiths recently cross-examined the model Naomi Campbell, her former agent Carole White and actress Mia Farrow, who all gave testimony at the trial over "blood diamonds" Mr Taylor allegedly gave to Ms Campbell as a gift. Prosecutors say that from his seat of power in Liberia, Mr Taylor also trained and commanded the rebels who murdered, raped and maimed Sierra Leone civilians, frequently hacking off their hands and legs.
The Sierra Leone war became notorious for the widespread use of child soldiers.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | August 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Securities and Exchange Commission sacks Ndi Okereke–Onyuike, the director–general of the Nigerian Stock Exchange and suspends its chairman, Aliko Dangote. | Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has fired the director-general of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Ndi Okereke-Onyuike, and suspended its chairman.
The move is being seen as an effort to restore investor confidence following growing fears over governance issues.
The action was taken by SEC head Arunma Oteh who took office at the beginning of 2010 promising tougher regulation.
The SEC has named ex-Deloitte executive Emmanuel Ikazoboh as its new chief.
The former chief executive of Deloitte in West and Central Africa will now be responsible for managing sub-Saharan Africa's second-biggest stock exchange for a caretaker period.
The SEC sacked Ms Okereke-Onyuike and suspended the stock exchange's president, Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote.
Brokers arriving for work on Thursday were met by armed police who were there to ensure there was no challenge to the SEC directive.
"This strong move by the SEC to get a grip of the situation and try to resolve the leadership crisis can only improve investor confidence, especially if the proposed interim administrator organises elections in a timely manner," said Kayode Akindele, a director at financial advisory firm Greengate Strategic Partners.
Last month financial regulator Arunma Oteh said she would bring 260 organisations and individuals to a special tribunal over alleged abuses in the country's stock markets. Nigeria's banking crisis last year exposed widespread abuses in the capital markets. As Nigeria's banks came close to collapse, it became clear that lax regulation and inadequate surveillance of stockbrokers was a major problem. Nigeria brings stock market cases
Nigeria's iron lady takes on fraudsters
Securities & Exchange Commission
Nigerian Stock Exchange
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | August 2010 | ['(SEC)', '(BBC)'] |
Holly Holm defeats Ronda Rousey in a women's bantamweight title match at Etihad Stadium in the Australian city of Melbourne, Victoria. | AS RONDA Rousey recovered in hospital after her stunning defeat, her opponent’s coach has made some pointed comments about her “intellect”. Etihad Stadium has been transformed into a UFC fan’s dream.Source:AFP
RONDA Rousey’s reign is over. The biggest female star in sport suffered a shock defeat against Holly Holm in front of a record-setting audience in Melbourne at UFC 193 on Sunday. Holm landed a head kick and then followed it up with punches as Rousey fell to the mat to knock the champ out a minute into the second round of the women's bantamweight championship fight. Afterwards, Holm’s coach, Mike Winkeljohn, said Rousey didn’t necessarily err by rushing his charge in their UFC world title fight, but was simply beaten by an intellectually superior fighter. THE knock out kick. Holly Holm of the US (R) lands a kick to the neck to knock out compatriot Ronda Rousey and win the UFC title fight in Melbourne on November 15, 2015.Source:AFP
Much of the talk coming out of the UFC 193 fight that shocked the MMA world centred on whether Rousey’s single-minded rushing of Holm — a renowned boxer and kickboxer — cost her the fight and ended with her being kicked right into hospital by Holm. Rousey spent the night in hospital for precautionary reasons, also receiving stitches for facial cuts. She was cleared of concussion. “Ronda is an emotional fighter and she has overwhelmed people with that pressure sometimes and it’s worked for her in the past,” Winklejohn said. “It’s just Holly is at another level when it comes to intellect.”
Winklejohn said he wasn’t surprised by the result, only how quick it came about and even said Holm had intentionally held back in some of her fights since arriving in the UFC. “Footwork is always the key for Holly Holm in her fights and Holly has held back a bit in the past and that was all part of the plan,” he said. “We knew we would fight Ronda one day and Holly showed why she is now the best in the world.”
Winklejohn also said a pivotal moment in the fight was when Holm escaped an attempt by Rousey at an armbar submission two minutes into the fight. “We ripped it over and over and over and it’s always scary when someone gets into that position that they are known to finish people, but we were confident she would get out of it and she did.”
The result, which will reverberate around the world because of Rousey’s recent rise in popularity, caught everybody off guard. “This is the biggest upset in the history of MMA,” commentator Joe Rogan said. Holm, a champion boxer, was simply a better striker. She regularly tagged Rousey and when Rousey tried to take the fight to the ground, Holm avoided damage. She landed 38 of 53 attempted strikes (72 per cent) compared to Rousey, who found her mark on just 21 of 69 (30 per cent). Holm becomes the second female bantamweight champion in UFC history, halting Rousey’s run of six consecutive title defences. “I had so much love and support, I thought ‘how could I not do this?’” Holm said. “This team right here is priceless." It was by no means a lucky result. Holm controlled the first round by getting her punches off quicker and rattled the champ from the start. All three judges had her winning the first round 10-9. “Everything we worked on presented itself in the fight,” Holm said. “I have not spent so much time in the gym in all my life. Everything we worked on happened tonight. I didn’t want to kick her in the body, we went high and yeah.”
Rousey was taken to hospital after the fight to be treated for concussion and a cut on her face. “She was transported (to hospital) because she got knocked out,” UFC boss Dana White said. “Obviously she’s completely bummed out and depressed ...
“These are the moments in fighting that make it so crazy and so fun. “Holly was the right fight. Ronda had never faced anyone who uses her length and distance like that.”
Rousey’s future from here is cloudy. A rematch would seem likely at some point, although the UFC doesn’t traditionally hand immediate redemption to fallen champions. “I think a rematch makes sense, for sure,” Holm said. “I don’t look at this belt and think I’ve made it. There’s still things I need to do.”
The official crowd at the event was 56,214, topping the previous UFC record of 55,724 set in Canada at UFC 129 on April 30, 2011. The gate was $9.53 million — a record for Etihad Stadium. “We broke a lot of records here tonight,” White said. Australians Mark Hunt, Robert Whittaker and Jake Matthews also recorded victories while Kyle Noke won a $50,000 bonus for a devastating kick. White announced the next event held in Australia — UFC Fight Night — would be in Brisbane on March 20 next year. — with wires
Continue reading for a fight by fight wrap of all the action. Holly Holm put Ronda Rousey on her back more than once.Source:Getty Images
Rousey was left bloody and dazed by the savage attack.Source:News Corp Australia
Joanna Jedrzejczyk (Poland) def Valerie Letourneau (Canada) via unanimous decision (49-46 x 2, 50-45) | Sports Competition | November 2015 | ['(News Limited)', '(Los Angeles Times)'] |
Huawei sues the U.S. Government to challenge the constitutionality of Section 889 of the National Defense Authorization Act which prohibits U.S. executive government agencies from procuring telecommunications equipment from two Chinese companies, Huawei and ZTE. | Huawei is suing the U.S. over a law that bans government agencies from buying the Chinese technology giant’s equipment, claiming the legislation is unconstitutional, as the company goes on the front foot following months of political pressure.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Thursday local time, focuses on a provision in a law known as the National Defense Authorization Act. Section 889 of that legislation prohibits executive government agencies from procuring telecommunications hardware made by Huawei and another Chinese firm, ZTE. Both companies are explicitly named in the act.
But lawyers for the world’s largest network equipment maker by revenue, argued that the provision in the NDAA is against the U.S. Constitution.
Huawei has faced intense pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration, which claims the company’s equipment could be used for espionage by the Chinese government. The tech giant is also facing criminal charges from the Justice Department, which has accused it of stealing trade secrets and skirting U.S. sanctions on Iran. The U.S. government has also tried to persuade allies against using Huawei gear.
Top executives, including the company’s founder, have repeatedly denied the allegations that Huawei is a security risk, while the company has also been carrying out a major public relations push to change its image. The Chinese firm is now going on the legal offensive.
Huawei argues that the provision in the NDAA in which it is explicitly named is really a “bill of attainder” wherein a legislative act pronounces a specific individual or group guilty of some offense and punishes them without due process. That’s forbidden by the U.S. Constitution. The company’s lawyers also argued that Section 889 is unlawful because it violates Huawei’s right to due process, meaning the firm cannot hear the evidence against it and fight that in court.
Huawei’s legal team is essentially arguing that, by including the provision in the legislation and banning the company’s sales to federal agencies in law, Congress is unconstitutionally acting as a judiciary.
The federal district court where the lawsuit is filed will make a decision on whether Huawei’s lawsuit will hold. Either side Huawei or the U.S. government can appeal that decision. A court has the power to invalidate a part of legislation without ripping apart the entire law. So, in theory, Huawei could get Section 889 thrown out.
Huawei will be hoping that by getting Section 889 of the NDAA scrapped, it could open the door for conversations with the U.S. government.
Glen Nager, lead counsel for Huawei and partner at Jones Day, claimed Thursday to CNBC that the American law is “hurting Huawei’s customers in the United States.”
“It’s damaging Huawei’s reputation and it’s limiting the ability of Huawei to provide its innovative products, including 5G, to consumers in the United States,” he added. “Huawei hopes that it can engage in a constructive conversation with the president and his administration over how to bring these innovative technologies and Huawei competition to the United States while providing full assurance of security for the United States of America.”
Huawei has long argued that its absence from the U.S. market will hamper competition in the next generation of mobile networking technology a claim that experts have contested.
The technology firm is also fighting fires on other fronts. Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested in Canada in December and was accused of breaking U.S. sanctions against Iran. She faces extradition to the U.S. But the CFO’s lawyers are now suing Canadian authorities, alleging they arrested, detained and searched her in violation of her constitutional rights.
Huawei’s lawsuit against the U.S. bears some similarities to a case in 2018 involving Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab. In September 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ordered government agencies to stop using Kaspersky software, alleging it could be used for espionage by Russia. The ban was later ratified in law.
Kaspersky filed two lawsuits against the government with one claiming the move amounted to a bill of attainder. The two lawsuits were thrown out by a judge in May and Kaspersky also lost an appeal later in the year. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | March 2019 | ['(CNBC)'] |
Gonorrhoea soars in England. | The number of newly diagnosed cases of gonorrhoea in England soared by 25% in 2011 amid fears that the sexual infection is becoming untreatable.
There have been cases in Japan and Europe of infections that resist first-choice therapies.
The Health Protection Agency said the threat of gonorrhoea was "very concerning".
It said there was a 2% overall rise in the number of new sexually transmitted infections diagnosed in 2011.
Gonorrhoea is caused by bacteria and can result in infertility. It is treated by antibiotics, but some are failing.
The head of sexually transmitted infection surveillance at the HPA, Dr Gwenda Hughes, said: "We are very concerned. It is a global problem.
"[The gonorrhoea bacterium] is very successful at developing resistance to every treatment used in the past few decades.
"We are worried that in the next five years, or some point in the future, that this is going to be a very difficult infection to treat."
Even the most resistant forms of the disease are not yet untreatable. Professor Cathy Ison, a gonorrhoea expert at the HPA, said that in the past, when resistance emerged, a new drug would be used.
However, she warned: "We don't have a new drug."
Between 2009 and 2010, the number of new sexually transmitted infections being diagnosed fell for the first time in more than a decade. However, cases have since increased, with nearly 427,000 new infections diagnosed in 2011.
More accurate tests and more people being tested explain some of the rise.
But the HPA said it was concerned about "ongoing, unsafe sexual behaviour" in at-risk groups.
Dr Hughes said two groups - young adults and men who have sex with men - were of particular concern.
There was a 4% drop in the number of diagnoses of chlamydia in young adults. However, this has been attributed to fewer people getting screened.
Sexually active people under 25 are advised to be checked annually or when they have a change of sexual partner. Yet the number of tests fell from 2.3 million to 2.1 million between 2010 and 2011.
The government said too many people were not taking care of their sexual health.
A Department of Health spokesperson said: "Sexually transmitted infections can lead to infertility and other serious health problems. The message is clear: whatever your age, you should always use a condom."
Lisa Power, from sexual-health charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: "These figures must act as a wake-up call, not only to sexually active people but also to the government and public-health services. "They represent a step backwards for the nation's sexual health. The emergence of drug-resistant strains of gonorrhoea is just one consequence of continued high rates." | Disease Outbreaks | June 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
A former UDAU diver dies from lack of oxygen while delivering supplies to a group of boys and a man trapped in the Tham Luang Nang Non. | Thai authorities say a former Navy SEAL working to rescue the boys and their soccer coach trapped in a cave died from lack of oxygen.
Petty Officer First Class Saman Kunan, a former member of Thailand's elite Navy SEAL unit who was part of the rescue team in Chiang Rai, died on Thursday night after entering the cave to lay oxygen tanks along a potential exit route, the SEAL commander said.
SEAL commander Arpakorn Yookongkaew told a news conference on Friday morning the rescuer was working in a volunteer capacity and died during an overnight mission in which he was placing oxygen canisters.
The ABC understands he was diving late at night to get to the chamber where the boys are trapped.
Petty Officer Saman, 38, set out at 8:37pm local time to deliver three oxygen tanks from chamber three to where the boys and their coach are located. He completed his task but on the way back lost consciousness. His diving partner performed CPR but was unable to revive him. Petty Officer Saman was brought to chamber three but was pronounced dead about 1:00am (local time) on Friday. He is one of about 80 Thai Navy SEALs. They make up the bulk of the divers that are running the rescue effort.
Facebook: Poom Pui
Rear Admiral Arpakorn said despite the tragedy, the rescuers "will continue until we accomplish our mission".
"In that 1,700-metre section [it] is very treacherous," he said.
"Last night's operation was to bring the oxygen tanks to the mound, which should take about five to six hours each way, so altogether it takes about 12 hours.
"This is what we train for, this is what we have to face, an incident like this can always happen but we're not losing our motivation.
"We won't let the life lost be wasted."
He said Thailand's King had ordered a royally-endorsed funeral ceremony.
Petty Officer Saman was a former clearance diver for the Navy SEALs, and Thai media has reported he was more recently working in a security role at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport.
Thai authorities are racing to pump out water from a flooded cave where 12 boys and their soccer coach have been trapped since June 23.
Hundreds of Thais bring free food, massage tents and even barber shops to a remote national park in a bid to support rescuers.
A navy source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the ABC three factors were driving the urgency — the water level inside the cave, the amount of oxygen available, and the health of the boys and their coach.
"The pressure we are experiencing comes from working against the weather, as the forecasts tell us there will be heavy rain in this area within 48 hours," he said.
The soccer team was trapped in a cave system known as Tham Luang, surviving for nine days before rescue divers found them on a muddy ledge.
The navy source said two of the boys were in a weaker condition, as was the 25-year-old coach, who sacrificed his share of their meagre food supplies to give to the boys.
The source said rescue coordinators faced tough choices and there were differences of opinion among those providing assessments. | Famous Person - Death | July 2018 | ['(ABC)'] |
A fire occurs at a Hindu temple in the Kollam district of the Indian state of Kerala. At least 102 people have been killed and hundreds injured. , | A major fire that broke out at a temple in India has left over 110 people dead, The Indian Express reports. The fire broke out at the Puttingal temple located in the Kollam district of Kerala, Southern India. The tragedy happened in the wee hours of Sunday morning at around 3:30 a.m., local time. Initial reports say the explosion was sparked off by a firework that set fire to a huge stockpile of fireworks that were stocked inside the temple premises for a traditional ceremony. By 6:40 a.m. local time, the efforts of the emergency workers and the fire brigade paid off and they were able to bring the blaze under control. Several of the dead included women and children, most of whom have been charred beyond recognition. The dead also include local police officers who were on duty to control the crowd. Efforts are on to identify the dead.
While temples are required to take permission from authorities before they are allowed to store and use fireworks, it remains unclear if such a permission was granted to this temple for stockpiling plenty of fireworks. Initial reports by local TV channel Asianet News say that the temple did not have the required permissions in place. According to Kerala Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala, the Director General of Police has been asked to rush to the site and he will coordinate all rescue efforts.
Meanwhile, the Chief Minister of Kerala, Mr. Oommen Chandy, and several other senior officials from the state government have rushed to the spot.
An official inquiry would be launched by the government to investigate the cause of the accident.
Update: The death toll in the accident has risen to over 110 people, fresh reports confirm. The initial death toll was reported to be 66. This number went up to 77 and currently stands at 110 individuals. Efforts are on to identify the dead bodies. The government has assured that DNA testing would be done to identify bodies that have been charred beyond recognition.
Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi expressed shock and anguish over the incident and tweeted about the same in the morning. | Fire | April 2016 | ['(Indian Express)', '(Times of India)', '(inquisitr)', '(BBC)'] |
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Orbán used the meeting to call for Russia's relations with the EU to "return to normal", saying "We all are interested in normalizing relationship between Russia and Europe" while Putin described Hungary as an "old and faithful partner". | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, on a visit to Moscow, called for better relations between Russia and Europe on Wednesday.
“We all are interested in normalizing relationship between Russia and Europe,” Orban said at the start of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
| Diplomatic Visit | February 2016 | ['(Reuters)', '(RT)'] |
Guatemala's Constitutional Court overturns a genocide conviction against former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt due to a dispute over jurisdiction. | Guatemala's constitutional court has overturned a genocide conviction against former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt, throwing out all proceedings against him since a dispute broke out in April over who should hear it.
Ríos Montt was found guilty on 10 May of overseeing the deliberate killings by the armed forces of at least 1,771 members of the Maya Ixil population during his 1982-83 rule. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison.
But the constitutional court said it had thrown out all proceedings in the case that took place after 19 April. It was then that the trial against Ríos Montt was suspended after a spat between judges over who should take the case.
Constitutional court secretary Martin Guzman said the trial needed to go back to where it stood on 19 April to solve several appeal issues.
A three-judge panel convicted the 86-year-old of genocide and crimes against humanity in what was regarded as a historic decision involving a Latin American leader. His lawyers immediately filed an appeal and he spent only one day in prison before he was moved to a military hospital, where he remains. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | May 2013 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The Trump administration proposes regulatory changes which would allow the children of illegal immigrants to be imprisoned for more than 20 days. | Children and workers are seen at a tent encampment built near the Tornillo Port of Entry in June in Tornillo, Texas.
Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET
The Trump administration is proposing to lift court-imposed limits on how long it can hold children in immigration detention.
Under proposed regulations set to be published in the Federal Register on Friday, the administration seeks to replace the Flores settlement, a decades-old agreement that dictates how long the government can hold migrant children, and under what conditions.
The administration wants to detain migrant families together for as long as their immigration cases are pending. The proposed regulations will satisfy the "basic purpose" of Flores, the administration argues, by making sure that children are treated with "dignity, respect, and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors."
"Today, legal loopholes significantly hinder the Department's ability to appropriately detain and promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country," said Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen in a statement.
Legal loopholes significantly hinder the Department's ability to appropriately detain and promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen
The proposed changes are expected to face legal challenges. Federal Judge Dolly Gee, who oversees the Flores settlement, recently rejected a separate attempt by the administration to detain children in jail-like settings for more than 20 days.
Under the Flores settlement, decided in 1997 and modified in 2015, immigrant minors can't be held in jail-like settings and there are sharp limits on how long the government can detain children. The Justice Department had asked the federal court for permission "to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings."
But Gee rejected that request. "It is apparent that Defendants' Application is a cynical attempt," she wrote, "to shift responsibility to the Judiciary for over 20 years of congressional inaction and ill-considered Executive action that have led to the current stalemate."
Attorneys for detained children accused the administration of trying to terminate the Flores settlement and said they will oppose that effort in court.
"Treating children humanely and not detaining them in often intolerable conditions is not a legal loophole, as the Secretary of Homeland Security claims," said the president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, Peter Schey. "It is the way civilized nations treat vulnerable children with due regard to their tender age and lack of culpability for the circumstances in which they find themselves." "We will oppose in court any effort to terminate the Flores settlement unless and until the Government proposes regulations that provide for the safe and humane treatment of detained children and that are fully consistent with the terms of the settlement we negotiated in 1997," he added.
Other immigrant advocates said the government appears to be trying to end court oversight of children's detention facilities.
"This is an administration that has not complied with the settlement agreement as it is," Michelle Brane, the director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women's Refugee Commission, told NPR.
To have them now say we don't need any more court oversight and we will oversee ourselves is frankly appalling.
Michelle Brane
"So to have them now say we don't need any more court oversight and we will oversee ourselves is frankly appalling," said Brane.
The administration's plan also drew a swift rebuke from Democratic Minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
"This is another inhuman assault on families and children," she said at her weekly press conference. "It's a wrong decision that he made ... I completely disagree with what the president has done."
"When you see the visual of them taking babies away from their moms, and then saying 'we can keep them endlessly,'" she continued, "you understand the inhumanity of it all. It has no practical value."
The move comes just months after the Trump administration attempted to discourage illegal immigration by separating migrant families at the border, but then backed down because of the resulting uproar. As of last week, nearly 500 children were still in government-run shelters without their parents. | Government Policy Changes | September 2018 | ['(NPR)'] |
The foreign ministers of China, India and Russia meet in New Delhi, India to discuss greater cooperation between the three Asian countries on issues including terrorism, drug trafficking and Afghanistan. | An Indian foreign ministry statement said the meeting discussed key global issues, including the importance of the United Nations.
The statement said the three countries agreed on the need to make the UN more effective, reflecting global realities.
They also agreed to meet more regularly and strengthen three-way co-operation.
'More effective'
"We shared our thoughts on the political, economic and security aspects of the global situation, the present world order and recent developments in various areas of mutual concern," a statement by the Indian foreign ministry said.
India and China enjoy vastly improved relations
"We agreed that co-operation rather than confrontation should govern approaches to regional and global affairs."
Correspondents say that India's ongoing campaign for a permanent seat on the UN security council was not mentioned in the closing statement, but the three countries did acknowledge the need for UN reform by calling for it to be made "more effective". Representatives of the three also stressed that their interaction would contribute to strengthening peace, security and stability in their region and the rest of the world. "There was coincidence of views against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and on the need to address financing of terrorism and its linkages with narco-trafficking," the closing statement said.
The three countries also assessed developments in Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Air links
The relationship between the three countries was first proposed by former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov during a visit to Delhi in 1998. This is the second such gathering of ministers focussing on a number of international issues.
The foreign ministers of the three states last met in Vladivostok in Russia in 2005. The Indian and Chinese foreign ministers on Tuesday discussed better air links and easing visa restrictions. President Putin had lengthy talks with India last year. That meeting was the first contact between Delhi and Beijing since China conducted a test of a missile capable of attacking satellites last month. Officials say that Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and his Indian counterpart, Pranab Mukherjee, discussed how to strengthen regional co-operation and set up a mechanism to manage issues related to shared rivers. The Chinese delegation made a statement on the test during the talks, India's ambassador to China, Nirupama Rao, said. "They stressed that China was against the weaponisation and militarisation of outer space and that the test conducted, according to them, was of a purely technological and scientific nature," she said. Border row
Mr Li and his Indian host, Pranab Mukherjee, also discussed the border dispute that led to the 1962 conflict between the two countries, Indian officials said. Correspondents say that a formal ceasefire line was never established after the war, but the border has remained mostly peaceful after agreements were signed in 1993 and 1996. India says that China occupies 38,000 square kms (14,670 square miles) of Indian territory in the disputed region of Kashmir which it says was illegally ceded to China by Pakistan in the 1950s. China in turn, claims 90,000 sq kms in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | February 2007 | ['(BBC)', '(Forbes)'] |
The 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup starts with the hosts France defeating South Korea 4–0. | PARIS (Reuters) - A rampant France smashed South Korea out of sight on Friday to open their women’s soccer World Cup campaign in irrepressible style with a 4-0 victory that sent a warning to all other teams with a design on the trophy.
It was one-way traffic all night in a packed 45,000-seater Parc des Princes as the French launched wave after wave of attack at the hapless Koreans, running out easy winners to stamp their authority on Group A of the FIFA extravaganza.
“We started well, it was the way to go we made it easy for ourselves. It was important to score a second goal before the break, we did even better,” France coach Corinne Diacre told a news conference.
“We knew there would a be a lot of emotions tonight, we dealt with it perfectly. You can only transcend yourself when you hear 45,000 people sing La Marseillaise,” woman of the match Wendie Renard told reporters.
France skipper Amandine Henry controlled the midfield with a firm grip and deft touch, while strikers Eugenie Le Sommer and Delphine Cascarino were constant threats.
From the very first minutes South Korea struggled to get out of their own half and Le Sommer set the tone after nine minutes when she slammed a shot past Korean keeper Kim Min-jung into the roof of the net to send the stadium into raptures.
France had all the play, and thought they had doubled their lead after 27 minutes when Griedge Mbock Bathy slammed a volley home, only for the video assistant referee to rule it out for offside two minutes later.
Related Coverage
Renard made amends after 35 minutes, the powerful central defender thumping a header home for her 21st international goal. She added another headed goal to make it 3-0 on the stroke of halftime of what was rapidly becoming a non-contest.
The Koreans were being outclassed in every department, and trudged off at the break having barely ventured out of their own half.
Korea desperately scrambled to keep the French at bay - just - and with the result in no doubt French coach Diacre looked to preserve some of her star names for later action, taking Cascarino off in the 70th minute, replacing her with Valerie Gauvin; and replacing Amel Majri with fellow defender Eve Perisset four minutes later.
Just as the Koreans thought they had somehow kept the French at bay for the second period, Henry added to the tally, slamming a right-foot shot curling into the Korean net from the edge of the area for 4-0 and a fitting finale.
Norway take on Nigeria in the other Group A game in Reims on Saturday.
Editing by Toby Davis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. | Sports Competition | June 2019 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Six people die and more than 200 are injured in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, after protesters of the announced results of the presidential election clash with security forces and set fire to a police dormitory and vehicles. | Six people died and more than 200 were injured in the Indonesian capital Jakarta after protesters clashed with security forces and set fire to a police dormitory and vehicles, officials have said.
Protests by supporters of an unsuccessful presidential candidate that had ended peacefully on Tuesday afternoon resumed and turned violent late on Tuesday and continued through the night, said the national police spokesman, Dedi Prasetyo. Police said they had arrested 20 “provocateurs”.
Several thousand demonstrators gathered to protest the results , in an area that was in a total security lockdown. Central Jakarta, usually bustling and full of traffic was eerily quiet by the evening.
Behind reams of barbed wire that separated protesters from a heavy military and police presence, some demonstrators held flowers and signs highlighting the deaths of rioters earlier today.
The Jakarta governor, Anies Baswedan, said hospitals were conducting postmortems to determine the causes of the deaths. Authorities were still investigating and were not willing to rule out the involvement of “third-party provocateurs”, said another police official.
Jakarta has been on edge in recent days amid simmering tensions in the aftermath of April’s presidential election. Official results on Tuesday confirmed the incumbent, President Joko Widodo, had won a second term with 55.5% of the vote.
His opponent, the fiery ex-special forces commander Prabowo Subianto, has refused to accept the result, alleging the poll was marred by widespread fraud – a claim his team has yet to produce compelling evidence to support.
Indonesia’s security minister, Wiranto, said authorities would restrict access to social media in certain areas to prevent the spread of fake news.
In a press conference this afternoon, Prabowo Subianto denounced the clashes and urged his supporters to protest peacefully.
“We are peaceful, not treasonous,” said Rusli, a 46-year-old Jakarta resident, and Prabowo supporter who attended the rally, “The voting data has been manipulated and our the rights of our voices has been diminished. We want justice.”
Indonesia’s Kompas TV showed protesters throwing rocks, a paramilitary police dormitory on fire, and hundreds of riot police in a central Jakarta neighbourhood. One man reportedly died after sustaining a gunshot wound in the melee, according to Tirto.id, an Indonesian news website.
Prasetyo said police were checking on reports of casualties, but stressed that security officers on the ground, which include military personnel, were not equipped with live bullets.
A police spokesman said police used teargas and water cannon against protesters who threw rocks, molotov cocktails and burning projectiles.
The opposition said on Tuesday it would contest the result in court, a repeat move of Prabowo’s unsuccessful bid for president in 2014.
In recent weeks, key figures in the Prabowo camp have called for “people power” as a response to the electoral outcome, with at least two associated figures facing treason charges as a result.
More than 30,000 troops have been deployed to secure the Indonesian capital ahead of a planned protest, with some government offices and schools closed as a precaution.
A major commuter train station in the area was shut temporarily, and roads blocked off in parts of the sprawling city. Some shopping malls, businesses and schools were also closed.
Tensions have been exacerbated by a string of recent arrests of terrorist suspects, who police say had planned to create chaos by bombing the post-election protests.
Police on Tuesday arrested a former general for allegedly smuggling weapons to the protest, and authorities confiscated molotov cocktails from one minibus of Prabowo supporters travelling to the capital from Java.
As of Wednesday morning, protesters had started to gather outside the building of the elections supervisory agency. | Riot | May 2019 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Japanese prosecutors issue arrest warrants against a former United States special operations forces soldier and two others for allegedly helping Carlos Ghosn to escape from Japan. Another arrest warrant was issued against Ghosn himself. | TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese authorities on Thursday issued arrest warrants for a former U.S. special forces soldier and two other men on suspicion of smuggling former Nissan Motor Co boss Carlos Ghosn out of Japan.
Warrants were issued for former U.S. Green Beret Michael Taylor and two other men, George-Antoine Zayek and Peter Taylor, prosecutors said in a statement. A warrant was also issued for Ghosn for illegally leaving the country, prosecutors said.
Ghosn fled to Lebanon, his childhood home, at the end of last year, while he was awaiting trial on charges of under-reporting earnings, breach of trust and misappropriation of company funds, all of which he denies.
The arrest warrants come days after prosecutors searched the Tokyo office of Ghosn’s former lawyer.
Lebanon and Japan have about 40 days to decide whether Ghosn will be extradited to Japan or stand trial in Lebanon, Reuters reported last week.
The two countries have no extradition treaty and Lebanon does not typically hand over its nationals. Ghosn’s legal team is hoping to hold the trial in Lebanon, where the former auto executive has deep ties and hopes to clear his name.
Ghosn has struck out at what he has called Japan’s unjust judicial system and said the alternative to fleeing would have been to spend the rest of his life languishing in Tokyo without a fair trial.
Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka and Junko Fujita; Editing by David Dolan, Christian Schmollinger and Lincoln Feast.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | January 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The Golden State Warriors qualify for the NBA Finals for the fifth year in a row by defeating the Portland Trail Blazers, 119–117, in overtime in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals. | The Golden State Warriors are heading to the NBA Finals again. Here's a look inside the astounding numbers of their historic achievement:
5. The Warriors are heading to the NBA Finals for the fifth year in a row after Monday's 119-117 overtime win over the Portland Trail Blazers.
2. The Warriors are one of only two teams in NBA history to have played for the championship five consecutive seasons. The Boston Celtics are the other group, having appeared in the Finals 10 straight seasons from 1957-66 – winning the title nine of those years.
6. The Warriors have completed six sweeps in their dynastic five-season run, including Monday night when they closed out the Blazers in the Western Conference finals.
1. Steph Curry and Draymond Green became the first teammates to each record triple-doubles in an NBA postseason game when they accomplished the feat in Game 4 against the Blazers, per ESPN Stats & Info. Curry had 37-13-11 while Green put up 18-14-11. It was Green's fourth triple-double of these playoffs, and second in a row.
34.2. That's the league-high scoring average Kevin Durant was putting up this postseason when he went down in Game 5 against the Houston Rockets with a leg injury.
35.8. That's what Curry has averaged in scoring in the full games since KD was hurt as the Warriors have gone 5-0.
99. Monday night marked the Warriors' 99th playoff game in the past five seasons.
75. That's how many wins the Warriors have picked up in the NBA's second season in that time.
3. The Warriors are now four wins away from the NBA's first three-peat since the Shaquille O'Neal/Kobe Bryant-led Los Angeles Lakers won consecutive titles from 2000-02.
Assuming he's healthy enough to return for the Finals, Durant will be looking to join another exclusive three-time club. He could become just the sixth player to win at least three Finals MVPs, and he could become just the third man to win three consecutively. Shaq and Michael Jordan are the only players who have gone three in a row; of course, His Airness accomplished the feat twice.
11. The numbers of Finals appearances in the Warriors' history, which trails only the Celtics and Lakers. | Sports Competition | May 2019 | ['(USA Today)'] |
American manufacturer Tesla files a lawsuit against one of its former software engineers for allegedly copying confidential computer scripts onto a personal file hosting service. The former employee denies the company's allegation, claiming he transferred the files by mistake. | SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Tesla has sued a former employee for allegedly stealing about 26,000 confidential files in his first week of working at the company, according to a court filing seen by AFP.
The company said on Friday that within three days of being hired, software engineer Alex Khatilov "brazenly stole thousands of trade computer scripts that took Tesla years to develop" and transferred them to his personal Dropbox, a cloud storage service.
Tesla said that when confronted by Tesla's security team, Khatilov claimed he had only transferred "a couple of personal administrative documents", whilst trying to delete the evidence.
Khatilov told the New York Post the software files ended up in his Dropbox by mistake when he had been trying to make a backup copy of a folder on his computer.
Tesla said the files, which represented "200 man-years of work", were extremely valuable to both the company and its competitors, as they could provide "a roadmap to copy Tesla's innovation."
It said Khatilov's team made up the handful of Tesla employees -- 40 out of 50,000 -- that had access to the scripts, but that they "had nothing to do with his responsibilities."
Tesla's security team detected the file downloads on January 6, after Khatilov was hired on December 28, and confronted him via videocall as he was working from home, according to the court filing.
Tesla said during this call, Khatilov delayed sharing his screen with the team, during which time "he could be seen on videochat hurriedly deleting information from his computer."
However, investigators were still able to view thousands of confidential files uploaded to his Dropbox, which Khatilov "claimed he somehow 'forgot.'"
Khatilov, who told the New York Post that he was unaware he was being sued until the newspaper called him on Friday, was fired the same day.
"When it happened, I was shocked," he was quoted as saying. "I didn't lie (about) anything." | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | January 2021 | ['(AFP via ABSCBN News)'] |
Grayrigg derailment: A Virgin Pendolino train derails in Cumbria, United Kingdom, killing one person and injuring dozens more. | Several carriages were left on their side after a Virgin London to Glasgow service crashed at Grayrigg, near Kendal, at 2015 GMT, at about 95mph.
Police said 22 people went to hospital and dozens more were "walking wounded".
Investigators say no cause has yet been established, but police said their inquiry was focusing on a set of points which could be "significant".
Rail union chief Bob Crow had earlier said he had been told the accident was because of a points failure.
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One of the passengers, BBC executive Caroline Thomson, said the train "did a sort of bump".
"It suddenly appeared to hit something and then lurched very, very badly from side to side in a very dramatic way."
The train had about 120 people on board, Supt Jon Rush, of Cumbria Police, told a news conference.
He said 22 passengers had been taken to three hospitals. The Royal Lancaster Infirmary and the Royal Preston Hospital took the most serious casualties. A total of five people had serious injuries. Police are still trying to establish the identity of the passenger who was killed, but they said she was an elderly female.
The line where the crash happened could be closed for five or six days, said Supt Rush. He added that investigators were trying to establish the cause of the crash.
The leader of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union, Bob Crow, told ITV News: "All our indications are that people on the scene are saying that it was a points failure. "And I think people can dismiss the idea that it was a cow on the track or vandalism."
The train came to rest after rolling down an embankment
All but one of the train's carriages had totally come off the tracks, a Cumbria Ambulance Service spokeswoman said.
Speaking at just after midnight she added that all nine train carriages had been cleared of passengers.
She said there were 65 people with minor injuries who were treated at the scene and a nearby farm, before being taken to the Castle Green Hotel in Kendal.
Emergency crews said they faced difficult conditions, with pouring rain, waterlogged ground and narrow country lanes around the crash site.
'Very strange sound'
The Pendolino tilting trains have been introduced by Virgin over the last three years and have a top speed of 125 mph.
Network Rail said the line speed for the area where the crash took place was about 95 mph.
Virgin Trains have suspended services between Lancaster and Lockerbie, with replacement buses operating. Trains are running as normal to and from Lockerbie, and between London and Lancaster.
A spokesman said passengers travelling between Scotland and London could use GNER East Coast trains instead.
CONTACT NUMBERS
Cumbria Police helpline: 0800 056 0146
Police family liaison centre: 0800 40 50 40
National Rail Enquiries: 08457 48 49 50 Those living close to the site described hearing the crash. Adam Pashley, 19, said: "It was one hell of a bang but I never thought it would be a serious incident.
"About 15 minutes later I was looking out of my bedroom window and suddenly I started to see police and ambulance crews."
Donald Potter said: "My house is only about 120 yards from the track and I was sitting at my desk when I heard a very strange sound, it was completely unidentifiable, like nothing I have ever heard before, and lasted for about ten seconds."
People worried about friends or relatives on the train are asked to ring a Cumbria Police helpline on 0800 056 0146 or a British Transport Police family liaison centre on 0800 40 50 40.
Passengers wanting to travel through Cumbria, meanwhile, can ring National Rail Enquiries on 08457 48 49 50 before starting journeys. | Train collisions | February 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
Pope Benedict XVI will appoint an envoy and a commission to reform Legion of Christ , whose Mexican founder, Marcial Maciel, abused children before being dismissed in 2006. | Pope Benedict XVI is to appoint an envoy to overhaul a conservative Roman Catholic order whose Mexican founder abused young children over many years.
Marcial Maciel's actions were "immoral" and the Legionaries of Christ order had to be "purified", the Vatican said. Maciel, who died in 2008, fathered a daughter with a mistress as well as sexually abusing many boys and young men over a period of 30 years. He had enjoyed the support of the previous pope, John Paul II. In 2006, Father Maciel was banned from exercising his ministry in public and told to retire to a life of prayer and penitence. The priest - who founded the conservative order in 1941 - had always denied any wrongdoing. He died in January 2008 at the age of 87. 'Unscrupulous'
The Vatican statement came after the Pope met five bishops who investigated the order. It said Fr Maciel had led a double life "devoid of scruples and authentic religious sentiment". "By pushing away and casting doubt upon all those who questioned his behaviour, and the false belief that he wasn't doing harm to the good of the Legion, he created around him a defence mechanism that made him unassailable for a long period, making it difficult to know his true life," the Vatican statement said. The Catholic Church has been hit by a wave of allegations that Church authorities in Europe and North and South America failed to deal properly with priests accused of paedophilia, sometimes just moving them to new parishes where more children were put at risk. The Pope himself has been accused of being part of a culture of secrecy, and of not taking strong enough steps against paedophiles when he had that responsibility as a cardinal in Rome. However, his supporters say he has been the most pro-active pope yet in confronting abuse. What are these? | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | May 2010 | ['(LC)', '(BBC)', '(Reuters)'] |
Ammar Harris, a suspect wanted in connection with a shooting and following car crash that killed three people and wounded five others on the Las Vegas Strip, is detained in Los Angeles, California. | Police in California have arrested a man suspected of a shooting and multiple car crash that left three people dead in Las Vegas last week.
Ammar Harris, 26, was found in a flat in North Hollywood. His surrender ended a manhunt across several US states.
Mr Harris is suspected to be the driver of a black Range Rover who allegedly opened fire on a Maserati on the Las Vegas Strip on 21 February.
Aspiring rapper Kenneth Cherry Jr was killed at the wheel of the Maserati.
The Maserati then sped forward and crashed into a taxi, killing the driver and a passenger.
Earlier on Thursday, authorities said they had found and spoken to all three women who had been passengers in the Range Rover Sport when the shooting occurred.
None of the other passengers in the car have been charged in connection with the incident, police say.
In total, six vehicles were involved in last week's crash and several other people, including a passenger in the Maserati, were injured.
Police say the incident followed an altercation in the valet parking area at the Aria Hotel, a nearby hotel and casino.
Police widen Vegas shooting manhunt
| Road Crash | February 2013 | ['(BBC)', '(KLAS–TV)'] |
South Korean Tongsun Park, Texas oilman David Chalmers and two others are indicted for bribery in the oil for food scandal. | NEW YORK, April 14 -- A Texas oil executive, his two companies and two foreign associates were indicted Thursday on charges that they illegally paid millions of dollars to Iraqi officials in exchange for lucrative deals to buy discounted oil from the government of Saddam Hussein. A separate criminal complaint charged Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman who was at the center of a congressional influence-peddling scandal in the 1970s, with acting as an "unregistered agent" of Hussein's government and with trying to bribe a U.N. official for relief from economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Thursday's action, announced by David N. Kelley, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, represents the largest round of criminal charges against individuals accused of abusing the $64 billion U.N. oil-for-food program. Samir A. Vincent, an Iraqi American businessman, recently pleaded guilty to illegally lobbying U.S. officials on behalf of Hussein's government and agreed to cooperate with Kelley's investigation.
The oil-for-food program was created in December 1996 to offset the consequences of sanctions by allowing Iraq to sell oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods; it ended after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. The Iraqi government raised more than $2 billion illicitly through the program, which has become the focus of a U.N. probe, six congressional inquiries and a federal criminal investigation. A federal grand jury in Manhattan charged that David B. Chalmers Jr., founder of Houston-based Bayoil USA Inc. and Bayoil Supply & Trading Limited; Ludmil Dionissiev, a Bulgarian citizen who lives in Houston; and John Irving, a British oil trader, funneled millions of dollars in kickbacks through a foreign front company to an Iraqi-controlled bank account in the United Arab Emirates. If convicted, the three men could each be sentenced to as long as 62 years in prison, $1 million in fines, and the seizure of at least $100 million in personal and corporate assets.
The federal complaint against Park charges that he received a total of $2 million in cash from Iraq, including a fee to "take care" of an unnamed U.N. official. It also states that Park invested $1 million in Iraqi money in a Canadian company owned by the son of another unknown, "high-ranking" U.N. official. Park could face as long as five years in prison and a fine of as much as $250,000 or twice the value of profits he earned as a result of his alleged activities. "The individuals and corporate defendants charged today reaped huge benefits from the corruption of the oil-for-food program," said John A. Klochan, acting assistant FBI director, who accompanied Kelley at a news conference. "But they didn't merely participate in the illegal scheme. They helped further it."
Chalmers and Dionissiev were arrested at their homes in Houston on Thursday and were due to appear Friday before a federal judge in Manhattan. Kelley's office plans to seek Irving's extradition from England. A spokeswoman for Chalmers, Catherine M. Recker, issued a statement saying that he and his two Bayoil companies "will all enter pleas of not guilty."
"We will vigorously dispute the allegations of criminal conduct," she added.
David Howard, a lawyer representing Dionissiev, said his client "intends to plead not guilty because he is not guilty."
Robert D. Luskin, a lawyer at the firm Patton Boggs LLP who is representing Park, said, "Our client formally denies any wrongdoing." Efforts to reach Irving in London were unsuccessful. The federal complaint charges that Iraqi authorities reached an agreement with Park and an unnamed co-conspirator, who is cooperating with federal authorities, in October 1992 to lobby U.S. and U.N. officials to grant it relief from U.N. sanctions. Kelley declined to name Park's co-conspirator, but court papers released in January said that Vincent had also engaged in lobbying U.S. and U.N. officials from 1992 to 2003.
Over the next five years, Park presented Baghdad's case to U.N. officials and foreign delegates and solicited as much as $10 million from Iraqi authorities "to take care of his expenses and his people," the complaint said. Iraq ultimately paid Park $2 million, and Park's co-conspirator said some of that money was intended for a U.N. official, the complaint said. Iraq's relationship with Chalmers predates the imposition of sanctions, and he held a privileged position in Iraq after it halted trade with other U.S. companies to protest U.S. policy against the government. The indictment said Chalmers advised Iraq on how to keep its oil exports below market rates so that the government could collect more kickbacks. He also sought to persuade U.N. officials responsible for approving the price of Iraqi crude to agree to lower prices, the indictment said.
Chalmers "paid millions of dollars in secret illegal surcharges to the government of Iraq," the indictment states. The money went through a "foreign company" that Chalmers set up and sent to a bank account held by a company known as Al Wasel and Babel General Trading, an Iraqi front based in the United Arab Emirates, according to the indictment.
"Chalmers agreed to pay the foreign company inflated commission prices on the original oil transactions, with the knowledge and expectation that the foreign company would then make the surcharge payments to the Government of Iraq," the indictment says. Staff writer Michael Dobbs in Washington contributed to this report. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | April 2005 | ['(Reuters)', '(Washington Post)'] |
A bomb in Exeter, England explodes in the Princesshay shopping centre linked to Islamic terrorism. | A man arrested after an explosion at an Exeter restaurant has "a history of mental illness" and was a recent convert to Islam, police have said. Nicky Reilly, 22, from Plymouth, suffered serious facial injuries when a device detonated at the Princesshay shopping centre in the city.
He is now in police custody in hospital and officers have also searched an address linked to him in Plymouth.
A senior police officer said Mr Reilly had been "preyed on and radicalised".
Anti-terror police and security services are assisting the inquiry.
Mr Reilly was arrested after the explosion at 1250 BST on Thursday in the Giraffe restaurant in the 230m shopping development, which is one of Exeter's main attractions. CCTV footage taken from a nearby camera appears to show him emerging from the cafe with blood pouring down his face before his arrest. No-one else was hurt in the explosion at the restaurant, which was busy at the time and is popular with families.
Amateur footage of the aftermath
Another device, which did not go off, was found outside the premises.
After the incident, officers evacuated the city's bus station - which is about half a mile away - and extended an exclusion cordon 100 metres around the scene. However, police have now re-opened the city centre though the restaurant remains closed.
Devon and Cornwall Police Deputy Chief Constable Tony Melville said: "Our investigation so far indicates Reilly, who had a history of mental illness, had adopted the Islamic faith. "We believe, despite his weak and vulnerable illness, he was preyed upon, radicalised and taken advantage of." After the arrest, police evacuated some properties 40 miles away in the Stonehouse area of Plymouth before officers from the Tactical Aid Group searched a flat in King Street, Plymouth, which was linked to Reilly. Neighbours shocked
They confirmed he travelled from Plymouth to Exeter by bus and are appealing for anyone who may have seen him over recent weeks to contact them. Officers would like to know more about Mr Reilly and trace his recent movements.
Neighbours have described Mr Reilly as a "big friendly giant" and told BBC News they were shocked at what had happened.
Businesses in the vicinity have been asked to retain any CCTV footage which could assist police.
Eyewitness Peter Lacey, who was in the restaurant with his wife, told BBC News: "There were three explosions. It is my impression they sounded more like gunshots than a bomb, like a lightbulb exploding. "They came from a locked toilet." The 230m Princesshay development officially opened last September. The scheme has been heralded as the biggest single investment in regeneration in the city's history. It contains a mix of shops, restaurants and apartments. | Armed Conflict | May 2008 | ['(BBC)', '(CNN)'] |
Australian Prime Minister John Howard announces that the 2004 Australian federal election will take place on October 9, 2004. | Six-week campaign ... Mr Howard says the election is about trust. (ABC TV) Prime Minister John Howard has put an end to speculation over the federal election, announcing Australians will go to the polls on October 9.
Mr Howard launched his election campaign after visiting Government House to meet Governor-General Michael Jeffery and finalise the date.
"This election, ladies and gentlemen, will be about trust," Mr Howard told a press conference.
"Who do you trust to keep the economy strong and protect family living standards? Who do you trust to keep interest rates low? Who do you trust to lead the fight on Australia's behalf against international terrorism?"
The October 9 date spells a longer-than-usual six-week campaign, the first time since 1984 that a federal campaign will run that long.
Mr Howard says the Senate will still sit on Monday and Tuesday, allowing an inquiry into the children overboard affair to be established.
"I didn't want anybody to suggest that I was trying to prevent the Senate doing any pointless political business that it might want to do," Mr Howard said.
Opposition Leader Mark Latham has welcomed the start of the campaign, saying Australia needs a change of government.
The Prime Minister says he plans to address the major challenges facing the nation over the next 10 years during the campaign.
"The election will be about the future of this nation over the next 10 years," he said.
"Economic strength and stability is the basis of the realisation of other hopes and aspirations of a nation."
But Mr Howard refused to guarantee he would serve a full term if re-elected, saying only that he would remain in the top job as long as he retained the support of his Liberal Party colleagues.
Mr Howard pointed to the achievements of his Government over the past eight years and highlighted the experience of his team over the Opposition.
"I present myself to the Australian people as an experienced, focused Prime Minister who is leading an experienced, focused team," he said.
"The great achievement of this Government is that we have delivered a strong, robust economy."
He says the Coalition has created 1.3 million jobs and wiped off debt inherited from the former Labor government.
Mr Howard underlined the Government's economic achievements, saying the Government had given the nation a sense of hope, prosperity and optimism.
"We have seen interest rates fall to 30-year lows and delivered real wage increase to Australian workers," he said.
"It is undeniably the case that the economic strengths ... has given to our a country a new dimension and a new respect.
"We have not neglected the vulnerable. We have strengthened Medicare.
"The Medicare safety net ... is a growing benefit to Australian families and the vulnerable in our community, yet Labor is committed to taking that safety net away."
Mr Howard raised the spectre of higher interest rates under Labor.
"A change to a Latham government would represent a real threat to the living standards of Australian families.
"Interest rates under Labor governments have always gone up and so it will be with a Latham Labor government.
"Labor would hand back control of industrial relations to the labour movement. It is a pathetic retreat to the past," he said.
The Labor Party needs to win eight seats from the Coalition for the Howard Government to lose its majority.
It will be a tightly fought election, with recent opinion poll results showing little difference between the major parties.
Prime Minister John Howard announces an October 9 election and launches his campaign for re-election.
Opposition Leader Mark Latham has welcomed the start of the federal election campaign.
© 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
This service may include material from Agence France-Presse (AFP), AAP(International), APTN, Reuters, CNN andthe BBC World Service which is copyright and cannot be reproduced.
AEDT = Australian Eastern Daylight Time which is 11 hours ahead of UTC (Greenwich Mean Time) | Government Job change - Election | August 2004 | ['(ABC Au)'] |
British professional racing cyclist Bradley Wiggins wins the 2012 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award ahead of track and field athlete Jessica Ennis and tennis player Andy Murray. | Last updated on 16 December 201216 December 2012.From the section Sports Personalitycomments831
Bradley Wiggins has been voted the 2012 BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
The Tour de France and Olympic time trial champion, 32, beat 11 other contenders to the prestigious title.
Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis was runner-up while US Open winner Andy Murray was third.
"How could it have been better? 2012 was the year of Super Saturday, of the Miracle at Medinah, of a Weirwolf on the prowl and the fastest moving set of sideburns since Elvis Presley"
"I will say thank you to everyone who voted," said Wiggins, who became the first Briton to win the Tour and followed that triumph by claiming his fourth Olympic title.
After receiving the main award from the Duchess of Cambridge, he added: "We have had all that jungle stuff and X Factor in the last few weeks, so for people to pick up the phone and vote in half an hour, thank you very much. "What a year. To stand on this stage with the people next to me is incredible. I'd like to thank my team-mates - I wouldn't be on this stage without them. I'd like to thank [British Cycling boss] the coaches, British Cycling, Team Sky and all the Olympians."
Prime Minister David Cameron posted a message of congratulationexternal-link on Twitter.
"Congratulations to Bradley Wiggins - a truly inspirational winner, after an incredible year for British sport," he said.
More than 1.6m phone votes were recorded for the 12 BBC Sports Personality contenders, with Wiggins taking 30.25% of the vote.
Wiggins mixed track and road cycling from an early age, but first came to wider public prominence in the velodrome, when he won 4km individual pursuit gold at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
The Lancashire-based athlete followed that up with two more golds on the track at the Beijing Games in 2008, a year in which he also picked up three titles at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships.
Wiggins showed his Tour pedigree when finishing fourth overall in 2009 (later promoted to third following the disqualification of third-placed Lance Armstrong) before securing a first Grand Tour podium place with third in the Vuelta a Espana two years later - a place behind Team Sky team-mate and fellow Briton Chris Froome, who was to play a key supporting role in Wiggins's 2012 Tour win.
In total, the Briton won Paris-Nice, the Tour de Romandie, the Criterium du Dauphine and the Tour de France during 2012 - the only cyclist ever to achieve that feat in a single season.
And just over a week after his Tour victory, the Belgium-born rider won the time trial at London 2012 to take his tally of Olympic medals to seven, a haul only equalled among Britons by fellow cyclist and 2012 Sports Personality nominee Sir Chris Hoy.
Below are the results of the phone voting for the 2012 BBC Sports Personality of the Year main award: | Awards ceremony | December 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Alex Salmond announces his resignation as First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party following the referendum. | He will also resign as leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), which he has led for a total of 20 years.
Scottish voters backed the country staying in the UK by 2,001,926 votes to 1,617,989 in Thursday's referendum.
Three arrests have been made after rival Union and independence supporters gathered in George Square in the centre of Glasgow.
Police, including officers on horseback, had to separate the two groups.
A spokeswoman for Police Scotland said there were about 100 people in each of the two groups, and although there had been some "minor disorder" it had been dealt with quickly, with no arrests so far. The square was closed to traffic with local diversions in place. The square had hosted a party by "Yes" supporters ahead of the referendum.
BBC Scotland reporter Cameron Buttle, who was at the scene, said the confrontation started quickly with flares being fired and a "co-ordinated" charge from the Unionist side, who were singing Rule Britannia.
Meanwhile, the Queen has said Scotland's vote to stay in the Union was "a result that all of us throughout the United Kingdom will respect".
She added: "Knowing the people of Scotland as I do, I have no doubt that Scots, like others throughout the United Kingdom, are able to express strongly-held opinions before coming together again in a spirit of mutual respect and support."
Elsewhere, Prime Minister David Cameron said the three main Westminster parties would now deliver their campaign pledge to boost the powers of Scotland's devolved parliament.
Mr Salmond, 59, is Scotland's longest-serving first minister, having held the post since the SNP won power at the Scottish Parliament in May 2007.
Speaking from his official residence at Bute House in Edinburgh, the first minister told journalists: "For me as leader my time is nearly over, but for Scotland the campaign continues and the dream shall never die.
"I am immensely proud of the campaign that Yes Scotland fought and particularly of the 1.6 million voters who rallied to that cause."
Mr Salmond said he would resign as SNP leader at the party's conference in November, before standing down as first minister when the party elects its next leader in a membership ballot.
He said there were a "number of eminently qualified and very suitable candidates" to replace him.
But Nicola Sturgeon, the current deputy first minister and deputy SNP leader, is seen as a clear frontrunner.
Mr Salmond, who will stay on as MSP for Aberdeenshire East, added: "It has been the privilege of my life to serve Scotland as first minister.
"But, as I said often during the referendum campaign, this is not about me or the SNP. It is much more important than that.
"The position is this. We lost the referendum vote but can still carry the political initiative. More importantly Scotland can still emerge as the real winner."
Ms Sturgeon said she could "think of no greater privilege than to seek to lead the party I joined when I was just 16," but said she would not make an announcement today.
She added: "Alex Salmond's achievements as SNP leader and Scotland's first minister are second to none. He led the SNP into government and has given our country a renewed self confidence." Mr Salmond also used his resignation statement to question Mr Cameron's more powers pledge.
"We now have the opportunity to hold Westminster's feet to the fire on the 'vow' that they have made to devolve further meaningful power to Scotland," he said.
"This places Scotland in a very strong position.
"I spoke to the prime minister today and, although he reiterated his intention to proceed as he has outlined, he would not commit to a second reading vote (in the House of Commons) by 27 March on a Scotland Bill.
"That was a clear promise laid out by Gordon Brown during the campaign.
"The prime minister says such a vote would be meaningless. I suspect he cannot guarantee the support of his party."
Many politicians paid tribute to Mr Salmond's contribution to political debate, including David Cameron who spoke of his "huge talent and passion".
On referendum night, 28 of Scotland's 32 local authority areas voted in favour of staying in the UK.
Glasgow, Scotland's largest council area and the third largest city in Britain, voted in favour of independence by 194,779 to 169,347.
But the the 75% turnout in Glasgow was the lowest in the country, and hoped for breakthroughs in other traditional Labour strongholds such as South Lanarkshire, Inverclyde and across Ayrshire never materialised for the nationalists.
Edinburgh, the nation's capital, clearly rejected independence by 194,638 to 123,927 votes, while Aberdeen City voted "No" by a margin of more than 20,000 votes.
Across Scotland, 84.6% of registered voters cast their ballot in the referendum - a record for a national election.
Mr Cameron said the Westminster parties would ensure commitments on new Scottish parliament powers were "honoured in full" after the final referendum result was announced.
He said that Lord Smith of Kelvin, who led Glasgow's staging of the Commonwealth Games, would oversee the process to take forward the commitments, with new powers over tax, spending and welfare to be agreed by November, and draft legislation published by January.
The prime minister also spoke of the implications for the other nations of the UK, and said "millions of voices of England must also be heard".
He added: "The question of English votes for English laws, the so-called West Lothian question, requires a decisive answer so just as Scotland will vote separately in the Scottish Parliament on their issues on tax, spending and welfare, so too England as well as Wales and Northern Ireland should be able to vote on these issues.
"And all this must take place in tandem with and at the same pace as the settlement for Scotland."
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Le Pen set for regional power with eye on presidency
How the Delta variant took hold in the UK. VideoHow the Delta variant took hold in the UK | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | September 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
NASA launches its MESSENGER spacecraft. It is due to reach the planet Mercury in 2011. | Mercury-Bound MESSENGER Launches from Cape Canaveral
NASA Spacecraft to Conduct First Study of Innermost Planet from Orbit NASA's MESSENGER — set to become the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury — launched today at 2:15:56 a.m. EDT aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The approximately 1.2-ton (1,100-kilogram) spacecraft, designed and built by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., was placed into a solar orbit 57 minutes after launch. Once in orbit, MESSENGER automatically deployed its two solar panels and began sending data on its status. Once the mission operations team at APL acquired the spacecraft's radio signals through tracking stations in Hawaii and California, Project Manager David G. Grant confirmed the craft was operating normally and ready for early system check-outs. "Congratulations to the MESSENGER launch team for a spectacular start to this mission of exploration to the planet Mercury," said Orlando Figueroa, Deputy Associate Administrator for Programs in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "While we celebrate this major milestone, let's keep in mind there is still a lot to do before we reach our destination." "All the work that went into designing and building this spacecraft is paying off beautifully," Grant said. "Now the team is ready to guide MESSENGER through the inner solar system and put us on target to begin orbiting Mercury in 2011." During a 4.9-billion mile (7.9-billion kilometer) journey that includes 15 trips around the sun, MESSENGER will fly past Earth once, Venus twice and Mercury three times before easing into orbit around its target planet. The Earth flyby, in August 2005, and the Venus flybys, in October 2006 and June 2007, will use the pull of the planets' gravity to guide MESSENGER toward Mercury's orbit. The Mercury flybys in January 2008, October 2008 and September 2009 help MESSENGER match the planet's speed and location for an orbit insertion maneuver in March 2011. The flybys also allow the spacecraft to gather data critical to planning a yearlong orbit phase. Since MESSENGER is only the second spacecraft sent to Mercury — Mariner 10 flew past it three times in 1974-75 and gathered detailed data on less than half the surface — the mission has an ambitious science plan. With a package of seven science instruments MESSENGER will determine Mercury's composition; image its surface globally and in color; map its magnetic field and measure the properties of its core; explore the mysterious polar deposits to learn whether ice lurks in permanently shadowed regions; and characterize Mercury's tenuous atmosphere and Earth-like magnetosphere. "It took technology more than 30 years, from Mariner 10 to MESSENGER, to bring us to the brink of discovering what Mercury is all about," said Dr. Sean C. Solomon, MESSENGER's principal investigator from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who leads a science team of investigators from 13 institutions across the U.S. "By the time this mission is done we will see Mercury as a much different planet than we think of it today." MESSENGER, short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, Geochemistry, and Ranging, is the seventh mission in NASA's Discovery Program of lower cost, scientifically focused exploration projects. APL manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, built the spacecraft and will operate MESSENGER during flight. MESSENGER is the 61 st spacecraft built at APL. "With MESSENGER on its way to Mercury, the reality is sinking in that in a few years, we will see things that no human has ever seen and know infinitely more about the formation of the solar system than we know today," said Dr. Michael D. Griffin, head of the APL Space Department. The countdown and launch was managed by the NASA Launch Services Program based at the John F. Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The Delta II launch service was provided by Boeing Expendable Launch Systems, Huntington Beach, Calif. MESSENGER's science instruments were built by APL; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and University of Colorado, Boulder. GenCorp Aerojet, Sacramento, Calif., and Composite Optics Inc., San Diego, provided MESSENGER's propulsion system and composite structure, respectively. KinetX, Inc., Simi Valley, Calif., leads the navigation team. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Deep Space Network of antenna stations the team uses to communicate with MESSENGER. | New achievements in aerospace | August 2004 | ['(JHUAPL)'] |
South African athlete Oscar Pistorius appears in court charged with the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. | A South African magistrate has postponed the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius until 19 August after lawyers asked for time to prepare for the case.
The 26-year-old Olympic and Paralympic track star, a double amputee since infancy, is accused of the premeditated murder of 29-year-old Reeva Steenkamp in February.
In pre-trial testimony, his lawyers said the shooting was a tragic mistake and Mr Pistorius was acting in self-defence against what he thought was an intruder.
Mr Pistorius made his way through a scrum of photographers and reporters for his first formal public appearance since his release on bail in February.
A judge changed his bail conditions in March, granting him permission to travel abroad.
In an interview shown on South African television last night, Ms Steenkamp's parents Barry and June said they were desperate to find out why their daughter had been shot.
In the Channel 5 interview, Mrs Steenkamp said "there is only one person who knows what happened" that night in February when her "terrified" daughter was killed.
Mr Pistorius's family yesterday said they will "support him every step of the way" and "fully stand behind" him. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | June 2013 | ['(RTE)'] |
Hundreds of thousands of people participate in the March for Our Lives protest around the world regarding gun violence, mass shootings and school shootings in the United States. | On Saturday, activists in Washington, D.C. and across the country will hold “March for Our Lives” rallies to protest gun violence. The rallies were planned in response to the mass shooting last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida,but they’ve quickly grown into a global initiative. Now, there are 838 marches planned worldwide. Here’s a guide to the main U.S. march in the nation’s capital.
Who are the organizers? Student activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are helping lead the march in Washington, D.C., and students at other schools around the country holding similar rallies Saturday. The events were planned in collaboration with larger gun reform organizations like Everytown for Gun Safety. Who is marching? Student activists from Washington to Indianapolis — where high school students are protesting a rise in local homicides — to Los Angeles, where a number of celebrities are expected to attend a rally. According to the March for Our Lives website, there will also be official marches in a number of countries, from Italy to India and Ghana. American students have also organized marches in Austria and Spain.
Who is funding the rallies? Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Justin Bieber, Steven Spielberg and George and Amal Clooney, who donated $500,000, provided a significant portion of the funding. The overall cost for the rally in Washington is unclear, but by comparison, the Women’s March on Washington last year raised more than $2 million through direct donations. Organizers have said that all of the donations would go towards covering the expenses for the Washington march, including the permits to hold the event as well as lobbying efforts, voter registration and ballot initiatives.
What are they trying to achieve? While gun control advocates have a broad-ranging agenda, most have focused on pushing for comprehensive gun reform legislation that they say would prevent mass shootings. Organizers have also zeroed in on school safety, and are calling for lawmakers to ensure there are no mass shootings inside schools in the future.
“The march on Saturday means that we are on our way to getting real common sense gun safety done,” Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in the Parkland shooting, told the PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff on Thursday night. “It means that, in a very short period of time, these kids and the people of this country have stepped up and spoken up and said, enough. And I think what you’re going to see is, not just in Washington, but around the country, possibly the largest number of people ever marching.”
Left:
High school and college students participate in the National School Walkout to protest gun violence in Seattle, Washington, on March 14, 2018. On Saturday, activists will hold rallies in Washington, D.C. and other places across the country. | Protest_Online Condemnation | March 2018 | ['(BBC)', '(PBS)'] |
Prince Friso of Orange–Nassau, brother of King Willem–Alexander of the Netherlands, dies aged 44 following complications from a skiing accident in 2012 which left him comatose for a year and a half. | Dutch Prince Johan Friso has died after a year and a half in a coma following an accident at an Austrian ski resort, officials say.
Prince Friso, who was 44, was moved from hospital in London back to the Netherlands last month, but had since suffered complications.
He was hit by an avalanche in February 2012 and buried for 15 minutes.
King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima are said to be on their way home from a holiday in Greece.
"Prince Friso has died of complications related to the hypoxic brain injury, which he suffered as the result of his skiing accident in Lech, Austria on 17 February 2012," a royal palace statement said.
He died on Monday morning in The Hague, the palace added.
The prince's wife, Princess Mabel, is said to have spent her 45th birthday on Sunday at his bedside.
Shortly before becoming king on the abdication of Queen Beatrix, his elder brother, Willem-Alexander spoke in April of the "terrible situation" the family had lived with for more than a year.
Prince Friso's wife and Beatrix had been doing their best to be there for him every day "to give him a chance", he said.
The prince had been skiing off-piste with friends in Lech when the avalanche struck. An emergency beeper he was wearing enabled rescuers to find him but medical officials in Innsbruck said it took some time to revive him and he suffered "massive" brain damage. They said he had suffered a heart attack lasting some 50 minutes.
He was later flown to London for treatment at the private Wellington Hospital, which has a specialist neurological unit.
He was eventually discharged in July 2013 but remained in a "state of minimal consciousness". At the time, officials said he would spend the summer with his family at the royal palace in The Hague, with medical treatment provided by a specialist team.
Prince Friso was Beatrix's second of three sons, but was no longer in line to the throne after his 2004 marriage to Mabel Wisse Smit, because of her earlier involvement with a notorious Dutch drug criminal.
The prince had worked for several years in London and the couple moved there after their marriage. He took up his last job as chief finance officer at Urenco in 2011, having worked previously in investment banking at Goldman Sachs.
The couple had two daughters, Luana and Zaria.
The prince's death had been unexpected, Dutch correspondents say, not least because the king had been away on holiday with his family.
The news also came within hours of a cousin, Prince Jaime, announcing his engagement to a Hungarian-born business lawyer, Viktoria Cservenyak.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who was also to return early from his annual holiday, said it was a "black and sorrowful day" for the royal family. "Despite everything this news still comes as a shock," he said.
Comatose Dutch prince 'improves'
Dutch prince 'may never wake up'
Dutch King Willem-Alexander sworn in | Famous Person - Death | August 2013 | ['(CNN)', '(BBC)', '(Huffington Post)', '(ABC)'] |
The first black Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, is announced to have died at the age of 85. | One of the most prominent political figures in the turbulent years before the independence of Zimbabwe, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, has died, aged 85.
He was seen by many as a moderate black leader at a time of extreme political change. But black militants saw him as a puppet of white politicians. Bishop Muzorewa entered politics in the 1970s when nationalist politicians were either imprisoned or in exile. He opposed the armed struggle that was ultimately to lead to independence. For a brief period in 1979, as white rule ended, he was the prime minister of an interim government when his country became known as Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. But the administration was short-lived. And when inclusive elections were held in 1980 after the Lancaster House Agreement, which led to independence, it was Robert Mugabe who swept to power. Bishop Muzorewa's party only managed to win three of the 100 seats in parliament. His moment in the political limelight was over. | Famous Person - Death | April 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The Daily Telegraph)', '(Daily Nation)', '(Voice of America)'] |
A U.S. B-52 long-range bomber on a routine mission over the South China Sea mistakenly flew within two nautical miles of an artificial island built by China near the Cuarteron Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands archipelago, according to a senior U.S. defense official. The Chinese Defense Ministry issues a statement accusing the U.S. of deliberately raising tensions in the disputed region. | US Navy says its B-52 plane had no intention of flying so close to the Chinese-claimed Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea
First published on Sat 19 Dec 2015 03.10 GMT
China has accused the US of “serious military provocation” after a B-52 bomber mistakenly flew within two nautical miles of Chinese-claimed territory in the South China Sea last week.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the incident involving the B-52 bomber took place last week near the Cuarteron Reef in the Spratly archipelago, disputed territory claimed by China and several of its neighbours.
Beijing claims the island chain is within China’s territorial borders. China has filed a formal complaint about the flypast with the US through the US embassy, prompting the Pentagon to look into the matter.
The Chinese Defense Ministry then issued a statement on Saturday accusing the US of deliberately raising tensions in the disputed region. “The actions by the US side constitute a serious military provocation and are rendering more complex and even militarizing conditions in the South China Sea,” the statement said.
It demanded Washington immediately take measures to prevent such incidents and damage to relations.
The ministry also repeated previous assertions that it would take whatever necessary measures to protect China’s sovereignty and security.
Navy Commander Bill Urban, a Pentagon spokesman, said the US regularly conducted B-52 training missions throughout the region but there was no plan for the B-52 to fly within 12 nautical miles of any artificial island.
“For this mission, there was no intention of flying to within 12 nautical miles,” Urban said. “The Chinese have raised concerns with us about the flight path of a recent mission,” he said. “We are looking into the matter.”
A unnamed senior US defense official told the Wall Street Journal that bad weather had contributed to the pilot flying off course and into the area claimed by China.
China has dramatically stepped up land reclamation work on reefs and atolls it claims in the Spratly island chain in the South China Sea in the past two years. In October, a US Navy destroyer, the USS Lassen, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Subi reef to deliberately challenge China’s claims of territorial waters there, prompting Chinese patrol boats to issue a warning that further “provocative actions” might lead to accelerated Chinese construction in the area. | Military Exercise | December 2015 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
East Timorese voters go to the polls to elect a new President of East Timor to replace Xanana Gusmão. | SINGAPORE, April 8 — As it struggles to pull itself together as a functioning democracy, the tiny, young nation of East Timor is scheduled to hold a presidential election on Monday amid continuing violence, poverty and self-doubt.
The election, for a largely ceremonial post, has exposed bitter personal rivalries as well as divisions among clans and regions.
Poverty and unemployment have led to the spread of gangs and contributed to an atmosphere of instability and lawlessness. Tensions remain between an older, Portuguese-speaking elite and a younger generation educated during 24 years of Indonesian rule. The failure of independence to bring prosperity has added to a sense of futility and anger.
“This election is very important in the context of the crisis, that we are not a failed state,” said the departing president, Xanana Gusmão, the charismatic independence leader who is expected to be a candidate for prime minister when parliamentary elections are held later this year.
East Timor won independence from Indonesia through a referendum in 1999, and graduated from United Nations control to become an independent nation in 2002. Yet it has remained one of the poorest countries in Asia, with a political system marked more by turmoil than governance.
More than 522,000 people are eligible to vote Monday, although a runoff is likely if, as expected, none of the eight candidates wins the required majority. Along with the parliamentary election, the contests could keep East Timor in a state of instability for months to come.
The most prominent of the candidates is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, José Ramos-Horta, 57, a member of the Portuguese-speaking diaspora who led an overseas campaign for his country’s independence and became its first foreign minister.
He became prime minister last year after a military mutiny and surge of violence that led more than 100,000 people to flee their homes and forced the incumbent, Mari Alkatiri, to resign.
Although public resentment has built against the presence of international peacekeepers, Mr. Ramos-Horta has said he would ask them to stay on to ensure that “women, children, the elderly and students can walk free on the streets without fears of being attacked.”
Among his strongest rivals is Francisco Guterres, a former guerrilla commander who is a member of Mr. Alkatiri’s revolutionary Fretilin Party and who has served as parliamentary speaker.
Another leading opponent is Fernando de Araujo, 44, the youngest of the candidates, who spent six years in an Indonesian prison along with Mr. Gusmão for leading a pro-independence resistance group.
For some people, it seems, the country’s problems may be beyond the grasp of any new leader.
“We don’t have a culture of peace, we have a culture of war,” said Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, the former Roman Catholic bishop of Dili, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Ramos-Horta. “Since the 18th century we have been fighting each other. Fighting seems to be the only situation in which we are content. It is in our blood.”
Violence has accompanied the election campaign, as supporters of rival candidates have clashed.
And signs of earlier unrest are not difficult to find. A 3,000-member international peacekeeping force, deployed a year ago when a military mutiny brought down the government and threatened to escalate into civil war, remains in place.
The soldiers are still searching for a renegade officer who led the mutiny. About 37,000 displaced people remain in refugee shelters.
Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 after Portugal abruptly ended more than 400 years of colonial dominance. About 200,000 people died during the separatist insurgency and brutal Indonesian rule that followed.
After the overwhelming vote for independence in 1999, the Indonesian military unleashed a revenge campaign of arson, killings and mass deportation carried out by local militias it had organized and armed. About 1,000 people died, and 250,000 more were forced across the border into the Indonesian territory of West Timor.
Independence meant the departure of the mostly Indonesian skilled technicians, civil servants and subsidies from the central government.
The new nation of about 900,000 people remains, as Mr. Gusmão said, on the verge of becoming a failed state, with an average per capita income of less than the equivalent of a dollar a day, and with close to half the working-age population unemployed.
Malnutrition and food shortages are widespread in a nation with few natural resources apart from rice and coffee, and with little foreign investment in businesses and manufacturing. A plague of locusts recently devoured about 11,120 acres of cropland west of the capital, Dili.
East Timor does have a nest egg of $1.2 billion in oil revenue locked in a special account in a bank in New York. Without a functioning bureaucracy capable of managing the oil revenues, and wary of the corruption that has ravaged other oil-rich developing nations, the government has placed the money in a fund for future use.
But Mr. Gusmão has backed Mr. Ramos-Horta in making the money an election issue, saying it could be used to relieve some of the country’s pressing problems. “Democracy will not work if the people are hungry,” Mr. Gusmão said. “We have so much money in an account in New York, while here in Timor people are struggling and living in misery.”
Speaking to foreign reporters in Dili last week, he said the government could not postpone measures to address social needs or even hunger. “We used to promise people jobs, the creation of jobs,” he said, a promise he himself often made in the difficult early days to calm restive crowds. “But they don’t see light at the end of the tunnel.” | Government Job change - Election | April 2007 | ['(New York Times)'] |
British police hold 14 men after anti–terrorism raids on locations in south and east London including one restaurant. , | Two people were held elsewhere in the city in what police said was an intelligence-led operation.
Police said the arrests were not connected to the alleged transatlantic jet bomb plot or the 7 July attacks.
An Islamic school near Tunbridge Wells has also been searched as part of the same operation.
The Jameah Islameah property, on Catt's Hill near Crowborough, East Sussex, was set up in 2003 as an Islamic teaching facility for boys aged between 11 and 16, according to Ofsted inspectors.
At the time of its last inspection the school only had nine pupils.
The BBC's Keith Doyle said the south London restaurant where the 12 arrests were made was a halal Chinese called The Bridge to China Town.
He said the raids came after "months of surveillance into those suspected of recruiting or encouraging others to take part in terrorist activities". Profile: Jameah Islameah
The restaurant was full of people, including children, when around 40 police officers wearing riot gear raided it shortly after 2200 BST on Friday.
Diners were told they were being questioned under the Terrorism Act. Each was asked to give their name and address, after which those arrested were taken away in handcuffs.
Police said the men were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
Anti-terrorist officers also carried out raids on a number of addresses in other parts of London, with a search being carried out at an address in the north of the capital.
The restaurant's owner, Mehdi Belyani, 40, said a group of around 15 men and two small boys had come in for dinner at 9pm. He described them as aged between 25 and 35 and said some were wearing Islamic dress.
"It was surprising actually, because plenty of [police officers] suddenly came in all together. There were more than 50 or 60 of them," he said. "They suddenly came inside because they were suspicious of some of the customers, and they talked to them. "They talked to them [for] more than one hour, two hours. And they arrested some of them. "So it was obviously surprising for me, my staff, for everyone anyway." Group bonding
The BBC's security correspondent, Gordon Corera, said the arrests were linked to allegations of "training camps" within the UK for people who want to engage in terrorist acts.
"This involves people suspected of facilitating training activity within the UK which might have allowed others to take part in terrorist activity," he said.
Police sealed off the restaurant while officers questioned customers
"Here in the UK it's more forms of bonding and getting groups together as well as radicalising those taking part. It's not necessarily military or terrorist training or blowing things up, it's more training in the sense of groups bonding and working together".
Some of the 7 July bombers were suspected of having undertaken this kind of training activity within the UK, although there is no link to those arrested overnight.
A spokeswoman for Home Secretary John Reid said he had been "kept fully informed".
Meanwhile, two men have also been arrested in other anti-terror raids in Manchester but a spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said these arrests were not linked to the London raids.
The pair were detained under the Terrorism Act and three addresses in the Cheetham Hill area are being searched.
A spokesman said both arrests followed an operation that took place on 23 August, when one man was held and a house in Elmfield Street in Cheetham Hill was searched. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | September 2006 | ['(Boston Globe)', '(BBC)'] |
Former Pennsylvania State University president Graham Spanier, former vice president Gary Schultz, and former athletic director Timothy Curley are sentenced to prison for covering up ex-coach Jerry Sandusky's criminal sexual acts, thereby letting him victimize more boys. | HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) - Three former Pennsylvania State University officials were sentenced to jail on Friday for covering up ex-coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual predations and effectively letting him victimize more boys.
In sentencing all three men for child endangerment, Judge John Boccabella in Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas also harshly criticized the late, revered football coach Joe Paterno for failing to alert authorities.
Graham Spanier, 68, once the nation’s highest-paid public university president, was ordered incarcerated for four to 12 months with two years probation.
Former athletic director Timothy Curley, 63, was sentenced to seven to 23 months incarceration and two years probation.
Ex-vice president Gary Schultz, 67, who supervised the campus police force, was ordered to serve six to 23 months behind bars and two years probation.
The three men were accused of covering up a 2001 complaint filed by then-graduate student Michael McQueary, who said he witnessed Sandusky sexually assaulting a boy who was about 10 years old in the campus football locker room showers.
Sandusky, 73, is serving 30 to 60 years in prison after he was convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period. He continues to appeal his conviction.
“Why no one made a call to the police or the Department of Public Welfare is beyond me,” the judge said.
The only motive for the men’s silence, he said, appeared to be to protect Penn State’s reputation.
Speaking in court before they were sentenced, Curley and Schultz sobbed as they apologized to the victims, saying they should have done more. Spanier, who maintained a steely composure, also apologized to the victims, his own family and the Penn State community.
“Today’s sentencings, which landed all three defendants behind bars, leaves no doubt that there are consequences for failing to protect children in Pennsylvania,” state Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a statement.
The judge said the men could serve a substantial portion of their punishment on home confinement with electronic monitoring - meaning just two months in jail each for Spanier and Schultz and three months for Curley. Each man also was fined, with Spanier given the heftiest penalty of $7,500.
Boccabella, who said he was picked for the case because he had no Penn State connections, said incarceration was a necessary deterrent to prevent others from making the same mistake of failing to report suspected abuse.
He also criticized Paterno for not calling authorities, as well as McQueary and his father and a neighbor who counseled McQueary. All could have done more, he said.
Deputy Attorney General Patrick Schulte also pointed a finger at Paterno for the cover-up itself, saying the trio of administrators had intended to report Sandusky to child welfare officials until they met with Paterno after the shower incident.
The sentencing ends the last criminal case in the Sandusky scandal, which broke in 2011 and led to the firing of Paterno. He died in 2012.
Since Sandusky’s conviction, Penn State has paid more than $90 million to settle civil claims filed by accusers.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | June 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
At least nine Iraqi police have been killed by insurgents in Kirkuk. The police were defusing a decoy bomb, when another nearby bomb detonated and killed them. | The casualties, including at least three wounded, worked for the Northern Oil Company guard service. Anti-US insurgents also launched a string of attacks in Baghdad, as the second high-level American official visited Baghdad in as many days.
At least four roadside blasts have been reported in the Iraqi capital.
The US state department's second-in-command Robert Zoellick arrived there a day after Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's one-day stopover. Both visits were kept secret for security reasons until the officials arrived. Protection force
Police say the security guards killed in the blast had been cordoning off an area containing a suspected decoy device when a second, live device blew up. They included Colonel Natham Abdullah who was in charge of protecting the northern oil fields from sabotage, police said. A large force has been created by Iraq's defence ministry to guard the oil and electricity infrastructure, which has been a frequent target of anti-US insurgents.
In Baghdad one bomb struck an oil tanker in the east of the city, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the air.
Two other bombs went off near US military convoys, one on the road to the airport and another in the Amariya district. No US casualties were reported but at least seven Iraqis were wounded. In other violence on Wednesday, the US military said it had killed a suspected foreign insurgent in a fierce gun battle near the restive western city of Qaim, near the Syrian border. Local hospital officials are quoted as saying that at least nine people were killed in clashes in Qaim but they were all believed to have been civilians. | Armed Conflict | April 2005 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(BBC)'] |
A senior U.S. official, Kurt M. Campbell, meets with Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. | HONG KONG — A senior United States diplomat met with the leader of Myanmar’s principal opposition party on Monday, three days after it was disbanded after refusing to register for an election it considered to be undemocratic.
The envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt M. Campbell, spoke with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi early Monday afternoon, a Western diplomat said. The meeting took place at a government guesthouse near her home in Yangon, Myanmar’s principal city and the former capital. | Diplomatic Visit | May 2010 | ['(AP)', '(The New York Times)', '(Press TV)'] |
a 16yearold farright extremist boy is arrested in Singapore for plotting attacks against two mosques on the anniversary of the deadly 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. | The 16-year-old Protestant, arrested last month, was planning to attack two mosques on the anniversary of Christchurch massacre.
A teenager in Singapore has been detained under the country’s strict Internal Security Act (ISA) for plotting to kill Muslims in two mosques on the March 15 anniversary of the deadly 2019 Christchurch attacks, the government said on Wednesday.
The 16-year-old student, who is a Protestant Christian of Indian ethnicity, is the youngest to be detained under such laws, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA) said in a statement, adding that the teenager, who was inspired by “far-right extremist ideology”, was detained last month.
“A secondary school student at the time, he was found to have made detailed plans and preparations to conduct terrorist attacks using a machete against Muslims at two mosques in Singapore,” the ministry said.
The ISA law allows for detention without trial.
The teenager, who has not been identified, had mapped out his route and chosen Assyafaah Mosque and Yusof Ishak Mosque as his targets near his home in northern Singapore, the ministry said, adding that he also had the intention of live-streaming his planned attack.
“He was self-radicalised, motivated by a strong antipathy towards Islam and a fascination with violence.
“He had also watched Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) propaganda videos, and came to the erroneous conclusion that ISIS represented Islam, and that Islam called on its followers to kill non-believers,” the statement said referring to the ISIL group.
The ministry said the teen was clearly influenced by Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant who shot dead 51 Muslims attending Friday prayers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on March 15, 2019. He had also streamed the shooting live on Facebook.
Tarrant was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole last year in August.
The MOHA said in the statement that the teenager admitted during the investigation that he could only “foresee two outcomes to his plan that he is arrested before he is able to carry out the attacks, or he executes the plan and is thereafter killed by the police”.
“He went in fully prepared, knowing that he is going to die, and he was prepared to die,” Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam was quoted as saying by local media.
In December, the International Security Department (ISA) said a 48-year-old Singaporean man was detained under the ISA for being “actively” involved in the civil war in Yemen.
“Sheik Heikel Khalid Bafana, who was in Yemen from 2008 to 2019, had volunteered to take up arms and also worked as a paid agent for a “foreign power” by collecting intelligence on Yemen,” ISD has told the local media.
Shanmugam pointed out that since 2015, seven people under the age of 20 have been detained or “given restriction orders under the ISA”.
Tiny opposition party takes government to court over order on two Facebook posts and an article on its website.
Punithan Genasan, a 37-year-old Malaysian, received the sentence for his role in a 2011 heroin transaction.
Jolovan Wham is facing charges under Public Order Act after posing for a photo with his placard in March. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | January 2021 | ['(Al Jazeera)'] |
A spokesman for Russia's Investigative Committee confirms that Nadiya Savchenko, the female military aviator who was captured by pro-Russian separatists on June 18, is now held in Voronezh, Russia, where she has been charged with killing two Russian journalists. , | German, French leaders call Putin over Ukraine Russia to Ukraine: We can monitor border together Lawyer: Snowden asks to extend stay in Russia Bulgaria, Russia push for pipeline blocked by EU MOSCOW (AP) -- A Ukrainian air force pilot who was captured by separatist rebels last month has been arrested in Russia and charged with abetting the killing of two Russian journalists, Russian officials said on Wednesday.
Ukraine has been rocked by fighting between pro-Russia rebels and government forces for over three months. Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, employees of a Russian state-owned TV channel, died in June after being hit by mortar fire while on assignment in the Ukrainian city of Luhansk.
Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement Wednesday that 31-year-old pilot Nadezhda Savchenko is suspected of tipping off Ukrainian troops as to the whereabouts of the journalists as well as other unspecified "civilians" who were in a rebel-held area.
The investigators said Savchenko was a Ukrainian officer but she went on leave earlier this summer to join a voluntary battalion.
Savchenko is now in a Russian detention center but it is unclear how she got there. Moscow insists she crossed the border voluntarily, without documents and under the guise of a refugee. They said they have yet to find out why she went to Russia. Ukraine, however, recently raised the alarm about her disappearance, with the foreign ministry issuing a protest note.
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yevhen Perebyinis said Wednesday that "as far as we know she was held by terrorists" and called the claim that she had been freed and attempted to go to Russia "absurd."
Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, was quoted by Ukrainian media as saying Wednesday that Savchenko had been kidnapped and the president has asked all authorities to work for her return. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2014 | ['(Radio Free Europe)', '(AP)'] |
Police in Hong Kong arrest over 300 people on the previously banned 1 July march and after the passing of the new national security law. The new law punishes crimes considered as subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison. It also allows extradition to the Mainland for trial. | HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong police fired water cannon and tear gas and arrested more than 300 people on Wednesday as protesters took to the streets in defiance of sweeping security legislation introduced by China to snuff out dissent.
Hundreds arrested in Hong Kong protests
02:18
Beijing unveiled the details of the much-anticipated law late on Tuesday after weeks of uncertainty, pushing China’s freest city and one of the world’s most glittering financial hubs on to a more authoritarian path.
As thousands of protesters gathered for an annual rally marking the anniversary of the former British colony’s handover to China in 1997, riot police used pepper spray and fired pellets as they made arrests after crowds spilled into the streets chanting “resist till the end” and “Hong Kong independence”.
“I’m scared of going to jail but for justice I have to come out today, I have to stand up,” said one 35-year-old man who gave his name as Seth.
Police said they had made more than 300 arrests for illegal assembly and other offences, with nine involving violations of the new law.
The law punishes crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison, will see mainland security agencies in Hong Kong for the first time and allows extradition to the mainland for trial.
China’s parliament adopted the law in response to protests last year triggered by fears that Beijing was stifling the city’s freedoms, guaranteed by a “one country, two systems” formula agreed when it returned to Chinese rule. Beijing denies the accusation.
Hong Kong police cited the law in confronting protesters.
“You are displaying flags or banners/chanting slogans/or conducting yourselves with an intent such as secession or subversion, which may constitute offences under the ... national security law,” police said in a message displayed on a purple banner.
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Authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong have repeatedly said the legislation is aimed at a few “troublemakers” and will not affect rights and freedoms, nor investors’ interests.
‘HEARTBREAKING’
But critics fear it will end the pro-democracy opposition and crush freedoms, including an independent legal system and right to protest, that are seen as key to Hong Kong’s success as a financial centre.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the new law was an affront to all nations and Washington would continue to implement President Donald Trump’s directive to end the territory’s special status.
Britain said it would stand by its word and offer all those in Hong Kong with British National Overseas status a “bespoke” immigration route.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab described Wednesday’s protests as heartbreaking and reprimanded HSBC and other banks for supporting the new law, saying the rights of Hong Kong should not be sacrificed for bankers’ bonuses.
Britain and Canada also updated their travel advisories for Hong Kong, saying there was an increased risk of detention.
A former employee of the British consulate in Hong Kong, Simon Cheng, said he had been granted political asylum by the British government after being beaten by Chinese secret police last year in mainland China during 15 days of detention.
In a post on Facebook after the enactment of the national security law, he said he hoped other Hong Kong people would be offered protection by Britain.
Police fired water cannon to try to disperse the protesters. A game of cat and mouse reminiscent of last year’s often violent demonstrations followed, with protesters blocking roads before running away from riot police charging with batons, only to re-emerge elsewhere.
Police posted pictures on Twitter of an officer with a bleeding arm saying he was stabbed by “rioters holding sharp objects”. The suspects fled while bystanders offered no help, police said.
On July 1 last year, hundreds of protesters stormed and vandalised the city’s legislature to protest against a bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.
Those protests evolved into anti-China demonstrations and calls for democracy, paralysing parts of the city and paving the way for Beijing’s new law.
‘BIRTHDAY GIFT’
In Beijing, Zhang Xiaoming, executive deputy director of Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, told reporters suspects arrested by a new Beijing-run security office could be tried on the mainland.
He said the new office abided by Chinese law and that Hong Kong’s legal system could not be expected to implement the laws of the mainland. Article 55 of the law states that Beijing’s security office in Hong Kong could exercise jurisdiction over “complex” or “serious” cases.
“The law is a birthday gift to (Hong Kong) and will show its precious value in the future,” Zhang said, adding the law would not be applied retroactively.
Speaking at a flag-raising ceremony to mark the handover, the city’s Beijing-backed leader, Carrie Lam, said the law was the most important development since 1997.
“It is also an inevitable and prompt decision to restore stability,” Lam said at the harbour-front venue where the last colonial governor, Chris Patten, a staunch critic of the security law, tearfully handed back Hong Kong to China.
Some pro-Beijing officials and political commentators say the law is aimed at sealing Hong Kong’s “second return” to the motherland after the first failed to bring residents to heel.
Luo Huining, the head of Beijing’s top representative office in Hong Kong, said at the ceremony the law was a “common aspiration” of Hong Kong citizens.
Some pro-democracy activists gave up membership of their groups just before the law came into force on Tuesday, though they called for the campaign to carry on from abroad.
“I saw this morning there are celebrations for Hong Kong’s handover, but to me it is a funeral, a funeral for ‘one country two systems’,” said pro-democracy lawmaker Kwok Ka-ki.
Reporting by Yanni Chow, Twinnie Siu, Pak Yiu, Scott Murdoch, Joyce Zhou, Clare Jim, Jessie Pang, Tyrone Siu and James Pomfret in Hong Kong, Yew Lun Tian in Beijing, William James and Guy Faulconbridge in London and Denny Thomas in Toronto; Writing by Anne Marie Roantree and Marius Zaharia; Editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | July 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
A boy discovers a fossilized hadrosaur skeleton at the Horseshoe Canyon in Alberta, Canada, dating back 69 million years. | The Grade 7 student from Calgary discovered a rare dinosaur skeleton earlier this year at Horseshoe Canyon in the Badlands region of southeastern Alberta, on the Nature Conservancy of Canada conservation lands.
It’s a significant find that one expert says fills a gap in the knowledge of dinosaur evolution.
“I really wanted to be a paleontologist before (and) now that I’ve found something already, at only 12 years old… I’d have a pretty killer resume,” Nathan said with a laugh during a phone interview.
He said he was on a hike with his father and a few friends on a sunny, hot day in late June, when he saw a bone protruding from the ground.
“The first thing I said was, ‘Oh my God, Dad. You need to get up here!'”
After emailing photos of the discovery to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alta., Nathan and his dad learned that the bone belonged to a young hadrosaur, also known as a duck-billed dinosaur because its pointed snout is similar to a duck’s.
Hadrosaurs could grow up to 13 metres long and roamed Alberta while triceratopses and tyrannosaurs ruled the Earth, said Francois Therrien, curator of dinosaur paleoecology at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, who responded to Nathan’s’ email.
Therrien said the three- to four-year-old hadrosaur lived about 69 million years ago. It’s a time period experts don’t know much about “in terms of dinosaurs living here in Canada and even in the western interior of North America,” said Therrien.
“We have very little information about what’s going on.
“That discovery by little Nathan is of great significance. Because it is one more piece to that puzzle.”
Therrien said the find can help paleontologists learn more about, not just the evolution of dinosaurs, but also how they responded to their changing climate and environment.
“I’m really excited because that time interval in the Earth’s history is a time of important environmental and climatic changes. There’s periods of rapid cooling, rapid warming, dropping rainfall, more humid conditions,” Therrien said.
“My interest is figuring out what’s happening to the animals during that time, especially dinosaurs.
“How are they faring with those periods of global climatic changes?”
On Thursday, Nathan and his dad were to join Therrien and his team in extracting the final pieces of the approximately three-metre-long hadrosaur, including its partial skull. The pieces are to be placed in protective jackets made of burlap and plaster and sent to the museum’s lab for cleaning and research.
The Nature Conservancy of Canada said that since Nathan’s find, paleontologists have uncovered between 30 and 50 bones in the canyon’s wall.
The group stressed this spot is on a conservation area and is asking people to respect the site, stick to the trails and not collect things along the way.
“The Nature Conservancy of Canada site is home to many at-risk plant and animal species,” said Andrew Holland, the conservancy’s spokesperson.
Therrien said the youngster’s response to the discovery is a textbook example of what the public should do when they come across fossils, bones and other skeletons in the area — contact the museum.
As for Nathan, he said working with Therrien has helped him discover a lot about himself, too. | New archeological discoveries | October 2020 | ['(BBC)', '(Global News)'] |
Julius Maada Bio is sworn in as President of Sierra Leone. | Sierra Leone's opposition candidate, Julius Maada Bio, has rushed to take his presidential oath in a hotel after winning the run-off election.
Mr Maada Bio is a former military ruler who briefly ruled the country in 1996. He narrowly beat ruling party candidate Samura Kamara, who has alleged irregularities and says he will challenge the outcome in court. Mr Maada Bio was sworn in on Wednesday, less than two hours after being declared the winner of Saturday's vote.
Under Sierra Leone's constitution, the presidential vote winner must be sworn in on the same day as he is declared the victor.
"[This is] the dawn of a new era," he said. "The people of this great nation have voted to take a new direction."
In a televised address, Mr Kamara said: "We dispute the results and we will take legal action to correct them." He also urged his supporters to stay calm. Mr Maada Bio, leader of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), won just under 52% of the vote.
He has already ruled the country, albeit briefly.
Mr Maada Bio, now 53, was part of a group of soldiers who overthrew the government in 1992 when he was in his late 20s. Then, in January 1996, he staged a palace coup, arguing that his boss, Capt Valentine Strasser, wanted to renege on the promised handover to an elected civilian government. His supporters point to that to call him the "father of democracy".
But his critics cite human rights violations witnessed while he was in power, for which he has taken "collective responsibility".
During his rule, which lasted just over two months, he appointed Mr Kamara as his finance minister.
The outgoing president, Ernest Bai Koroma, has stepped aside after serving two five-year terms for the All People's Congress (APC). He had hand-picked Mr Kamara as his preferred successor.
Mr Maada Bio lost to Mr Komora in the previous election. Support for the SLPP and the APC is largely based on ethnicity. The SLPP, the nation's oldest party, is most popular in the southern and eastern parts of the country.
By Umaru Fofana in Freetown Julius Maada Bio was sworn in rather strangely on Wednesday night - at a hotel instead of State House, and less than two hours after he was declared president-elect.
Sierra Leone has what many consider a defective transition arrangement. The constitution says the winner of a presidential election must be sworn in "on the same day" he is declared the winner. To have sworn him after midnight could have triggered a constitutional challenge, after a sometimes acrimonious campaign. Many believe Julius Maada Bio is the most popular of the candidates who ran for the presidency. But his eventual win was a combination of that popularity and former President Ernest Bai Koroma stepping on many toes. His administration's response to the Ebola and mudslide crises amid allegations of corruption angered many in the capital, Freetown. On top of this, even with the country's deep-rooted ethnic politics, tribalism came to the fore more prominently than ever before. Many members of Mr Maada Bio's Mende ethnic group - one of the country's largest - almost worship him, while most ethnic Temnes sided with the APC. With a narrow outcome, the new president has vowed to heal the divisions, and rebuild the country's broken educational system. He has a tough job ahead of him, made harder by the fact that his party does not have a majority in parliament. Sierra Leone is one of the world's poorest countries, with a fragile economy and widespread corruption. It suffered heavily during a devastating Ebola outbreak in 2014. The disease killed nearly 4,000 people yet there are still only 200 doctors serving the country of seven million people.
The country also went through a brutal civil war between 1991 and 2002, which killed more than 50,000 people.
Mr Maada Bio has promised to heal the country's divisions and rebuild the country's broken education system. Mr Maada Bio received 43.3% of the vote in the first round, falling short of the 55% needed for an outright win. The run-off was delayed by the High Court after a member of the ruling APC party alleged there had been electoral fraud during the first vote.
However, the court rejected a petition by the APC seeking an indefinite suspension of the election to allow for a forensic audit of the original 7 March vote.
After the second round, Mr Kamara said the APC still had "many concerns" about the legitimacy of the results. The country where children fear election time
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | April 2018 | ['(BBC News)'] |
Republican Party voters gather in Nevada for the party caucuses with Mitt Romney projected as the winner. | Reacting to his projected win in the Nevada Caucuses, Mitt Romney talks to supporters about the "misguided policies" and "broken promises" of the Obama administration and that with his campaign, "things must get better." Updated at 11:23 p.m. In winning the Nevada Republican caucuses, Mitt Romney added another victory in a campaign built on organization and momentum. And the former Massachusetts governor wasted no time in looking ahead to the potential contest with President Obama. As expected, Romney won Nevada easily with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul jostling for second place and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum far behind. The victory for Romney marks his second this week, following a similarly decisive win on Tuesday in Florida's Republican primary. A win in the Nevada caucuses, while expected, gives Romney added momentum for his campaign, and a new piece of evidence to support the sense that Romney is the GOP's emerging front-runner to face off against President Obama in November. After the win, Romney quickly turned his attention to Obama (and not his GOP foes) in remarks before an especially boisterous crowd Saturday night in Las Vegas. "This president began his term by apologizing for America. He should now be apologizing to America!" Romney said. "America needs a president who can fix the economy because he understands the economy. I do, and I will." In Nevada, Romney won the caucuses convincingly, winning almost every age and income group, and, more importantly, with healthy margins of support from moderate and conservative Republicans alike. While last week's Florida's primary results contained some warning signs for Romney — namely, his inability to win over the core, conservative part of the GOP — Saturday's caucus reflect an instance in which Romney was able to rally conservatives to his candidacy. Nevada caucus-goers who described themselves as "very conservative" made up almost half of the electorate. Romney won about half of them, while his competitors split the rest. Romney performed even better with caucus-goers who described themselves as "somewhat conservative." In that sense, Nevada offered Romney his most convincing argument in support of his ability to rally Republicans of all stripes. Romney's prime opponent in the race, Gingrich, had campaigned throughout Nevada this week making the argument that Romney was too moderate to unite the GOP and effectively fight Obama. Romney was bolstered, as he was when he won the state in 2008, by Nevada's Mormon population. According to entrance poll data, about a quarter of caucus-goers on Saturday identified themselves as Mormon. Those voters broke overwhelmingly — roughly nine in 10 of them — for Romney. Romney's win in Nevada also carries a degree of symbolic importance. The contest is the first in the West during the GOP primary, and Nevada — like Florida and New Hampshire — is decidedly a swing state in 2012, a state that Obama had won in 2008. Romney's Florida win helped him reclaim his status as the putative frontrunner in the Republican campaign, a status that had come under threat just 14 days ago in South Carolina, where former House Speaker Newt Gingrich rallied conservatives and scored a major upset victory in that state's primary. Gingrich sought to dispel any notion, though, that the primary was anywhere close to over. "I am a candidate for president of the United States. I will be a candidate for president of the United States. We will go to Tampa," he said at a press conference. The former speaker said that he would move on to Colorado and then Minnesota before decamping to Ohio, one of the largest Super Tuesday states. "I'm not going to withdraw," Gingrich said, blaming Romney's team for rumors that he would drop out. "I'm actually pretty happy with where we are." But Romney's bigger organization has left little to chance as the campaign goes on and that was evidenced in Nevada. Having made frequent visits to the state last year — one in April to tour a foreclosed neighborhood and stoke speculation about his candidacy, and another in May shortly after the Romney campaign had launched to raise over $1 million in a "national call day." Romney's been equally aggressive in the past few days, too, his campaign pressing the case against Gingrich, and touring Nevada with a number of events. But the path between victories in Florida and Nevada have not been the smoothest for Romney. The day after winning in Florida, Romney drew intense scrutiny for saying in a CNN interview that he is "not concerned about the very poor" as the focus of his campaign. "I misspoke. I've said something that is similar to that but quite acceptable for a long time. And you know when you do I don't know how many thousands of interviews now and then you may get it wrong. And I misspoke. Plain and simple," Romney told Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston later this week in a bid for damage control. Romney also appeared publicly with Donald Trump, the bombastic billionaire, to receive an endorsement from the reality TV star that had dubious value in the Republican Party, and had more Democratic tongues wagging than anything else. "A man who hasn't worked in 10 years, has his money in the Cayman Islands and in Switzerland, and is talking about the poor people have a safety net?" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada's top Democrat, said of Romney's comments in an interview to air Sunday on Univision. The Democratic National Committee also gleefully pounced, producing a web video about Trump and Romney's appearance together. Democrats are particularly mindful that Nevada, a state hard hit by the collapse of the housing market, could be a general election battleground in 2012. President Obama beat Sen. John McCain by about 6 points there in 2008, but Romney, if nominated, is hoping to make a better showing there this November. While the primary race goes on for Republicans, new questions have arisen about the future of Gingirch's efforts. The former speaker is in need of the financial resources needed to wage a full campaign and the New York Times reported in its Sunday edition that Sheldon Adelson, a casino magnate who had donated $10 million to a super PAC that supports Gingrich — sustaining the former speaker's campaign almost by itself — is now open to backing Romney as the GOP nominee. Gingrich is slated to appear Sunday on "Meet the Press" and other public affairs shows throughout the morning, where he'll almost certainly be forced to answer questions about the viability of his campaign. Paul and Santorum seemed poised to continue their candidacies, as well. Paul skipped the Florida primary to focus on caucuses like Nevada's, where his enthusiastic, organized corps of supporters tend to make a better showing than in primaries. Nevada's outcome could be a key test of Paul's ability to accrue delegates. Santorum, meanwhile, has been busy campaigning in Colorado, which, along with Minnesota, hosts a caucus on Tuesday. Romney is also favored in those states, though their more minor stature in the nominating calendar arguably offers the three other Republicans their best chance of upsetting Romney. The campaign enters a relatively dead period after Tuesday until the end of February, when Arizona and Michigan host their primaries. Romney, having grown up in Michigan, where his father served as governor, is heavily favored in that contest. The biggest test, then, follows on March 6 — this cycle's "Super Tuesday — which features a number of large primaries, including some more Southern and conservative contests in which Gingrich might have his best shot at parrying Romney's march to the nomination. older
Whats going on Bible Bunny? Our paths haven't crossed for a few days. Now it looks like we are the only ones here. P.Obama is leading America to its darkest days of the Age of Enslavement by proliferating Class Warfare and poverty. Class Warfare destroys the middle class and small business. there is no freedom of speech or religion. No property rights and no legal rights. No MuSiC or anything else that you take for granted or love. No rights of our life, our liberty or our pursuit of happiness. "Bible Bunny"? I corrected you on your lack of credibility on biblical issues... But, I'm agnostic & not religious
This President has led us from "Bust to Recovery", ended the "Cold War" policies & closing Eruopean US Cold War bases as well as ending the war in Afghanistan..... Americans have more rights today than they did in 2007
The Patriot Act, The National Defense Authorization Act, The Enemy Expatriation Act, the Government Consolidation Act, The Consumer Financial Protection (Confiscation) Bureau are all NAILS IN THE COFFIN of our rights of life, our liberty and our pursuit of happiness and our Constitution, our Bill of Rights and our Declaration of Independence. Call or write your Representatives and express your concern in regards to these Acts that are NAILS IN THE COFFIN and a threat of our rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Jeffrey,,, Knock it off dude, you've been debunked on those issues
Just wanna see Willard and Newt fight to the finish! Debunked by whom? You are in denial Bugs Bunny. Pull the wool from eyes. Bah bah sheep don't follow your leader to the slaughter. Obama is a war monger and a corporate bailout whore...Rom-Bama will be exactly the same person. They are both the choice of the global elite banking cartels. RON PAUL IS THE ONLY REAL GAME CHANGER!!!!!!! ... The Patriot Act, The National Defense Authorization Act, The Enemy Expatriation Act, the Government Consolidation Act, The Consumer Financial Protection (Confiscation) Bureau are all NAILS IN THE COFFIN of our rights of life,... Funny - none of you conservatives had anything to say about any of those excesses, back when it could have meant something, curious - ain't it. Stay the course... The foundations are stable, its only "minor correction" in the market. Drop these babies off at the the door step in Crawford... GW... the DNA tests are in, "You are the Father"! Jim, Marxism isn't progress and Obama is not going to give you something for nothing. Except maybe higher unemployment, more foreclosures, more closed factories and businesses, more debt, more misery, more malaise and more Marxist rhetoric about the "rich". Are you intelligent enough to understand that if the "rich" were taxed at 100% of their income, it would only run the government for two months? Then what, idiot? This president has addes trillions to our debt with no benefits for the common American citizen. He is arrogant and no more deserving to be in the White House than my golden retriever. Instead of tackling real issues like unemployment and the economy when he was first elected he chose to force America to accept a sub-par socialistic health care plan (which every analyst not on his payroll says will bankrupt this nation in no time) and pushed for his "gays in the military" agenda. And his followers wonder why the American people in the mid term election chose to take away the majority he enjoyed in the House and the Senate. Now those same idiots scream how he can not do anything thanks to the party of no. The reason power was taken away is because he proved to the citizens of this nation that he is too inept to be trusted with control; he is too motivated by personal acknowledgements and only worries about what is in it for him. I don't think it matters who the Republicans put in the race against him, he has angered so many Americans he has no chance of re-election. I am not a Republican by any measure, but I will be voting for the one opposing this worthless excuse for a president next November. just as well vote for Donald Duck! Repubs and DEMS are our enemy. Jim, They have not actually been debunked so Jeffrey has a point however:
Jeffrey, two things you listed are incorrectly declaired as 'poison' to our rights:
1. the consolidation act. Where do we have the constitutional right to make or remove Government agencies? And anyway this is exactly what the Right wants, to shrink the Government. The only reason they are against it know is because Obama is the one suggesting it, even though they want the Government to shrink. It is a partisan bullcrap talking point you are spweing here. 2. The consumer protection agency is neccesary, nothing else has to be said about that. Anyone that says otherwise is either blind or has a job in an industry that actively screws their customers over. The other stuff you mentioned we DO need to worry about. But those are not Obama's bills, they came from the House/Senate. Obama was forced to sign them because they had 3/4ths or more of the vote in Congress and so his veto would be meaningless. However all the rest of those bills are exactly as you say, an affront to our freedoms and as unconstitutional as all Hell. All Congress members involved with the drafting or vote for renewal of those bills should be stripped of their positions and thrown in jail for treason. I love how when the President signs a law, it's his, even though he had Bi-partisan support. As a "Dem" I think those laws suck too, I think they steal our freedoms and I will defend my rights to my dying breath. P.Obama is leading America to its darkest days of the Age of Enslavement by proliferating Class Warfare and povert
You need to cut the drama and look at the real statistics. He is turning the tide -even without the help of those Republican worms in Congress-
If you read different newspapers; and compare statistics instead of just listening to FOX, you would not have to be so anxious. | Government Job change - Election | February 2012 | ['(The Guardian)', '(NBC News)'] |
Hundreds of people protest on the West Bank and in Gaza for the third day in a row. | Palestinians have taken to the streets of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a third day angry at US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Hundreds protested, but numbers were down compared to Friday.
Earlier, Israel carried out strikes on Gaza in response to rocket fire aimed at southern Israel.
The move ends US neutrality on one of the region's most sensitive issues and has been criticised even by US allies.
Israel has always regarded Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem - occupied by Israel in the 1967 war - as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
For Mr Trump the decision fulfils a campaign promise and he has said it was "nothing more or less than a recognition of reality".
More than 600 Palestinians held protests at over 20 West Bank sites, according to the Israeli army, with some lobbing stones and petrol bombs at security forces.
In northern Israel a bus was pelted with rocks as it passed through mostly Arab communities, with three Israelis injured, Haaretz reported. There were also protests at the Gaza border, where a day before two Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli troops. Three rockets were fired at Israel late on Friday, with no casualties reported. Israel responded with strikes targeting what the army said were military sites belonging to the Islamist group Hamas, killing two of its members.
Thousands of Palestinians had protested on Friday, with solidarity demonstrations held across the Arab world and in other Muslim-majority nations. The US vice-president is due to visit the Middle East later this month, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' adviser Majdi al-Khaldi said the pair would not be meeting.
"America has crossed all red lines with its latest decisions over Jerusalem," Majdi al-Khaldi said.
There has been no comment from Mr Abbas himself though and it is not clear what, if any, meeting had been scheduled. At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday, the US found itself isolated, with the other 14 members all condemning Mr Trump's declaration.
But US ambassador Nikki Haley accused the UN of bias, saying it "has outrageously been one of the world's foremost centres of hostility towards Israel", and that the US was still committed to finding peace.
Jerusalem is of huge importance to both Israel and the Palestinians. It contains sites sacred to the three major monotheistic faiths - Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
Israel occupied the eastern sector - previously occupied by Jordan - in 1967, and annexed it in 1980, but the move has never been recognised internationally.
Some 330,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem, along with about 200,000 Israeli Jews in a dozen settlements there. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel does not regard them as settlements but legitimate neighbourhoods. According to the 1993 Israel-Palestinian peace accords, the final status of Jerusalem is meant to be discussed in the latter stages of peace talks. The last round of talks between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in 2014 and while the US is formulating fresh proposals, Palestinian officials have said Mr Trump's announcement has disqualified the US from brokering future negotiations. | Protest_Online Condemnation | December 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Golden State Warriors, with today's win at San Antonio, tie the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls NBA regular season record with their 72nd win this season. The Warriors can still break the record; on Wednesday, they host the Memphis Grizzlies in their final regular season game. | After gritty win in San Antonio, Golden State can get record 73rd regular-season victory Wednesday against visiting Memphis
POSTED: Apr 11, 2016 2:09 AM ET NBA.com
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Warriors vs. Spurs
Draymond Green talks with NBA TV's Kristen Ledlow on tying the NBA wins record.
SAN ANTONIO — History comes in moments, one snippet at a time. Like the scene at the end of the third quarter when Steph Curry held the ball one full tick past the expiring clock and let fly with a long, arcing rainbow from a step past the 3-point line at the opposite end of the court, watched it splash into the bottom of the net, then stood there and smiled anyway. Like midway through the final period when Draymond Green kept a possession alive by leaping to save the ball from going into the backcourt, flipping it to Curry, and jumping up and down with a wagging tongue as the most electric shooter of our time — likely all time — casually flipped in an 18-foot bank shot over the outstretched arms of two defenders. Like that scene just after the final horn sounded when Green and Curry met in an emotional embrace on the court and exchanged words that held a meaning only truly understood by the two of them. The Warriors won 92-86 on Sunday night to become the first opponent all season to win on the Spurs' home floor, ended a 33-game regular season losing streak in San Antonio that dated back to Feb. 14, 1997, and, oh yes, tied the legendary, historic Michael Jordan Era Chicago Bulls with their 72nd victory. Curry On Tying Wins Record
Stephen Curry talks with Kristen Ledlow about tying the 1995-96 Bulls 72 wins against the Spurs in San Antonio.
"What does it mean to have 72?" Green said, repeating the question. "We can get to 73." That chance arrives Wednesday night at home against Memphis. History comes in waves, like the relentless sets of breakers that Golden State used to wash over the NBA in a record-setting 24-0 start to the season that planted the flag in the ground and seemed to lift the Warriors up above mere greatness and pushed them on this journey. All those games and all those nights in all those cities when they took the floor feeling and knowing and playing like they were truly superior to the guys in the other uniforms and never let themselves forget that. All those other nights when maybe they weren't at their physical or mental peak and had to somehow find a way to get it done. Like just 24 hour earlier in Memphis when it took digging down deep in the final seconds to pull out a victory over an outmanned bunch of Grizzlies to keep the quest alive. We put ourselves in a great position to end the season with a win and do something that no team has done in history, so that's an amazing accomplishment.
– Stephen Curry
If these same two teams meet again in six weeks in the Western Conference finals, this game will mean nothing then. But that doesn't make it mean nothing today. "Obviously, we're in the moment, enjoying the ride and the goal is to win a championship," said Curry after scoring 37 points. "That's what we're playing for. But we put ourselves in a great position to end the season with a win and do something that no team has done in history, so that's an amazing accomplishment. "It's kind of hard to step outside the locker room and understand the spotlight that comes with it or just the hoopla because we come out every night trying to win. But when you think about it, I guess, perspective, only two teams have done what we've done so far and hopefully Wednesday we can finish that off. It's unbelievable." Despite the offer, even the wish from coach Steve Kerr, that the Warriors regulars might choose to rest up for the fast approaching playoffs, there was never a question that any of them would sit with their feet up. "I tried to do it with the way I played and obviously the decision on resting or not was a pretty easy decision for me," Curry said. "I'm not nursing any injuries, I don't think putting myself in a position to be a step slow come the playoffs. So why not go out and take advantage of an opportunity that may never come again?" Kerr, of course, is the link, having played for 20 years ago for the 72-10 Bulls. Analysis: Warriors Tie Bulls with 72 Wins
NBA TV's Kristen Ledlow and Steve Smith break down the Warriors keys to win and the Spurs offensive struggles.
History comes in memories. "I thought as a player it seemed like a bigger deal because the players talk about it, think about it," Kerr said. "We never talked about it as a staff here this year. It's really a players' reward, a players' honor, a players' record. They're the ones that go out and play. It probably meant more to me back then personally. But to see the look on these guys faces knowing that they have a chance to break the record and at least they tied it, they're pretty excited and that's what's great about coaching, when you see your team smiling and happy." Kerr expected to hear from at least a few of his old Chicago teammates. "Jud Buechler will call me to congratulate me," he said. "That's my guy. Luc Longley will have some snarky joke for me. And everybody else will just mutter expletives under their breath and leave me alone." Especially Scottie Pippen, who has famously pronounced that the Bulls would have swept the Warriors 4-0 in a playoff series. "With Pip coming out and saying what he said, that's cool," Green said with a smile and a shrug. "We respect those guys. We got one of them in our locker room. "Mike told me at All-Star: 'Go get the record. If you don't win this record, I'm gonna be hot and I'm blaming you.' We're almost there. I don't know what the emotions are gonna be, but I know we'll be ready. | Sports Competition | April 2016 | ['(NBC News)', '(NBA)'] |
The Israel Defense Forces say they've killed Baha Abu al-Ata, leader of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine's armed wing known as the Al-Quds Brigades, in an airstrike on a building in the Gaza Strip. PIJ confirms the death of Baha Abu al-Ata and his wife, vowing to "shake the Zionist entity to its core" in response. | Baha Abu al-Ata, the commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the northern Gaza Strip, was behind a string of attacks against Israel ■ Rocket alerts sound in southern Israel and as far north as Tel Aviv
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Israel assassinated a senior Islamic Jihad militant overnight Tuesday, the military said, after targeting a building in Gaza. Palestinian factions in Gaza vowed retaliation, with Islamic Jihad saying Israel "declared war,' as dozens of rockets were launched from Gaza at Israel's south and central cities.
The senior Palestinian militant who was targeted was Baha Abu al-Ata, the commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the northern Gaza Strip.Just over an hour after the strike, multiple rocket alerts sounded in southern Israel, including in Ashdod, Ashkelon, and in central Israeli cities such as Holon, Rishon Letzion and Tel Aviv.
Amid the escalation, approximately one million students remained home Tuesday after Israel announced that schools in the vacinity of the Gaza border and in the center of the country will be closed.
Bomb shelters were opened in central Israel and as far as Modi'in, near Jerusalem.
>> This elusive Jihadist commander in Gaza is challenging both Hamas and Israel
Overnight Tuesday, a joint statement by the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service announced that an airstrike targeted al-Ata at around 4:30 A.M.
"Al-Ata was responsible for most attacks from the Gaza strip over the last year, including the days of battle close to Memorial Day [for Israel's fallen soldiers], the shooting on the Sderot festival on August 25, 2019, and the last rocket barrage against Sderot on Friday, November 1, 2019," the statement said, calling al-Ata "a ticking bomb."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that al-Ata "was behind multiple attacks and rocket launches against Israel in recent months and intended to carry new immediate attacks," noting that the strike was recommended by the IDF chief of staff and the Shin Bet and was approved by the inner security cabinet.
Following the assassination, Islamic Jihad vowed to respond. "We promise to continue the fight, and our response will undoubtedly come to shake the foundations of the Zionist entity," the group said. Hamas, the ruling group in Gaza, said Israel bears the responsibility for the consequences of the assassination. "This crime committed by Israel will not pass silently, and will be met with retaliation by the resistance forces," it said.
Benny Gantz, leader of centrist alliance Kahol Lavan, who is currently tasked with forming the next government, voiced his support of the assassination.
"The political leadership and the IDF made the right decision tonight for the safety of the citizens of Israel and the people of the South," the former chief of staff and Netanyahu's political rival said on Twitter. "Kahol Lavan will back up any activity that is right for Israel's security and put the safety of the people above politics."
The Israeli army announced a series of road closures and other restrictions in the south of the country in anticipation for a possible flare-up.
Al-Ata, a leading figure in Islamic Jihad, has become a dominant figure in the Strip, recently associated with the rise and fall of tensions with Israel.
Ata headed the military council of the Al-Quds Brigade, which is the military arm of the Islamic Jihad. He commanded the organization's operations in northern Gaza, but also wielded great influence on the southern front.
Al-Ata had several hundred fighters under his command and an arsenal of dozens of rockets at his disposal that could be fired at Israel, sources in Gaza told Haaretz ahead of his killing.
During the Gaza conflict in 2012, Israel attempted to assassinate al-Ata together with other leaders. An Israeli airstrike hit a building he was in, but he survived.
In 2014, during the Gaza operation dubbed Operation Protective Edge, al-Ata's house was bombed, but the commander wasn't home at the time and the Islamic Jihad interpreted the strike as a mere warning. | Famous Person - Death | November 2019 | ['(Haaretz)', '(The Jerusalem Post)'] |
Police announce they will expand Project Servator to cover London. Project Servator involves the deployment of hundreds of armed counterterror officers in a bid to rapidly swarm potential terrorists. | Officers could be sent to shopping centres, transport hubs and tourist attractions to deter and disrupt possible attacks.
Thursday 5 April 2018 19:06, UK
Hundreds of specially-trained police will be ready to deploy to potential London terror targets at short notice under a new plan called Project Servator.
The officers could be sent to patrol locations like shopping centres, transport hubs and tourist attractions in a move aimed at deterring, detecting and disrupting possible attacks.
The plans involve undercover and highly visible police trained in how to spot people planning such acts.
Project Servator has already been used for four years by City of London Police, and was trialled in Wandsworth and Lambeth last year.
In the past four years under Servator deployments, the force has carried out 938 searches leading to 547 arrests.
Superintendent Nick Aldworth said traditional techniques for stopping terrorism have not worked against new, simpler terrorist attack methods such as using vehicles as weapons.
He said: "When we look globally and nationally, we have seen that terrorists now use simple methodologies that perhaps have evaded some of our traditional techniques for countering terrorism.
"In terms of specific methodologies, we put a lot of time and energy into future forecasting.
"We look at Syria and some of the things that are happening there, and how that might be migrated back into the UK.
"That's an ongoing piece of work, not only by us but through our intelligence services colleagues as well."
The London Bridge and Finsbury Park attacks both saw rented vans hit and kill members of the public, while a car was used to kill people on Westminster Bridge last year. | Government Policy Changes | April 2018 | ['(Sky News)'] |
Former Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones reports to a Texas jail to begin a six–month sentence for perjury regarding past steroid use. | Jones, 32, pleaded guilty to lying about steroid use and involvement in a drugs fraud case last October.
She reported to the Federal Medical Center-Carswell in Fort Worth just before noon, said prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley. The mother of two was stripped of five Olympic medals and has retired.
When sentenced in January, Jones was given until 11 March to begin her jail term.
She will also serve two years' probation for lying to federal investigators about her use of performance-enhancing drugs and about a cheque fraud case involving her former boyfriend, sprinter Tim Montgomery.
Once arguably the most famous female athlete in the world, Jones won gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x400m relay as well as bronzes in the long jump and 4x100m relay, at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. But she suffered a spectacular fall from glory last October, when she admitted using a steroid between September 2000 and July 2001. At her sentencing, a tearful Jones said she was "deeply sorry" for her offence, and said she hoped "that people will learn from my mistakes". | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | March 2008 | ['(BBC News)'] |
Barnsley F.C. fires assistant manager Tommy Wright as further allegations of corruption in English football are reported. | Last updated on 29 September 201629 September 2016.From the section Football
Barnsley have sacked assistant boss Tommy Wright after he was named in a Daily Telegraph investigationexternal-link alleging corruption in football.
The report included footage of Wright apparently accepting money in return for allegedly helping persuade the Championship club to sign players.
He was suspended on Wednesday while the club investigated the allegations.
But the 50-year-old has now been sacked with immediate effect after a meeting with chief executive Linton Brown.
A Barnsley statement read: "After considering Mr Wright's response to allegations in today's Daily Telegraph about breaching FA rules over player transfers, Mr Wright was dismissed.
"The club was unaware of such matters or involved in any wrongdoing. The club will continue to fully investigate the issues at hand and will co-operate with the regulatory authorities as necessary."
As part of an ongoing investigation into alleged corruption in football, the newspaper claims Wright accepted £5,000 at a meeting in Leeds in August.
A spokesman for Wright has said: "Any suggested acts contrary to criminal law or those of the Football Association and Fifa are categorically denied."
Wright joined Barnsley in February 2015 as number two to former boss Lee Johnson, and continued in the role under current head coach Paul Heckingbottom.
The latest allegations come a day after the Telegraph claimed eight current or former Premier League managers had taken bribes for player transfers.
Sam Allardyce left his post as England manager on Tuesday after claims in the newspaper that he offered advice on how to "get around" rules on player transfers.
The FA, Premier League and EFL have pledged to investigate this week's newspaper allegations.
In a joint statement, they said: "English football takes the governance of the game extremely seriously with integrity being of paramount importance.
"Any substantive allegations will be investigated with the full force of the rules at our disposal, which are wide-ranging and well-developed. In addition, should we find any evidence of criminality we would inform and seek the support of the appropriate statutory authorities."
The League Managers' Association (LMA) has accused the newspaper of holding up any investigation because it has yet to hand over any evidence. It said in a statement it wanted "full and complete unconditional disclosure of all the information it has, immediately".
The Telegraph has said it will pass on all relevant material to the football authorities.
In a separate meeting, QPR manager Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was filmed apparently negotiating a fee to travel to Singapore to speak to the Far East firm.
The Dutchman, 44, also allegedly discusses the possibility of signing players from them.
He has not been suspended by the Championship club who say "there will be a thorough internal investigation regarding this matter".
QPR's statement added: "However, we have every confidence in our manager and the robust systems and processes the club has in place."
Former Chelsea striker Hasselbaink also issued a statement in which he denied "any accusations of wrongdoing on my part".
"I was approached by Mr McGarvey and Ms Newell of the Telegraph purporting to be players' agents. They offered me a fee to make a speech in Singapore.
"I do not see anything unusual in being offered to be paid to make a speech.
"I did not make any promises in return. I did not ask QPR to purchase any of the players who were said to be managed by Mr McGarvey and Ms Newell and did not and would not recommend the purchase of a player for my personal gain."
Controversial Leeds owner Massimo Cellino, meanwhile, was filmed by the Telegraph offering undercover reporters posing as an investment firm a way to get around FA and Fifa third-party ownership rules.
In a meeting at Leeds' ground, arranged by football agent Pino Pagliara, Cellino apparently offered to sell shares in the Championship club as a means of funding the purchase of players.
The Italian proposed the fictitious firm buy 20% of the club, in return for which it would receive the same percentage of future player sell-on fees.
In the video, Cellino says: "I tell you, I spend eight million this year... on new players.
"You want to finance that? You want to come 20% in that? You got 20% of the player - it's the only way.
"As a shareholder you can finance the club, asking everything you want - percentage - you are allowed to do it in England."
Leeds claimed the footage of their owner amounted to a "non-story" as Cellino "made a perfectly proper suggestion which is entirely consistent with the FA's regulations".
The statement added: "If a company commits money to a club by way of investment, taking on the potential for profit but also the risk for loss, then that is a normal, everyday corporate process.
"This is plainly not a suggestion as to how to circumvent the rules, but rather, an accurate albeit concise explanation of how to operate within the confines of the rules and effectively become 'the club'."
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | September 2016 | ['(BBC Sport)'] |
The Japanese Era Reiwa (令和) begins as Emperor Naruhito accedes to the Chrysanthemum Throne as the 126th Emperor of Japan. The Emperor inherits two of the Three Sacred Treasures of Japan during a symbolic ceremony, which formalises his ascension. | Japan's Emperor Naruhito has pledged to fulfil his role as a "symbol of the state and unity", in his first public address since taking the throne.
The 59-year-old was speaking as he officially began his reign on Wednesday in a short but symbolic ceremony at the Imperial Palace.
Naruhito succeeds his father, 85-year-old Akihito, who abdicated citing his age and failing health. He is the first Japanese emperor to stand down in more than 200 years.
Akihito, who will now be known as Emperor Emeritus, had endeared himself to many Japanese people during his reign through his interactions with those suffering from disease and disaster.
In his speech, Emperor Naruhito paid tribute to his father while pledging to show the same devotion to his people. "[Akihito] showed profound compassion through his own bearing," he said. "I swear that I will reflect deeply on the course followed by the Emperor Emeritus ... and fulfil my responsibility as the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people of Japan."
Naruhito technically became emperor at the stroke of midnight when his father's reign came to an end - marking the start of the new Reiwa era.
But on Wednesday morning his place was formalised as he symbolically took possession of the sacred imperial regalia - a sword and a gem - that have been passed down through the generations. Japanese emperors do not wear a crown so these treasures, along with a mirror, act as a symbol of imperial power. However the items used in the ceremony are duplicates - the real objects are kept in shrines around the country and never seen. Emperor Naruhito and his wife Masako Owada, a former diplomat, are expected to be more modern in their outlook.
The Oxford-educated royal said in a news conference in 2017 that he believed "that just as new winds blow in every age, the role of the imperial family changes in each age".
"I would like to learn various things from the past while also pursuing the ideal role that the Imperial Family should take in the future," he said.
However, he is expected to carry on his father's legacy - working to replicate the sense of closeness to the public that Emperor Akihito had built up. The Emperor and Empress reportedly met at a tea party and married in 1993. Empress Masako was educated at Harvard and Oxford, and had a promising career as a diplomat before her marriage.
Masako later told reporters that she had accepted Naruhito's proposal after he said: "You might have fears and worries about joining the imperial household. But I will protect you for my entire life."
They have one child, Princess Aiko, who was born in 2001. But Japanese law prohibits women from inheriting the throne.
Empress Masako has struggled to cope with royal life and the pressure to produce a male heir. She reportedly suffers from a stress disorder, and admitted last year that she was "insecure" about becoming empress. However, she has pledged to do her best to serve the people of Japan. Naruhito's brother Prince Fumihito will be next in line to the throne, followed by the new emperor's nephew, 12-year-old Prince Hisahito.
It's the oldest continuing hereditary monarchy in the world. Legends date it back to about 600 BC.
In fact, Japanese emperors used to be seen as gods, but Emperor Hirohito - Naruhito's grandfather - publicly renounced his divinity at the end of World War Two, as part of Japan's surrender.
Today, the role is largely ceremonial and the emperor is barred from making any political statements. Emperor Akihito is seen as having redefined the role, helping to repair the damage to Japan's reputation after the war. Previous emperors rarely interacted with the public, but Akihito broke down the barrier between the royals and the people - and came to be known for his compassion.
He also took up the role of a diplomat, becoming an unofficial ambassador for Japan and travelling abroad extensively - Naruhito is expected to continue this. Akihito will now be known as "Joko", which means "grand emperor", and by the English title "Emperor Emeritus", while his wife Michiko will be "Empress Emerita".
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | May 2019 | ['(The Mainichi)', '(BBC)'] |
Landfall of the giant oil spill will result in widespread environmental harm to animals, birds and coastline areas. | The cord-grass marshes of south Louisiana are nurseries for baby shrimp, stalking grounds for blue crabs, and barriers that slow down waves before they bite off more of the mainland. On Friday, they were becoming defenseless sponges for sticky, dark oil.
The locals said the foul-smelling mass had the goopy look of chocolate mousse. The scientists said the enormous slick had the potential to bring environmental ruin to this treasured coastline.
The oil is spilling out of the seafloor at 5,000 barrels a day -- the equivalent of 210,000 gallons -- maybe much more, from a well about 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, and it could soon eclipse the volume of the infamous Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. That disaster spilled oil onto rocky Alaskan beaches, but it is at least possible to wash oil off a rock. In the Gulf, the oil is floating into wetlands that could hold on to its toxins for years.
And, scientists said, the spill's damage could be magnified by its awful timing.
Among the animals that live along the Gulf Coast, this is the time for hatching and rearing: Species as diverse as pelicans, shrimp and alligators are all reproducing, or preparing to. That could bring sensitive young animals in contact with toxic oil or cause their parents to plunge into oily waters looking for food.
Already, rescuers from Delaware were using Dawn blue dish soap to clean the first bird found to be "oiled" in the disaster, the Associated Press reported. The bird, a young northern gannet, had been turned from white to black.
"I can't imagine we're not going to have some mass casualties" among these birds, said Michael Parr of the American Bird Conservancy. "It's got to be about the worst time right now" for an oil spill to hit.
One environmentalist said the scenario created "a potential mega-disaster." Along the Gulf, they were waiting for it with a dread usually devoted to hurricanes.
"The magnitude and the potential for ecological damage is probably more great than anything we've ever seen in the Gulf of Mexico," said Nancy Rabalais, a scientist who heads the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, a research center in Cocodrie, La. "Once it hits the shoreline, it'll get into everything."
The oil has been flowing since April 22, when a drilling rig called the Deepwater Horizon blew up and sank 50 miles out in the Gulf.
By late Friday, federal officials estimated that the slick had reached land in Louisiana's isolated southeast corner and was being pushed ashore by strong winds.
It had already surrounded some of the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana, where thousands of brown pelicans are roosting. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the islands, has protected them with a ring of floating booms.
That barrier so far has stopped the oil, despite heavy seas.
"We hope it holds," said Tom MacKenzie, an agency spokesman.
In south Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, fishermen were already seeing the oil as a thick, brown sludge, washing toward the town of Venice. "It's the chocolate mousse, that's the term they've been using," said Albert "Rusty" Gaudé, a state extension agent who works with fishermen there. He said it had left many fearful that crabs, oysters and shrimp -- part of a Louisiana industry that produces 10 percent of the country's seafood -- could be devastated.
"There's only two things that are happening in Venice, and that's seafood and oil," Gaudé said. "Could be catastrophic for both of them."
In the rest of the region, the oil was still unseen -- scientists and fishermen were left to wait and worry.
"There's a lot at risk here," said Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She noted that 40 percent of the coastal wetlands in the continental United States are in Louisiana. "Ninety-seven percent of commercial fish and shellfish in the Gulf depend on estuaries and wetlands during their life cycle," she said.
In the Gulf, some scientists worried about the marsh itself: In south Louisiana, the oil was hitting wetlands dominated by Spartina grass, with huge clumps of dead grass underwater. Thomas Shirley, a professor at Texas A&M University's Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, said that posed a problem that Exxon Valdez did not.
"There's no way to wash the oil out of a Spartina marsh," Shirley said. Instead, he said, it could take years to leach out with the tides. "It's just a big sponge."
That could mean trouble for the marsh itself, and for the land behind it. If marshes die, that could remove a key natural barrier that takes the punch out of waves before they hit Louisiana's fast-eroding coast.
At Louisiana State University, Professor Ed Overton said his worries grew after a university laboratory analyzed a sample of the oil. "It's not terribly toxic, but it does appear to be terribly sticky," he said, which meant it could coat blades of grass and kill them.
Oil is damaging for birds because it coats their feathers, destroying the natural chemistry that keeps them buoyant, warm and able to fly. When birds "preen" and try to remove the oil, they can swallow it and be poisoned.
So it is terrible timing that, at this time of year, huge numbers of birds converge on the marshes and empty barrier islands on this stretch of the Gulf Coast. Some are just stopping to recharge after a long flight over the Gulf from South America. But others have come to stay, preparing to raise their young in nests in the marsh and along sandy beaches.
Among other wildlife, scientists said, some fish would swim away from the oil -- provided they can flee to an oil-free place. The situation is worse for dolphins, which must surface twice a minute to breathe: They would inhale fumes from the oil.
The natural rhythms of many other species make them also particularly vulnerable. Tiny shrimp, just hatched and only a few millimeters across, will be swimming at the oily surface. Alligators, nearing their nesting season, might ingest the oil as they feed. Sea turtles will be coming ashore to lay their eggs on beaches.
Scientists said that huge die-offs are not assured: The wind could shift and blow the slick offshore, or the spilling oil might finally be capped, mitigating the damage.
But as of Friday night, neither of those fervently hoped-for things had come to pass.
"I'm going to be honest with you, it's got a lot of people very fearful," said Avery Bates of the Organized Seafood Association of Alabama in Bayou la Batre. He said the slick was expected to hit their stretch of coastline Sunday. | Environment Pollution | April 2010 | ['(The Washington Post)', '(CNN)'] |
Four Chadian soldiers are killed and many more are wounded when their base is attacked by jihadists in Aguelhok, Kidal, Mali. | The United Nations mission in Mali (MINUSMA) has said four peacekeepers were killed and several others wounded in an attack on its base in the northern town of Aguelhok.
Peacekeepers repelled the attack on the camp that was carried out by several “heavily armed terrorists”, MINUSMA said in a statement on Friday, adding that the attackers suffered heavy losses including several deaths.
“A provisional toll shows four peacekeepers dead”, said the statement, adding that the wounded were evacuated via helicopter.
A MINUSMA source told AFP news agency the attack occurred some 200km (120 miles) from the Algerian border, targeting a contingent of peacekeepers from Chad.
The peacekeeping mission, established in 2013, has about 13,000 peacekeepers drawn from several countries operating at the centre of a multilayered and complicated conflict that has spread across the western portion of the Sahel, a semi-arid region directly south of the Sahara desert.
More than 190 peacekeepers have died in the country, including nearly 120 killed by hostile action making Mali the UN’s “most dangerous” peacekeeping operation.
Mali has been plagued by a brutal conflict that began as a separatist movement in the north but devolved into a multitude of armed groups jockeying for control in the country’s central and northern regions.
The violence has spread into Burkina Faso and Niger, with fighters linked to ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda exploiting the poverty of marginalised communities and inflaming tensions between ethnic groups.
The “tri-border” region the three-country point joining Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has seen the most intense fighting in a worsening conflict that has sparked a major humanitarian crisis.
Attacks grew fivefold between 2016 and 2020, with 4,000 people killed in the three countries last year, up from about 770 in 2016, according to the United Nations.
In February, French President Emmanuel Macron ruled out an immediate drawdown in France’s 5,100-strong Barkhane forces battling armed groups in the Sahel, describing a rushed exit as a mistake.
Last month, some 100 assailants on pick-up trucks and motorbikes launched an attack on a military post in the town of Tessit, near Mali’s border with Burkina Faso and Niger, killing at least 33 soldiers, according to the army.
Twenty attackers were killed in the attack, the army said.
Wane was UN assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping and held several high-level African Union posts.
Army says coordinated twin assaults also left 18 troops wounded, with some 30 assailants killed in military response.
The court did not issue a verdict and ended proceedings against 15 other defendants.
| Armed Conflict | April 2021 | ['(Al Jazeera)'] |
Brazil's strict new gun control legislation, including a nationwide register of all firearms, both privately owned and government issued, comes into force. | The law, passed by Congress in December, came into force on Friday after being signed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. It will tighten rules on gun permits and create a national firearms register, with strict penalties for owning an unregistered gun.
A referendum will be held in 2005 on whether to ban gun sales outright.
About 40,000 people are shot dead each year in Brazil, mainly in urban shanty towns, giving the country one of the worst murder rates in the world.
Gun owners now have 180 days to register their weapons or surrender them to the police. Thereafter, anyone with an unregistered gun faces a four-year prison term. The law is also creating a programme whereby the government will purchase guns from people as an incentive to them to disarm, but Congress has not yet approved funding for this.
Only strictly defined groups of people - including police, security officials, target shooters and transport companies - will be able to obtain a gun licence. The legal age for owning a gun is being raised from 21 to 25. In October 2005, a national referendum will ask: "Should the sale of arms and munitions be prohibited in Brazil?"
Slow change
More than 50 other gun control bills have come before Congress over the years and failed to be passed.
Brazil's arms industry is the world's sixth largest, and strong lobbying has in the past blocked any changes to the law.
Critics of the bill say that it will not stop criminals from buying weapons illegally while depriving ordinary citizens of the means to defend themselves.
However, campaigners say that public opinion is now overwhelmingly in favour of gun control.
Over 100 police officers have been shot dead in Sao Paulo alone, and thousands of civilians die in incidents involving firearms in the country every year. | Government Policy Changes | July 2004 | ['(BBC)'] |
British Prime Minister David Cameron tells the House of Commons that 3,800 British troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2013. The figure represents half the current British deployment in that country. | David Cameron has told MPs that 3,800 British troops - almost half of the current force serving in Helmand province - are to be withdrawn from Afghanistan next year.
Troop numbers are already being reduced from 9,500 to 9,000 before Christmas. And numbers would fall to about 5,200 by the end of 2013, Mr Cameron told MPs at Prime Minister's Questions.
All Nato operations are due to finish by the end of 2014, with responsibility being transferred to Afghan forces.
But a small number of British troops would remain in the country beyond that, working at an officer training academy and "involved in returning equipment and dealing with logistics", Mr Cameron said. Mr Cameron told MPs "we'll be able to see troops come home in two relatively even steps", in 2013 and 2014. This was due to "the success of our forces and the Afghan national security forces, and the fact that moving from mentoring at a battalion level to mentoring at a brigade level in 2013", he said. In a subsequent Commons statement, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond added: "Over the last 11 years we have been helping to ensure that Afghanistan's past is not inevitably its future. "As we move towards full transition at the end of 2014, it is clear that there remain huge challenges ahead for the Afghan people. "Our combat mission is drawing to a close, but our commitment to them is long term."
He told MPs that the UK had "on-going funding commitments" to the country amounting to £250m a year. Mr Hammond suggested that, if this level of aid spending were to continue, "the Afghan government will need to address the corruption which remains rampant, and could become a very real threat to the long-term stability of Afghanistan". But he praised democratic reforms in the country, which meant "Afghan voters can look forward to a future of their choosing, rather than one forced upon them". Labour leader Ed Miliband said that "greater diplomatic efforts" would "give us our best chance of leaving behind an inclusive and durable settlement in Afghanistan". Responding to Mr Hammond's statement, shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy added: "This is the fourth conflict in Afghanistan and we have no intention of there ever being a fifth." Conservative MP and chairman of the defence select committee James Arbuthnot noted that troop withdrawals would leave those remaining in the country increasingly isolated. Former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell also drew attention to the vulnerability of military equipment remaining in the country that "might be of use to insurgents or others of malign intention to the government of Afghanistan". Labour backbencher David Winnick concluded that "military victory of any kind against the Taliban is totally out of the question: it hasn't come about so far; it's not going to come about in the next two years". Earlier, a spokesperson for Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed he had spoken to the Mr Cameron by phone. A statement from the Afghan presidential palace said: "They talked to each other about the peace process, the successful security transition and about the agenda of trilateral talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan and UK which are going to be held next month." The decision on the pace of withdrawal was agreed at a meeting of the National Security Council on Tuesday, at which officials said politicians and military chiefs were in consensus on the timetable. Mr Cameron also discussed Afghanistan in an hour-long video conference with US President Barack Obama, during which they agreed that Nato's strategy to withdraw combat troops by the end of next year was "on track".
"This would present further opportunities for International Security Assistance Force countries to bring troops home next year and they agreed to stay in close touch as detailed plans develop," a Downing Street spokesman added.
"They also agreed on joint work to strengthen the political process, particularly supporting Afghanistan and her neighbours to work together for stability, building on the trilateral discussions with Pakistan led by the UK."
The US currently has about 60,000 troops in Afghanistan, after withdrawing some 23,000 this year. The White House is expected to spell out its plans for withdrawal in January. Mr Cameron said he was "confident" of meeting his promise to bring the majority of UK troops home by the end of 2014 while on a trip to Afghanistan in July.
He said reductions in troops before then would be done in an "ordered and sensible" fashion. Since 2001, 438 British personnel have died in Afghanistan.
| Government Policy Changes | December 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Voters in the US states of Alabama and Mississippi head to the polls for primaries with Rick Santorum winning in both states. |
We live blogged the results from tonight's GOP presidential primaries, and Rick Santorum was a surprise winner in both Alabama and Mississippi. Pre-primary polls had projected a tight three-way race among Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in the two states. Ron Paul didn't really compete in the Deep South and finished well behind his rivals. "We did it again," a jubilant Santorum said in Louisiana, as he made the case that he is the best conservative to face President Obama in the fall. Caucuses are also being held tonight in Hawaii and American Samoa. Romney sends out a news release congratulating Santorum on his victories. It's one of the rare nights when Romney does not hold an election night rally. "I am pleased that we will be increasing our delegate count in a very substantial way after tonight. Ann and I made a lot of new friends in Alabama and Mississippi, and we look forward to campaigning in those states in the general election," Romney said. 11:14 p.m. ET: In congressional races in Alabama, House Ethics Committee Chairman Jo Bonner won his GOP primary while House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus was leading his Republican rivals. 11:07 p.m. ET: Gingrich says he can't compete with Romney when it comes to money, as he tells the story of getting his 175,000th donor. He says it was a "humbling" conversation. "With your help, if you talk to your friends and neighbors ... we will continue to run a people's campaign. After the primaries are over, it will be obvious that the so-called front-runner didn't get there," Gingrich says. 11:05 p.m. ET: "We can forget about nominating a Massachusetts moderate," Gingrich says about Romney, arguing it's time to focus on who can best beat Obama. Gingrich is denouncing the news media for asking "why doesn't he quit" and acknowledges he'll have a tough time raising money because he didn't win in either Mississippi or Alabama. 11:02 p.m. ET: Gingrich says "great solutions" require "substance" and that "virtually everything Barack Obama knows is wrong." 11 p.m. ET: "Ideas matter," Gingrich says. He argues that he's a "visionary leader" on the order of Ronald Reagan, and denounces the "petty baloney" of GOP primary attacks. 10:59 p.m. ET: Gingrich makes his case that he's the one who can go "toe-to-toe" with Obama in the general election debates. He thanks the Mississippi and Alabama voters for helping him "change the national dialogue" on rising gas prices. Gingrich has said he can get gas prices down to $2.50 a gallon if he's elected president. 10:59 p.m. ET: "It's quite an evening. Obviously I would have liked to come in first," Gingrich says, as he congratulates Santorum for a "positive evening." Because delegates are awarded on a proportional basis, Gingrich says he will have a "substantial" number after tonight. "The elite media's effort to convince the nation that Mitt Romney is inevitable just collapsed," Gingrich tells the Birmingham crowd. "In both states, the conservative candidates got 70% of the vote. If you're the front-runner and you keep coming in third, you're not much of a front-runner." 10:56 p.m. ET: Callista Gingrich is introducing her husband, who appears to be finishing behind Santorum in both states. 10:51 p.m. ET: AP calls Mississippi for Santorum. 10:49 p.m. ET: CNN projects Santorum will win a "double-header" and also take Mississippi. 10:43 p.m. ET: "If we nominate a conservative, we will defeat Barack Obama," Santorum says. Some in the crowd appeared to be telling him that he has also won Mississippi, but the networks haven't projected a winner just yet. 10:42 p.m. ET: Santorum blows a kiss to the crowd, shakes his head and says, "Bless you." He says he expects a "huge win" in Louisiana. "We will compete everywhere. The time is now for conservatives to pull together," Santorum says. "The time is now to make sure we have the best chance to win this election ... and the best chance is to nominate a conservative who can take on President Obama on every issue." 10:39 p.m. ET: He says he wanted to be in Lafayette, La., because it's the heart of the oil and gas industry, before taking a jab at the Obama administration's energy policy. "This president almost put this whole region out of business," Santorum says, referring to a drilling moratorium after the 2010 BP oil spill. "We will put this town and this region back to work." 10:36 p.m. ET: Santorum says he was encouraged by the crowds in the Deep South. "To the people of Alabama, you made a great difference tonight," he says, before acknowledging the tight race in Mississippi. 10:34 p.m. ET: Santorum thanks his family, kisses his wife Karen and gives a shout-out to daughter Elizabeth, who is campaigning for him in Hawaii. (The Aloha State holds caucuses tonight.) 10:33 p.m. ET: Santorum takes a shot at Romney, who has been the best-funded GOP candidate. "For someone who thinks this race is inevitable ... he spent a whole lot of money against me for being inevitable." 10:32 p.m. ET: "We did it again," Santorum says. "I just want to thank everybody. What do people say to you? ... Most common thing I hear from people ... I'm praying for you." 10:30 p.m. ET: Santorum is making his way to the stage in Lafayette, La., to address his supporters. 10:27 p.m. ET: Romney strategist Eric Fehrnstrom tells CNN that there aren't enough opportunities in upcoming states for Santorum to close the delegate gap with Romney. He said the campaign met its goal of obtaining one-third of the delegates in the two contests. 10:18 p.m. ET: AP makes it official and says Santorum wins Alabama. 10:16 p.m. ET: CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Fox News are also projecting an Alabama win for Santorum. 10:05 p.m. ET: AP has called some congressional primary races in Mississippi. Sen. Roger Wicker easily won his GOP primary, while Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson defeated Greenville Mayor Heather McTeer. 9:58 p.m. ET: The votes in the Deep South are too close to call, but the Obama campaign is focused on Romney. In an e-mail fundraising pitch, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina makes the argument that the fall campaign will be "tighter than you think." "If the idea of a President Romney scares you, it's time to own a piece of this campaign," Messina writes, as he asks for a donation of $3 or more. 9:53 p.m. ET: NBC News is projecting Santorum will win the Alabama primary. 9:33 p.m. ET: Where are the candidates? Santorum is in Lafayette, La., where he's already campaigning for the Bayou State primary next week. USA TODAY's Rick Jervis is with Santorum tonight. STORY: Battle for Louisiana 9:30 p.m. ET: Earlier this evening, the Gingrich campaign released a strategy memo about the candidate's strategy at "halftime." They argue that the half-way mark is the Louisiana primary on March 24. "The sequencing and pace of the second half favors Newt," write Randy Evans, a senior Gingrich adviser, and Martin Baker, the national political director. The memo discusses upcoming primaries in Southern states, as well as contests in delegate-rich states such as Texas and California. "Here is the bottom-line reality: This nomination will not be decided until the fourth quarter – and that is not until June. It also means that the candidate who closes strongest in this race is going to win." 9:08 p.m. ET: A projection from one of the networks: "The only thing Fox News can project at this moment is that Ron Paul will come in fourth place in both Mississippi and Alabama," says the story on its website. 9:03 p.m. ET: The votes are coming in and, no surprise, the Alabama and Mississippi GOP races are too close to call. So we bring you news from other quarters:
A hypothetical race between President Obama and Romney is now a tossup, says a new Bloomberg News poll. Obama and Romney each get 47% support,
8:11 p.m. ET: More from AP on the early exit polls conducted by Edison Research, for the wire service and TV networks:
In Alabama and Mississippi, Santorum leads among the evangelical and born-again Christian voters who said a candidate's religious beliefs mattered to them. The former Pennsylvania senator and Gingrich do better among the most conservative voters, while Romney is strong with moderates and those who say the economy matters to them. For those voters who say they're concerned about beating Obama in the fall, Romney is their pick. 8 p.m. ET: The polls are now closed in Alabama and Mississippi. The exit polls show Romney, Santorum and Gingrich are bunched close together. 7:49 p.m. ET: Remember the GOP debates? The Atlantic reports Romney's campaign is saying the former Massachusetts governor is skipping the March 19 debate scheduled for Portland. This could mean the debates are really, really over. Updated 7:17 p.m. ET: Polls have closed in parts of Alabama. | Government Job change - Election | March 2012 | ['(CNN)', '(USA Today)'] |
Fourteen civilians are killed and 45 injured in mortar attacks in Faryab Province. Taliban insurgents claim responsibility for the attack. | At least 14civilians were killed after the Taliban attacked the center of Khwaja Sabz Posh district in the northern province of Faryab early on Friday morning, the provincial police spokesman Abdul Karim Yurish said. Yurish added that the civilians were killed when the Taliban’s rockets landed near their houses.
He said that 39others were wounded in the attack.
Yurish said that children are also among the victims.
He said that the wounded were taken to nearby hospitals in the province.
Taliban rejected the claims and the rockets were not fired by members of the group.
The provincial police spokesman said the incident took place in Khwaja Shabz Posh district early on Friday morning.
| Armed Conflict | July 2019 | ['(TOLOnews)'] |
United States President George W. Bush offers to help improve the Lebanese Armed Forces. | President Bush on his Middle East solution
The US is prepared to help strengthen Lebanon's army so it can disarm Hezbollah, US President George W Bush said in an interview with the BBC.
He said the Shia Muslim Hezbollah movement had acted against its own people and was destabilising Lebanon. He made the remarks ahead of a trip to the Middle East later this week.
At least 60 people have died in clashes in the capital Beirut and other cities between supporters of the government and the Hezbollah-led opposition.
The sectarian violence is the worst since the end of the 15-year civil war in 1990. Political stalemate
After heavy fighting in Beirut last week, clashes broke out again in the northern city of Tripoli on Monday.
An Arab League delegation trying to mediate an end to the fighting is expected to arrive in Lebanon on Wednesday.
The latest violence erupted after the government moved to shut down Hezbollah's telecoms network and remove the chief of security at Beirut's airport for allegedly sympathising with Hezbollah. The military said it would use force - if necessary - to restore order, starting from 0600 (0300GMT) on Tuesday.
For the past 16 months, Lebanon has been locked in political stalemate between the ruling coalition and Hezbollah-led opposition over the make-up of the government. The army has emerged as the only factor preventing a complete collapse, and it is generally agreed that its commander, Gen Michel Suleiman, should be the next president. Lebanon has not had a president since November, when Emile Lahoud stepped down despite parliament failing to agree on his successor. Lebanon was plunged into civil war from 1975-90, drawing in Syria and Israel, the two regional powers. 'Source of instability'
Speaking to the BBC's Arabic television channel, he said Lebanon's success was important for peace in the Middle East.
Gunfire on the streets of Tripoli
He said the US was helping the Lebanese army become effective enough to act against Hezbollah's armed wing.
"I don't see how you can have a society with Hezbollah armed up the way they are.
"In this case though, they moved against the Lebanese people, they're not moving against any foreign country, they're moving against the Lebanese people and it should send a signal to everybody that they're a destabilising force."
"The first step of course is to make sure that the Siniora government has got the capacity to respond with a military that's effective," he said.
Hezbollah would be nothing without Iranian backing, he said, adding that Iran was the source of much instability in the Middle East.
The interview took place ahead of Mr Bush's second - and probably last - trip to the Middle East. He arrives in Israel on Wednesday and will also visit Saudi Arabia and Egypt. | Armed Conflict | May 2008 | ['(BBC News)'] |
A bus crash in Slanic Prahova, Romania, injures 23 Israeli tourists. | Twenty-three Israeli tourists were hurt Sunday when their minibus crashed on a visit to a Romanian salt mine, local authorities said.
None suffered serious injury but passengers were taken to hospital as a precaution, emergency services spokesman Florin Chivu said after the crash near the Unirea mine at Slanic Prahova in southern Romania.
He added the 25 people were on board in total, including eight children, when the vehicle overturned.
Police were investigating the cause of the accident on a highway leading to one of the regions’ key tourist sites.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it had been contact with authorities in Bucharest regarding rescue efforts, and that it had been informed that Israelis were involved in the accident. It stressed, though, that it could not definitely confirm details until the consul arrived in the area. | Road Crash | April 2018 | ['(The Times of Israel)'] |
Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-N declares victory, despite not having gained a majority in the parliament. | Nawaz Sharif has declared victory for his centre-right party in Pakistan's landmark elections, as early results put him on course to win a historic third term as prime minister.
The election, in which 86 million people were eligible to vote, marks Pakistan's first transition from one civilian government to another in its 66-year history.
Millions of people defied deadly polling day attacks to vote, and the result represents a remarkable comeback for Mr Sharif, who heads the centre-right Pakistan Muslim League-N party (PML-N).
The party of his main rival, cricket star Imran Khan, has conceded defeat but vowed to form the next provincial government in the north-west.
"Results are still coming in, but this much is confirmed: we're the single largest party so far," Mr Sharif declared to hoots of joy from his supporters in Lahore.
"Please pray that by morning we're in a position that we don't need the crutch of coalition partners."
Early results suggest no single party will win a simple majority of 172 seats in the national assembly, raising the prospect of protracted talks to form a coalition government.
Mr Sharif previously served as prime minister from 1990-93, when he was sacked for corruption, and from 1997-99, when he was deposed by the military.
His family says he is a changed man who will this time govern more successfully.
The next government will have to contend with Taliban militancy, endemic corruption, chronic power cuts and crumbling infrastructure in the nuclear-armed country of 180 million people. One of the first likely tasks will be to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund for a multi-billion-dollar bailout.
Mr Sharif has vowed meet the huge challenges facing Pakistan and to bring about change. "That is what the people voted us for. So we are the change and people have shown their confidence in us," he said.
"They know that we have changed this country in the past ... and we will do it in the future as well."
Mr Sharif's high-voltage campaign saw him clash with Mr Khan, whose promises of reform and ending corruption struck a chord with middle-class and youth voters.
It is now clear that Mr Khan's Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) party did not have the momentum needed to trip up Mr Sharif.
Still, it looks set to squeak into second place and says it will form government in the terror-hit north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
That marks an end to decades of two-party dominance by the PML-N and Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
Mr Khan had a last-minute surge of support after fracturing his spine when he fell from a stage at a campaign rally on Tuesday.
The election commission says voter turnout was nearly 60 per cent, making it the highest since 1977.
More than 86 million people were eligible to vote for the 342-member national assembly and four provincial assemblies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan.
Queues formed outside polling stations in Pakistan's main cities where people spoke enthusiastically about exercising their democratic right and voting for change, although some expressed nervousness about security.
Voting in Pakistan's financial hub Karachi was marred by allegations of rigging from rival parties, and the election commission ordered a re-vote in more than 30 polling stations in one constituency over accusations of ballot stuffing.
More than 600,000 security personnel have been deployed nationwide at polling stations amid warnings from the Taliban to voters to stay away.
A bomb targeting a candidate in the Awami National Party (ANP) in the commercial hub, Karachi, killed at least 17 people and wounded 30.
A blast in the northern city of Peshawar also injured a number of women voters.
We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
| Government Job change - Election | May 2013 | ['(ABC News Australia)'] |
Joyce Mitchell, who had smuggled hacksaw blades inside frozen meat to Richard Matt and David Sweat in prison, before withdrawing as their getaway driver, pleads guilty to a first-degree felony of promoting prison contraband and to a misdemeanor count of fourth-degree criminal facilitation. She faces up to 7 years in prison when sentenced. | BREAKING NEWS: Justice Dept. charges Rep. Chaka Fattah of Pa. with racketeering and other crimes. Click for more...
PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. (AP) — A prison worker who got "caught up in the fantasy" of a breakout planned by two killers told investigators she performed sex acts with one of the men and took naked photos of herself for the other.
Joyce Mitchell, 51, an instructor in the tailor shop at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York, tearfully pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping prisoners Richard Matt and David Sweat escape. She faces a sentence of 2 1/3 to seven years in prison under terms of a plea deal with prosecutors.
Her lawyer, Stephen Johnston, said Mitchell realizes she made a "horrible mistake" by getting involved with Matt and Sweat, who staged an elaborate escape from the maximum-security prison on June 6.
"She got in over her head into something that she never should have started. But she did, and she's paying the price now," Johnston said outside court. "I think that to a certain extent, Matt got her to feeling good about herself, better than she had for a period of time, and she was swept off her feet a bit. ... And then when she realized who she was dealing with, everything changed."
Matt was shot and killed by searchers June 26, about 30 miles west of the prison. Sweat was captured near the Canadian border two days later and sent to another prison.
Mitchell's sentencing is set for Sept. 28. Johnston said his client will not be able to post the bail of $100,000 cash or $200,000 bond.
In documents first obtained by NBC News, Mitchell told investigators she believed she helped the two inmates escape because she "was caught up in the fantasy" of their plot.
"I enjoyed the attention, the feeling both of them gave me and the thought of a different life," she said in a statement.
"Matt told me they were getting out and we were all going to be together," Mitchell said.
© Rob Fountain/The Press-Republican via AP, Pool
Joyce Mitchell raises her hand during a court appearance with her attorney Stephen Johnston on Tuesday July 28, 2015 in Plattsburgh, N.Y. Mitchell, an instructor in the tailor shop at the Clinton Correctional Facility, pleaded guilty to charges of aiding two inmates convicted of murder by smuggling hacksaw blades and other tools to the pair, who broke out and spent three weeks on the run in June. She faces a sentence of 2 1/2 to 7 years in prison under terms of a plea deal with prosecutors.
In April, Mitchell said, she was alone with Matt in the tailor shop when he grabbed her and kissed her.
"It startled me. He kissed me with an open mouth kiss. I didn't say anything because I was scared for my husband, who also works for the facility," Mitchell said.
In May, Matt asked her to perform oral sex and she so did out of fear, Mitchell said. On two or three other occasions, she said, Matt would come to her desk wearing a large coat in which he'd cut a hole so Mitchell could fondle him.
She said she took photos of her breasts and genitals and gave them to Matt to give to Sweat.
Mitchell told police the escape plan involved the inmates giving her pills to knock out her husband so she could pick them up in her vehicle. Then she was supposed to take them to her home, where Matt planned to kill her husband, whom he referred to as "the glitch," Mitchell said in her statement. She also said the inmates planned to drive to an unspecified hideout in the woods 6 to 7 hours from the prison in Dannemora.
In another statement, she admitted she passed notes, some of which were "of a sexual nature" to Matt to give to Sweat. Sweat was reassigned from her tailor shop after rumors surfaced that he was romantically involved with Mitchell.
District Attorney Andrew Wylie said separate cases against Sweat and Gene Palmer, a guard who investigators accuse of unwittingly helping the two inmates, are expected to go before a grand jury next month.
"At this time, there are no other individuals who have been identified through the investigation as being involved directly or indirectly" with the escape, Wylie said.
Prosecutors say Mitchell provided hacksaw blades, chisels, a punch tool and a screwdriver to Matt on May 1. Authorities say she became close with the pair and agreed to be their getaway driver. But she backed out at the last moment, forcing the two to flee on foot after they emerged from a manhole near the prison.
Investigators also said Mitchell had discussed killing her husband, Lyle Mitchell, as part of the plot.
Lyle Mitchell was in court Tuesday and declined to speak with an Associated Press reporter.
Wylie said a grand jury could have considered other counts against Joyce Mitchell, including conspiracy to commit murder and sexual-related charges based on allegations involving the inmates. But he said he accepted pleas on two clearly provable charges — first-degree promoting prison contraband, a felony, and fourth-degree criminal facilitation, a misdemeanor— "in the interest of justice."
The deal requires Mitchell to cooperate with a probe by the state inspector general.
Authorities said she smuggled the tools into the prison by hiding them in frozen meat she placed in a refrigerator in the tailor shop. They said Palmer then took the meat to Sweat and Matt, who were housed in a section where inmates are allowed to cook their meals.
Authorities do not believe Palmer knew of the escape plan. He was released on bail after being arrested on charges including promoting prison contraband.
Mitchell, who was arrested June 12, resigned from her job but remains eligible for a pension, according to corrections officials and the state comptroller's office.
Matt and Sweat cut through their adjoining cell walls over months, climbed down catwalks to tunnels and broke through a brick wall. They then cut into a steam pipe and cut a chain holding a manhole cover outside the prison to get away, authorities said. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | July 2015 | ['(MSN)'] |
Hugo Chávez, the President of Venezuela, announces that he has cancer again. Preparing to travel to Havana, Cuba, for further cancer surgery, he named Vice President Nicolás Maduro to carry out his legacy if he is unable to remain in office. | Venezuela President Hugo Chavez says he will return to Cuba on Sunday for more cancer surgery, and has spoken openly for the first time of a successor.
In a televised address to the nation, he named his Vice-President Nicolas Maduro as the man to replace him if anything should happen to him.
He only returned from cancer-related treatment in Cuba on Friday.
He said thorough tests undertaken during his stay had detected more cancerous cells.
"Unfortunately, during these exhaustive exams they found some malignant cells in the same area. It is absolutely necessary, absolutely essential, that I have to undergo a new surgical intervention," he said.
"With God's will, like on the previous occasions, we will come out of this victorious." But, he acknowledged the seriousness of the situation. "There are risks, Who can deny it?" he said.
Mr Chavez said his doctors had recommend he stay in Cuba and undergo surgery this weekend, but he told them he wanted to return to Venezuela first - even though the pain he is experiencing is "not insignificant".
Speaking from the Miraflores presidential palace, Mr Chavez said that if his health failed and a new election had to be held, his supporters should vote for Nicolas Maduro.
Mr Maduro, a former bus driver, is one of the president's closest advisers. He had been foreign minister since 2006 until he was chosen by Mr Chavez to be vice-president following his election win in October.
"He is a complete revolutionary, a man of great experience despite his youth, with great dedication and capacity for work," Mr Chavez said. Mr Chavez underwent surgery for unspecified type of cancer in the pelvic region after his diagnosis in June 2011, and then had another bout of surgery last February along with chemotherapy and radiation treatments. He declared himself free of cancer in May.
He was re-elected in October for a fourth term in office, but acknowledged that the campaigning had left him exhausted and in some pain.
He left for Cuba on 27 November saying he would be receiving "hyperbaric oxygenation" therapy, which can ease ailments caused by radiation treatment.
But speculation has been rife that the cancer had returned, prompting the opposition to call for greater transparency about the state of the president's health.
Mr Chavez is due to begin his new six-year term in office on 10 January.
The constitution states that should the president leave office in the first four years of his term then an election must be held within 30 days.
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| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | December 2012 | ['(AP via Huffington Post)', '(The New York Times)', '(BBC)', '(Reuters)'] |
Severe drought conditions continue in Zimbabwe where close to 7 million people are facing food shortages, according to a Catholic aid agency. Because of repeated droughts over the past five years, many of Zimbabwe’s small farmers are unable to feed their families. Catholic Relief Services is working with farmers teaching soil and water conservation methods. The agency offers drought-resistant crops to farmers and is cooperating on a notification system warning farmers about threats to their harvest. | As severe drought conditions continue in Zimbabwe, close to 7 million people are facing food shortages, a Catholic aid agency warned this week.
“Families have run out of options to put food on their tables,” said Dorrett Byrd, Catholic Relief Services’ (CRS) regional director for Southern Africa.
With repeated droughts over the past five years, many of Zimbabwe’s small farmers have found themselves unable to feed their families. The United Nations estimates that nearly half of the 16 million people in the country are urgently in need of food aid, and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network ranks the country as experiencing a “Phase 3 food crisis,” signifying widespread acute malnutrition.
The droughts have increased in frequency and intensity due to climate change, Byrd said. In addition to widespread crop failure, inflation has decimated many families’ savings.
Byrd warned that the struggle to find food has led many young people to leave the country, adding, “Migrating parents often leave their young children behind with grandparents who struggle to provide for them.”
Catholic Relief Services is working with farmers in Zimbabwe to teach soil and water conservation methods. The agency is also offering drought-resistant crops to farmers and is cooperating with the government in a notification system warning farmers about threats to their harvest.
Even with these steps, however, Byrd warned that more action needs to be taken in order for the people of Zimbabwe to recover.
Other countries in the region are also facing an escalating hunger crisis. The Food and Agriculture Organization reports that more than 45 million people in Southern Africa are currently faced with food insecurity.
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“This area of the world needs help and it needs help now,” Byrd said. “We hope the economic situation improves soon, but if climate change is not addressed, countries like Zimbabwe will continue to suffer.”
Y | Droughts | December 2019 | ['(Catholic News Agency)', '(Bloomberg News)'] |
Egypt tries 237 activists, who face jail terms of up to three years, arrested for protesting without permits against President Abdel Fattah elSisi. Thousands demonstrated this month following the Sisi government's decision to hand over two uninhabited islands in the Straits of Tiran to Saudi Arabia. Human Rights Watch says at least 382 had been arrested. | CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt put on trial 237 activists arrested for protesting against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, judicial sources said on Saturday, the first court cases after demonstrations this month.
Thousands angered by Sisi’s decision to hand over two islands to Saudi Arabia called on April 15 for his government to fall in the largest demonstration since the former army general took office in 2014. Security forces dispersed a second protest.
Security forces had arrested at least 382 people, Human Rights Watch said in a report this week.
The 237 appeared in four courts in Cairo and Giza suburb charged with demonstrating without permits, the sources said. The sessions were adjourned. They face jail terms of up to three years if convicted.
Sisi faces criticism for a government accord putting the uninhabited Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir in Saudi waters.
Saudi and Egyptian officials say the islands belong to the kingdom and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh had asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them.
There are no signs that Sisi’s rule is under immediate threat.
Reporting by Cairo bureau; editing by Susan Thomas
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | April 2016 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Spain's Rafael Nadal defeats South African Kevin Anderson, 6–3, 6–3, 6–4, in the US Open men's singles final for his third championship at Flushing Meadows Park in the New York City borough of Queens. This is Nadal's second Grand Slam title this year, and his 16th overall. | NEW YORK -- Rafael Nadal entered the 2017 Grand Slam season on a 2½-year drought without so much as one appearance in a major final, let alone a title. He ends it having reasserted himself, capped by a U.S. Open final that shaped up as quite a mismatch -- and turned out to be exactly that.
His game at a higher level than it needed to be by the end of an unusually easy path through the field, Nadal overwhelmed Kevin Anderson 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 on Sunday to win his third championship at Flushing Meadows.
"Of course, after a couple of years without competing at this very high, high level,'' Nadal said, "very happy to be back.''
The No. 1-ranked Nadal collected his 16th Grand Slam trophy overall and at his news conference, he wore a white T-shirt listing the date and site of each one. Among men, only Roger Federer has more, with 19. Each of those two longtime rivals won two of the four majors this season, marking their return to the heights of their sport.
Nadal has dealt with knee and wrist problems, both likely a result of his physical brand of play, over his career, but 2015 and 2016 were his first seasons without reaching at least one Grand Slam final since 2004, when he was still a teenager.
Seems safe to say that, at age 31, he is once again the Nadal of old.
"I mean, I've always said he's one of the, obviously, greatest players of our sport, obviously feeling very confident,'' Anderson said. "He seems to have turned around a lot of those injuries he's experienced the last couple of years. I guess time will tell on that.''
At No. 32, Anderson was the lowest-ranked U.S. Open men's finalist since the ATP computer rankings began in 1973. The 31-year-old South African never had been past the quarterfinals at any major tournament in 33 previous appearances, so when he won his semifinal on Friday, he climbed into the stands to celebrate.
There would be no such joy for him on this day.
Nadal added to his U.S. Open triumphs in 2010 and 2013 and improved to 16-7 in Grand Slam finals. For the first time since 2013, he appeared in three in a single season, losing to Federer at the Australian Open in January, then beating Stan Wawrinka for his record 10th French Open trophy in June.
Nadal's career haul also includes two trophies from Wimbledon and one from the Australian Open. All of his big victories have come while being coached by his uncle, Toni, who is now stepping aside. The U.S. Open was the last Grand Slam event of their partnership.
It was not as daunting as usual.
Not since Pete Sampras at Wimbledon in 2000 had a man won a Slam tournament without facing any opponents ranked in the top 20. In New York, the bracket was weakened by the injury withdrawals of three of the top five men: past champions Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic and Wawrinka.
Plus, Nadal did not need to deal with Federer: The potential for a semifinal, which would have been their first U.S. Open meeting, was dashed when Juan Martin del Potro eliminated Federer in the quarterfinals. Nadal then beat del Potro , the 2009 champion but now ranked 28th, in the semis.
Much like Nadal's 6-2, 6-3, 6-1 win against Wawrinka at Roland Garros, the only beauty of this match was not in its competitiveness -- not by a long shot -- but in an appreciation for one participant's absolute superiority.
Forehands whipped up the line. Two-handed backhands ripped cross-court with ferocity. The spinning, back-to-the-net returns of serves that darted in at him at more than 130 mph (210 kph) and helped him break Anderson four times.
"I learned a lot of lessons,'' Anderson conceded. "It was a difficult match, up against somebody who has been on that stage over 20 times before.''
Nadal even came up with some terrific volleys, winning the point on all 16 of his trips to the net. Anderson, meanwhile, finished 16 for 34 in that category. Another difference-maker: Nadal never faced a break point, although that was more a reflection of his talent once the ball was in play than any particularly dominant serving.
With Nadal standing way back to receive serves, nearly backing into the line judges, he neutralized Anderson's most effective skill. Anderson came in having won 103 of 108 service games across six matches, but Nadal accumulated break points at will from the get-go -- two in a six-deuce game at 1-all, another two in a five-deuce game at 2-all.
Anderson began trying to end points quickly with a volley. Two problems with that: Anderson is not usually a serve-and-volleyer and so is no expert at that tactic; Nadal is superb at summoning passing shots at extreme speeds and angles, especially when facing the sort of target provided by the 6-foot-8 (2.03-meter) Anderson, the tallest Grand Slam finalist in history.
At 3-all, 30-all, Anderson double-faulted to offer up Nadal's fifth break point of the match, then badly pushed a forehand wide.
That only made the score 4-3 , but the statistics were telling: Anderson had 21 unforced errors, Nadal just four. A pattern had been established.
"That,'' Nadal said, "changed the rest of the match.''
When he broke to lead 4-2 in the second set , that was pretty much that.
"I always accepted all the challenges that my career present to me. The good news and the negative news, I accepted in the same way, in a very natural way. I am a person that I don't have much ups and downs,'' Nadal said. "When I am in a negative moment, I don't go very down. When I am in a positive moment, probably like now, I don't believe that I am that good.'' | Sports Competition | September 2017 | ['(ESPN)'] |
An unidentified civilian is jailed for three and a half years for terror offences connected to banned neo-Nazi group National Action. Acquitted Finnish national Mikko Vehvilainen, a serving soldier in the British Army, is jailed alongside him for a weapons offence, receiving 12 months. | A serving soldier and self-confessed racist has been jailed for having a banned CS gas canister.
L/Cpl Mikko Vehvilainen, 33, of Sennybridge Camp in Brecon, was cleared of terror offences on Thursday but admitted having a prohibited weapon.
Vehvilainen kept the spray in a drawer of a home he was renovating in Llansilin, Powys.
He was jailed for a total of eight years after another offence was taken into consideration.
A judge at Birmingham Crown Court said he had a "long and deep-seated adherence" to racist ideology.
Pavlos Panyai QC, the soldier's barrister, told the trial jury it was "not in dispute he is a racist" but it was not criminal, by itself, to hold such views.
Police found dozens of weapons - including knives, crossbows and a "war hammer" - at two properties in Powys occupied by Vehvilainen and guns which were licenced.
He also kept a photograph which showed him giving a Nazi-type salute at a memorial to his native Finland's independence.
Recorder of Birmingham, Melbourne Inman QC, said: "It is to be hoped the time in custody will enable you to look and consider of what you seek to achieve, in hope you put it behind you."
Vehvilainen, of the Royal Anglian Regiment, was cleared following a trial of having a copy of a terrorist document - namely white nationalist mass murderer Anders Breivik's manifesto, the European Declaration of Independence.
Mr Panyai told the judge: "His career in the Army is over and he leaves having dishonoured himself and, what is more, having brought infamy on himself."
When the married father-of-three was arrested in September 2017, he told his wife: "I'm being arrested for being a patriot".
A 23-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was also jailed for three-and-a-half years for possession of two terrorist documents and distributing another.
A third man, also of the Royal Anglians, Pte Mark Barrett, 23, of Rutland, Leicestershire, was acquitted of membership of the banned extreme far right terrorist group, National Action.
An Army spokesman said: "We expect the highest standards of behaviour from our personnel whether on or off duty.
"Anyone found to have fallen short of these standards will be dealt with administratively and can face a number of sanctions including dismissal."
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | April 2018 | ['(BBC)', '(BBC)', '(The Birmingham Mail)'] |
India's economy contracts by 23.9% in the April–June quarter, the country's worst recession on record since the government started releasing quarterly data in 1996. The lockdown caused massive disruptions to economic activity during the quarter. | The Indian economy contracted by a record 23.9% in the April-June quarter, as the country went into the lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
India’s real GDP fell to 26.9 lakh crore in constant terms, 23.9% lower than a year ago, showed data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation on Monday. Nominal GDP fell to Rs 38.08 lakh crore, 22.6% lower than the same period last year.
In gross value added terms, the economy contracted 22.8%.
A Bloomberg poll of 31 economists had forecast India’s GDP to contract 18% in the April-June quarter.
The Covid-19 crisis has brought on India’s fourth recession since independence and the first since liberalisation. The economy last contracted in FY80. This is the first contraction since India began releasing GDP growth data on a quarterly basis in 1997-98.
The imposed restrictions impacted economic activity as well as data collection mechanisms, said the official data release. The timelines for filing statutory returns were also extended by most regulatory bodies. “In these circumstances, the usual data sources were substituted by alternatives like GST, interactions with professional bodies etc. which were clearly limited,” it added.
A deeper dive into the GDP data shows that construction took the steepest hit along with manufacturing and the trade, hotels and transport segment.
Aditi Nayar, principal economist at ICRA Ltd., said the 26.7% drop in private final consumption expenditure, the mainstay of the economy, reflects the economic uncertainty and income as well as job losses. Consumption trends are likely to be altered during the pandemic, with non-discretionary and in-home consumption being prioritised at the expense of discretionary goods and services, she said.
Nayar added that without the support of government expenditure, the GDP contraction would have been worse.
Nayar said the wide discrepancy between the double-digit growth of government final consumption expenditure on the expenditure side, and the contraction in public administration, defence and other services on the production side, is rather incongruous.
Despite the steep reported contraction, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy may still be underestimated in the data. Along with the use of substitutes to compute GDP, the data challenges in the case of other underlying macro-economic indicators like IIP and CPI will also have implications for these estimates, which are likely to undergo revisions, the government said.
Pronab Sen, former chief statistician of India, explained that the first round of revisions would take place when data from the Ministry of Company Affairs data is incorporated. The quarterly estimates are mainly based on corporate data of listed corporates, and not the smallest companies, he said. "We suspect that smaller companies would have done worse than the larger companies, so we should expect one round of revision on that count, he said. The second revisions will happen when the informal sector data comes in, which could lead to larger revisions."
While the GDP data is a lagging indicator, Sen said the steep contraction in the first quarter means that the full-year contraction could be worse than the 5% estimated by a number of economists. | Financial Crisis | August 2020 | ['(BBC)', '(Bloomberg Quint)'] |
Pakistani lawyers hold a protest rally in Islamabad to demand the reinstatement of judges sacked by the President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf. | Pakistani lawyers are on the last leg of their nationwide protest
Thousands of protesters have gathered outside Pakistan's parliament to demand the government reinstate judges fired last year by President Musharraf.
The protesters' convoy of several hundred buses began earlier this week and finally rolled up to parliament at 0200 on Saturday (2000 GMT Friday).
The crowds milled close to the floodlit parliament building awaiting speeches by senior lawyers.
Mr Musharraf dismissed the judges in November when imposing emergency rule.
After they won elections in February, both the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif (PML-N) promised to restore the judges. But they are split on the mechanics of how this should be done. 'Musharraf's last days'
Police expected the protest to swell to between 40,000 and 50,000 people.
Barricades have been set up around the presidency and parliament buildings and extra security forces brought into the capital. The BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad says the authorities are nervous about potential violence. But neither side wants trouble and they have reached agreement on a designated route through the city, our correspondent says. The convoy travelled from the city of Lahore on the last leg of the nationwide protest. The "long march" - as it has been dubbed - has passed through different towns and cities on its way to the capital. Several thousand lawyers have been joined in the capital by a much larger number of activists, most of them supporters of the PML-N. Protesters were showered with rose petals as they passed through the city of Jhelum en route to Rawalpindi and the capital. "These are Musharraf's last days," leading lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan told the crowd. "We are out in the streets to save Pakistan." Pakistan's deposed Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and Nawaz Sharif are expected to address the protesters. Parties split
President Musharraf dismissed dozens of judges, including the Supreme Court chief justice, in November when he imposed emergency rule. At the time he faced numerous legal challenges to his staying on for another term. The move further enraged lawyers and his political opponents, who were already infuriated over his attempts earlier in the year to sack Mr Chaudhry. The PML-N now argues that the judges should be reappointed by an executive order from the prime minister. But the PPP wants to link any reinstatement to a major package of constitutional reforms. The differences led Mr Sharif to withdraw his ministers from the cabinet last month, although his party still supports the coalition government. The two parties also appear to differ over how to deal with President Musharraf. Mr Sharif has called for his removal and trial for treason, but the PPP appears wary of a confrontation with the president, who has insisted that he has no plans to resign. Before the judges were sacked, the Supreme Court was also due to rule on the legality of an amnesty President Musharraf granted former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then the PPP leader, and her husband Asif Ali Zardari. Mr Sharif was granted no such amnesty. | Protest_Online Condemnation | June 2008 | ['(BBC News)'] |
Thai Police say they have arrested a further eight activists, including two popular rappers, in an increased crackdown on protestors who demand a change to the country's monarchy. All eight were later released on bail, according to one of their lawyers. | BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai police said on Thursday they had arrested eight more activists, including two popular rappers, in a crackdown after more than a month of protests against the military-backed government that have also challenged the powerful monarchy.
The eight arrested overnight and on Thursday are charged with breaching internal security laws over a July 18 protest and defying an emergency decree that banned public gatherings to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, police said.
“The arrests of the leaders that organised such activity are being processed based on the law,” Jirapat Phumjit, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau told reporters. He said there were warrants for another four activists over that protest.
Among those arrested on Thursday was Dechathorn “Hockhacker” Bamrungmuang, 30, from the Rap Against Dictatorship group, which surged to popularity online last year. The other rapper held, Thanayut Na Ayutthaya, 19, also known as Elevenfinger.
All eight were later released on bail, a lawyer said.
Protests have been held almost daily since mid-July to call for a new constitution, the departure of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha - a former junta leader - and an end to the harassment of government opponents.
Some protesters have also called for curbs on the power of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, until recently a taboo.
Prayuth rejects protesters’ accusations that last year’s election was manipulated by the army in his favour. He has said he is ready to speak to the students, but that criticising the monarchy goes too far.
Three other activists had been arrested earlier. They include Anon Nampa, a human rights lawyer who was the first to call openly for reforms at the palace. He was arrested on Wednesday for the second time this month over different protests and also released on bail.
Six arrest warrants have also been issued over a demonstration last week at which students set out 10 demands for reform of the monarchy.
The return of protests to Bangkok streets has unsettled investors by reviving memories of more than a decade of colour-coded clashes between supporters of they establishment and their populist opponents before Prayuth took power in a 2014 coup.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | August 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
A boat carrying eight Somali pirates from the freed supertanker MV Sirius Star capsizes in the Gulf of Aden, causing the deaths of five and the loss of their portion of US$3 million in ransom. | Five Somali pirates who released a Saudi supertanker have drowned with their share of a reported £2 million ransom after their escape boat capsized.
Residents and pirates in the Somali port of Haradhere told the Associated Press that the boat, which was carrying eight men, overturned in a storm after dozens of pirates left the Sirius Star following a two-month standoff in the Gulf of Aden.
Three of the eight pirates managed to swim to shore but five were believed to have drowned.
Haradhere, which has been used by pirates to launch their attacks on international vessels off east Africa, is a Somali coastal town close to where the Saudi supertanker ship was anchored.
Local sources said that the ransom payment held by the eight pirates on their get away boat had been lost at sea.
Dozens of pirates were involved in the Nov 15 hijacking of the Sirius Star, which had a £60 million cargo of crude oil. The estimated £2 million paid to release it on behalf of the ship's owners was split between many members of the gang.
The ransom was delivered on Friday by airdrop, parachuted close to the ship in a waterproof case for the pirates to collect. They were then allowed to make their escape. | Shipwreck | January 2009 | ['(Telegraph)'] |
The organizers claim that at least 1.7 million people join a peaceful rally in Victoria Park, Hong Kong. Protesters spill into nearby streets, with train service intermittently suspended due to the sheer number of people. | An estimated 1.7 million people in Hong Kong – a quarter of the population – defied police orders to stage a peaceful march after a rally in a downtown park, after two months of increasingly violent clashes that have prompted severe warnings from Beijing and failed to win concessions from the city’s government.
Huge crowds filled Victoria Park on Sunday afternoon and spilled on to nearby streets, forcing police to block traffic in the area. Torrential rain came down an hour into the rally, turning the park into a sea of umbrellas. At the same time, protesters walked towards Central, the heart of Hong Kong’s business district, and surrounded government headquarters.
Police had turned down a plan for Sunday’s march submitted by the Civil Human Rights Front group and gave permission only for a rally in the park. Those defying the ban risked being charged with unlawful assembly, which can lead to up to five years in prison.
“Stand with Hong Kong! Fight for freedom!” protesters shouted at the rally.
Throughout the afternoon, streets around Victoria Park were so densely packed that the march frequently came to a complete standstill. Some protesters walked on to a flyover near the park as the crowds on the streets were unable to move.
Protesters were orderly but burst into choruses of slogans as they waited to move forward. “Hong Kong people, go!”, “Reclaim Hong Kong, revolution of our era!” they chanted.
Observers saw Sunday’s rally, the largest in weeks, as a test of the movement’s momentum and public support as tensions between police and protesters have escalated.
“Even though the weather was so bad, even in the face of threats of the People’s Liberation Army and water cannons, Hong Kong people never back down,” said Wong, 21, a university student.
Wong did not expect this to be the last major rally. “For as long as the government doesn’t respond, there will only be more large-scale protests.”
US president Donald Trump said on Sunday he wanted to see the crisis resolved peacefully, warning against any hardline crackdown.
“I’d like to see Hong Kong worked out in a very humanitarian fashion … I hope [Chinese] President Xi can do it… he sure has the ability, I can tell you that.
“I think it’d be very hard to deal if they do violence, I mean, if it’s another Tiananmen Square,” Trump told reporters in New Jersey. “I think it’s a very hard thing to do if there’s violence.”
Organisers of the rally, who estimated that 1.7 million people turned up at the park and in the nearby Causeway Bay and Tin Hau areas, said many more were unable to get there. Train services to the metro stations near the park were suspended intermittently throughout the day due to the huge numbers of people.
The crowd was a mix of young protesters, families and elderly residents. Parents walked alongside small children.
By early evening, protesters occupied a six-lane road outside the government in Admiralty, shining lasers at the building and the nearby People’s Liberation Army garrison and yelling insults at the police. After convoys of police vans were seen entering the government complex, protesters called for a retreat and the crowd gradually dispersed. A statement from the force late on Sunday condemned the protesters and accused them of paralysing traffic in the area.
As protesters marched past the police headquarters, they chanted, “Return the eye!” referring to a recent incident in which a young woman’s eye was badly injured during the protests. Both the government and police headquarters were surrounded by giant water-filled barricades.
In the early evening, a number of protesters ignored the organisers’ advice to leave after reaching Central and continued to march west towards the Chinese government’s liaison office, where previous protests have ended in violent clashes. Dozens of riot police officers armed with shields and guns were seen patrolling the area.
Organisers insist that the Hong Kong government must stop using the police force to suppress them and respond to their five political demands, including the complete withdrawal of the now suspended extradition bill – under which individuals can be sent to China for trial – the setting up of an independent body to investigate police violence, and universal suffrage (the free election of Hong Kong’s leaders).
A late-night government statement said although the protests were peaceful, they caused inconvenience to the community. The statement said it was “most important” to restore social order and “the government will begin sincere dialogue with the public, mend social rifts and rebuild social harmony when everything has calmed down”.
The Civil Human Rights Front had earlier called for a “peaceful, rational and non-violent” rally and online posts urged “self discipline and calmness” after 10 weeks of intensive protests, many of which have ended in violent clashes as police increasingly employed teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.
“China is taking over Hong Kong. Our society has no justice and no future. We’re just making a last-ditch attempt to do something amid our despondency,” said Carol Lui, a teacher in her 30s. “Hong Kong is dying anyway, so we are just fighting to our last breath.”
Hong Kong had its first teargas-free Saturday for weeks after three separate rallies took place in Kowloon. The marches this Saturday and Sunday marked the 11th weekend of protests in Hong Kong.
Tensions reached a new level during the past week. Following last weekend’s violent clashes with police, protesters occupied Hong Kong’s airport. Over the past week, state media outlets have published videos showing armoured Chinese troop carriers purportedly driving into Shenzhen, the south-eastern state that borders Hong Kong.
Chinese officials have also released a series of threatening statements about Hong Kong’s protesters, with one claiming “terrorism” was emerging in the city after flights were cancelled.
Despite the call for peace on Sunday, some protesters have warned that the protests could turn violent again if the government continues to ignore their demands.
“Violent escalation is an extreme measure … but if it is effective, we would continue, because we need to try all means to attract attention to our cause,” said a 25-year-old engineer wearing full protective gear who gave his surname as Fan. | Protest_Online Condemnation | August 2019 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Hundreds of thousands of students protest worldwide for climate change mitigation. | (ANSA) - Rome, March 15 - Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Italy on Friday to protest against the lack of government action against climate change as part of an international 'climate strike'. In Milan, placards raised high by students had 'Friday for Future' and 'No time left' written in English on them. One of the large banners in Italian called on governments to "act, time is running out. Today we are protesting in 182 squares in Italy to call for one thing only: to have a future". Other students had written "why should we study for a future when there will not be any". Organizers said that, as of mid-morning, some 30,000 people were taking part in the march in Milan alone. Tens of thousands were doing in the same in other cities. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte wrote on his Facebook page that "climate change is a crucial challenge for the safeguarding the future of our planet. Heads of state and government not only have the moral obligation to listen to the cries of alarm being raised today from every corner of the world, they must also take concrete steps. Apathy would be an unforgivable, historic sin." He added that his government sees climate change as "one of the most important challenges we are facing and that the new European Commission will be called upon to face." Conte said that "we still have a long way to go" but that "the presence of thousands of young people in the streets gives us more stimulus to move forward". | Protest_Online Condemnation | March 2019 | ['(ANSA)', '(Archynewsy.com)', '(The Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
Typhoon Nari hits the Philippines killing at least five people and leaving two million without power. | Typhoon Nari has pummelled the northern Philippines, ripping roofs off buildings, killing five people and leaving more than two million people without electricity.
Nari hit the country's east coast around midnight local time, toppling trees and pylons and dumping heavy rain as it cut a westward swathe through the farming regions of the main island of Luzon.
"One of the dead was a police officer awaiting deployment for rescue duties. He was buried in a mudslide," National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council spokesman Rey Balido told a news conference in Manila.
Three people were crushed to death by falling trees while another person was electrocuted by a loose power line, he added.
The damage blacked out 37 towns and cities across central Luzon, according to a tally by the civil defence office in the region.
Road and utility crews were out clearing roads and restoring power, but it could take up to two days before electricity is restored and major highways are reopened to traffic.
A total of 2.1 million people live in the areas now without electricity, according to official population figures.
Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies
Mr Balido said four people were listed as missing, including a fisherman on the country's east coast who had been sleeping in his boat when the cyclone made landfall.
Three other fishermen who put to sea elsewhere before the typhoon have also failed to return.
About 3,000 people moved into government-run shelters before the typhoon struck amid warnings of flooding and landslides.
Seventeen villages in Bulacan, a province that lies next to Manila, were under up to 1.2 metres of floodwater..
The typhoon spared the capital Manila, where the state weather service had warned on Friday about possible widespread flooding.
No major floods have been reported in the metropolis of more than 12 million people.
After sweeping across the Philippines, Nari blew out to the South China Sea with peak winds of 120 kilometres an hour, the state weather service said.
Projections from the Hong Kong Observatory had the storm gathering pace over the coming days as it heads towards the northeast coast of Vietnam.
The Philippines is hit by about 20 major storms or typhoons each year that occur mainly between June and October.
AFP
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AEST = Australian Eastern Standard Time which is 10 hours ahead of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | October 2013 | ['(AFP via ABC News)'] |
Honduran President Manuel Zelaya diverts his jet to Nicaragua after being barred from landing in Tegucigalpa as ground troops kill two in a battle against supporters with the country in turmoil. | Honduran troops fire tear gas at Zelaya supporters
Honduras's ousted President, Manuel Zelaya, has failed in a dramatic attempt to fly back to his country.
His plane circled the Tegucigalpa airport, but it could not land as the authorities had blocked the runway. Earlier at least two people were killed as troops fended off Zelaya supporters converging on the airport. Mr Zelaya, who was ousted a week ago, has now arrived in neighbouring El Salvador where he is due to meet regional leaders, who support him. Mr Zelaya departed from Washington and was hoping to fly home, despite warnings from the self-declared interim government that he would not be allowed to land. After several failed attempts to touch down at Tegucigalpa airport, where military vehicles were placed on the runway, the plane eventually flew to Nicaragua, where Mr Zelaya met President Daniel Ortega. The deposed Honduran leader went on to El Salvador where he was due to meet the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay and the head of the Organization of American States (OAS). The new government, which said it came to power through due legal process, is offering to negotiate with the international community, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs reports from Tegucigalpa. But it says one thing is not negotiable and that is the return of Mr Zelaya to the presidency, our correspondent says. Two dead
As the plane was flying towards Tegicugalpa, troops in riot gear fired tear gas at thousands of Zelaya supporters, some of whom reportedly hurled stones. Thousands managed to break through the security cordon. Hospital sources and police said at least two people had been killed and a number had been injured. After Mr Zelaya's plane was turned away, his supporters began chanting "We want blue helmets!", meaning UN peacekeepers. Zelaya supporter Karin Antunez, 27, was in tears. "We feel sad because these coup soldiers won't let Mel [Mr Zelaya's nickname] return, but we're not going to back down," she said. "We're going to keep marching so that our president comes home." Human rights activist Matias Sauceda, 65, said: "This is a war. Imagine - things are so bad, that the president is in the air and they don't let him land." The new government has imposed a sunset-to-sunrise curfew. OAS acts
Speaking earlier from the plane, Mr Zelaya said troops had threatened action against the aircraft if it tried to land. "I'm doing everything I can," Mr Zelaya said. "If I had a parachute I would immediately jump out of this plane." The military - backed by Congress and the courts - forced Mr Zelaya out of Honduras on 28 June over his plans to hold a vote on possible constitutional change. "We are the authentic representatives of the people," interim president Roberto Micheletti insisted. On Saturday, the OAS suspended Honduras - the first time the organisation had taken such a measure since Cuba was suspended in 1962, when it allied itself with the USSR. Mr Zelaya is a supporter of left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. His opponents, which include the Supreme Court and a majority in parliament, accuse him of seeking to prolong his rule. He had wanted to hold a popular vote on convening a constitutional convention - a move that could have removed the current one-term limit for presidents. | Armed Conflict | July 2009 | ['(BBC)', '(The Guardian)'] |
Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei is freed on bail. Under the terms of his bail agreement, he is not permitted to disclose the reason for his arrest and detention. | Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has returned home having been freed after more than two months' detention.
He was bailed late on Wednesday after pleading guilty to charges of tax evasion, Xinhua news agency said.
An outspoken critic of China's human rights record, his arrest in April prompted a global campaign for his release.
The 54-year-old said he was back home and in good health in a phone interview with the BBC.
"I am already home, released on bail, I can't talk to media but I am well, thanks for all the media attention," he said.
Mr Ai was detained as he boarded a Beijing flight bound for Hong Kong.
Perhaps most famous for helping design the Bird's Nest stadium that became the centre-piece for Beijing's 2008 Olympics, he was held at a secret location without access to a lawyer.
Beijing alleged the artist had evaded taxes and destroyed evidence; his supporters said the charges were motivated by his activism.
Xinhua reported that Mr Ai had offered to repay the taxes and would be released because of "his good attitude in confessing his crimes".
The agency quoted police as saying the company that handles business aspects of Mr Ai's career, Beijing Fake Cultural Development, had evaded "a huge amount of taxes and intentionally destroyed accounting documents".
Xinhua also reported that Mr Ai was suffering from a "chronic illness".
China's foreign ministry previously said that Mr Ai was under investigation for "economic crimes". It insisted that his arrest - which came amid one of China's biggest clampdowns on activists in years and was condemned by Western governments - had "nothing to do with human rights or freedom of expression".
But the release coincides with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit this week to Germany and the UK, two countries with which Mr Ai has strong professional ties and public support.
Beijing has been under enormous pressure to free the artist, says the BBC's Damian Grammaticas in Beijing.
The case had generated criticism from the international community that China was breaking its own laws by holding Mr Ai in secret without access to a lawyer, adds our correspondent.
A message from the Twitter account of Mr Ai's lawyer, Liu Xiaoyuan, said he had received a text message from his client's phone which simply read: "I'm out!"
Chinese human rights activist Wen Kejian welcomed the release, saying Mr Ai's arrest had been political.
The US state department welcomed Mr Ai's release, adding: "But there's obviously more individuals who are being held, so we want to see the release of all these people."
Baroness Ashton, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, said Mr Ai's case had been "the subject of widespread concern" and featured in recent EU-Chinese discussions on human rights in Beijing.
She said she welcomed the news "while regretting the circumstances of his detention".
In a statement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said his release "can only be a first step" and that China must now fully explain to Mr Ai the accusations against him.
The German director of Human Rights Watch said it was "not by accident" that Mr Ai had been released shortly before Mr Wen's European visit, but warned he could now be facing further restriction on his movements.
"Examples from the past of other dissidents that were released have shown that released opponents of the system face strict restrictions and many have been silenced," said Wenzel Michalski.
Rights group Amnesty International said Mr Ai's long detention without charge had violated China's own legal process.
"It is vital that the international outcry over Ai Weiwei be extended to those activists still languishing in secret detention or charged with inciting subversion," said Amnesty's Catherine Baber.
The circumstances of one of Ai Weiwei's relatives, his accountant and driver, who were detained at the same time as him, remain unknown.
British sculptor Anish Kapoor, who had led criticism of Beijing over the detention, called for the artist to be given a fair trial.
"While I am thankful that he has been released, I do not think that artists should present their work in China until the situation has been resolved," said Mr Kapoor.
The Indian-born sculptor had dedicated his monumental Leviathan art installation in Paris, unveiled last month, to Mr Ai.
Ai Weiwei gained international recognition in the early 1980s for his monolithic brick sculptures.
Last October, he unveiled a carpet of 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds at London's Tate Modern, which he said questioned the role of an individual in society. Profile: Ai Weiwei | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Investigate | June 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(Al Jazeera)', '(China Daily)'] |
The General Synod of the Church of England unanimously votes to apologise to descendants of the slaves on Barbados where, two hundred years ago, the church's Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts that owned the Codrington Estates, used slaves for labour. | An amendment "recognising the damage done" to those enslaved was backed overwhelmingly by the General Synod. Debating the motion, Rev Simon Bessant, from Pleckgate, Blackburn, described the Church's involvement in the trade, saying: "We were at the heart of it." The amendment was supported by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Archbishop of York John Sentamu.
Dr Williams said the apology was "necessary".
He said: "The body of Christ is not just a body that exists at any one time, it exists across history and we therefore share the shame and the sinfulness of our predecessors and part of what we can do, with them and for them in the body of Christ, is prayer for acknowledgement of the failure that is part of us not just of some distant 'them'."
Branding irons
During an emotional meeting of the Church's governing body in London, Rev Blessant explained the involvement of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in the slave trade. The organisation owned the Codrington Plantation in Barbados, where slaves had the word "society" branded on their backs with a red-hot iron, he said. We were directly responsible for what happened
Rev Simon Bessant
He added that when the emancipation of slaves took place in 1833, compensation was paid not to the slaves but to their owners. In one case, he said the Bishop of Exeter and three colleagues were paid nearly £13,000 in compensation for 665 slaves. He said: "We were directly responsible for what happened. In the sense of inheriting our history, we can say we owned slaves, we branded slaves, that is why I believe we must actually recognise our history and offer an apology."
The synod passed a motion acknowledging the "dehumanising and shameful" consequences of slavery. It comes ahead of commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which will be marked next year. The debate heard from descendants of the slave trade including the Rev Nezlin Sterling, of Ealing, west London, who represents black churches. She told the synod that commemorations of the 200th anniversary would revive "painful issues and memories" for descendants.
The apology comes after Dr Williams was criticised in November for saying that missionaries "sinned" by imposing hymns ancient and modern on places such as Africa. | Government Policy Changes | February 2006 | ['(The Times)', '(BBC)'] |
Protests erupt in Port Louis, Mauritius, over the government's handling of the disaster and after dozens of dolphins are found dead on the beaches. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth blames bad weather for the slow response to the disaster as task teams from France and the United Nations arrive. | JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Honking and drumming, tens of thousands of people protested Saturday in Mauritius over the government’s slow response to an oil spill from a grounded Japanese ship and the alarming discovery of dozens of dead dolphins in recent days.
Outraged over the Indian Ocean island nation’s worst environmental disaster in years, protesters displayed signs such as “You have no shame” and “I’ve seen better Cabinets at IKEA.” “Inaction,” one protester scrawled on an inflatable dolphin held above the crowd. They marched peacefully through the capital, Port Louis, a month after the ship struck a coral reef a mile offshore. It later cracked under the pounding surf and spilled around 1,000 tons of fuel oil into fragile marine areas.
“It’s clear we are at a turning point in the history of our country,” a commentary in the Le Mauricien newspaper said, as residents said the demonstration could politicize a broader section of the population. Addressing the crowd in Port Louis, some speakers called for top officials to step down. There was no immediate government comment. Other protests were reported outside the Mauritius High Commission in London and in Paris and Perth, Australia. “I’d be surprised if it’s not close to 100,000” people who attended the march, local writer Khalil Cassimally said. Public demonstrations aren’t common in Mauritius, but “one of the things that really binds people together is the sea,” he said. “It’s one of the jewels of this country, and everyone feels very passionately about this.”
Another protest is planned on Sept. 12 in Mahebourg, one of the most affected coastal villages, Cassimally said. Mauritius depends heavily on tourism, and the spill has been a severe blow on top of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which has limited international travel.
Authorities on Friday said at least 39 dead dolphins have washed ashore but it’s not yet clear what killed them. The government said no fuel oil was found in two necropsies so far and called the deaths a “sad coincidence.”
Civil society groups should be present as necropsies continue, and independent experts should give a second opinion, local environmental group Eco-Sud said Friday. Some experts fear water-soluble chemicals in the fuel are to blame.
“Something that is also concerning is that we don’t know the possible long-term effects. The oil is a new low-sulfur fuel oil that is being introduced to reduce air pollution,” Jacqueline Sauzier with the Mauritius Marine Conservation Society told the journal Nature this week. “This is the first time that type of oil has spilled, so there have been no long-term studies on the impacts.”
Residents and environmentalists have demanded investigations into why the MV Wakashio strayed miles off course. Its captain and first officer have been arrested and charged with “endangering safe navigation.”
The ship ran aground on July 25 and began leaking fuel Aug. 6 into the Mahebourg Lagoon, fouling a protected wetlands area and a small island that was a bird and wildlife sanctuary. Thousands of civilian volunteers worked for days to try to minimize the damage, creating makeshift oil barriers by stuffing fabric bags with sugar cane leaves and empty plastic bottles to keep them afloat. Environmental workers carefully ferried dozens of baby tortoises and rare plants to shore, plucking some trapped seabirds out of the goo.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth blamed bad weather for the government’s slow response. Experts from ship owner Nagashiki Shipping, France and the United Nations have since arrived at the scene, and multiple investigations are underway. | Protest_Online Condemnation | August 2020 | ['(AP)'] |
Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi proposes a reform of the Italian judiciary system restricting telephone taps, one of the methods used by prosecutors in the Ruby Rubacuori scandal. | Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has launched a new attempt to reform Italy's judicial system, days after being charged with having sex with an under-age prostitute.
The proposals include a curb on the use of wiretaps and the re-instatement of full parliamentary immunity.
Mr Berlusconi says the reforms, given initial cabinet approval on Friday, will make the system fairer and faster.
Critics say the measures are intended to shield him from trials.
The prime minister has been trying to reform Italy's judicial system for years.
"This is a reform based on principles (underlying) civilised life," he is reported as telling cabinet ministers.
The changes, which were outlined to the cabinet by the justice minister, would restrict telephone taps - one of the main investigative methods used by prosecutors in inquiries against Mr Berlusconi.
The reforms would also separate the careers of prosecutors and judges - a key demand of supporters of Mr Berlusconi, who accuse the judiciary of ganging up against him.
Critics say the independence of the judiciary would be undermined as prosecutors would be placed under the authority of the justice ministry.
"The reforms that the government has announced it wants to carry out are not in favour of justice and honest citizens but in favour of criminals," said opposition politician Antonio Di Pietro, a former magistrate. The draft changes still need definitive approval from the government and will then need to be passed with two-thirds majorities in parliament.
Earlier this week, Mr Berlusconi was ordered to stand trial on 6 April on charges of paying for sex with Karima El Mahroug, better known as Ruby, when she was 17. Although frequenting prostitutes is not a crime in Italy, having sex with one under the age of 18 is an offence punishable by a prison sentence.
Both he and Ms Mahroug deny having had sex. The charismatic leader has seen his approval ratings fall as the scandal continues, and there has even been criticism from the Catholic Church.
But Mr Berlusconi showed no sign of concern on Friday as he met two senior Vatican officials who have both been critical of his behaviour. Leaving Italy's embassy to the Holy See after the annual ceremony marking the 1929 treaty that governs relations between Italy and the Vatican, Mr Berlusconi was asked by reporters how the meetings had gone.
"Great, as always," he said, declining any further comment. Sex charge trial for Berlusconi
| Government Policy Changes | February 2011 | ['(Xinhua)', '(BBC)'] |
A U.S. judge sentences Ahmed Ghailani, the first Guantanamo detainee to have a civilian trial in America, to life imprisonment for conspiracy to destroy government buildings. He was found "not guilty" of 285 other charges filed against him, including 200 counts of murder and dozens of other charges. | The first Guantanamo detainee to be tried in a US civilian court has been sentenced to life in prison.
Tanzanian Ahmed Ghailani, 36, was found guilty in November of conspiracy to damage or destroy US property with explosives but was cleared of murder.
After Ghailani's acquittal on that and other charges, Congress barred US President Barack Obama from moving Guantanamo prisoners to the US.
The charges related to the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
In New York on Tuesday, Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Ghailani's request for leniency, saying any mistreatment he claimed he had suffered at the hands of his captors "pales in comparison to the suffering and the horror he and his confederates caused".
"This crime was so horrible," he said. "It was a cold-blooded killing and maiming of innocent people on an enormous scale."
US Attorney General Eric Holder said the life sentence demonstrated the ability of the US justice system to hold terrorists accountable for their actions.
"We hope this life sentence brings some measure of justice to the victims of these attacks and their families and friends who have waited so long for this day," he said in a statement.
"As this case demonstrates, we will not rest in bringing to justice terrorists who seek to harm the American people, and we will use every tool available to the government to do so."
Ahead of the sentencing, Ghailani had asked for leniency, saying he had never intended to kill anyone and that he had been tortured.
In 2001 four co-conspirators were sentenced to life in prison over the August 1998 bombings, in which 224 people were killed.
Prosecutors said Ghailani had conspired with al-Qaeda operatives to bomb the embassies, and helped buy the explosives that destroyed the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
US investigators said Ghailani had flown to Pakistan the night before the simultaneous bombings.
He was indicted in the US in December 1998 but remained at large in Afghanistan and the Waziristan area of Pakistan, the US says. He was captured in July 2004 and transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
Last year, the US stayed proceedings in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay and transferred him to New York for the civilian trial. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | January 2011 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(BBC)'] |
Five people drown in heavy flooding around the town of Labasa on the island of Vanua Levu in Fiji. | Five people have drowned in flash floods in Fiji and at least one other person is missing, according to local reports. Three people were confirmed to have died on Saturday (local time) as rivers broke their banks around Labasa, the main town on Fiji's second-largest island, Vanua Levu, commercial radio quoted police as saying. Another woman was reported missing from the Labasa area and Fiji TV reported that 13 people had saved themselves from rising flood waters by climbing into trees. The radio station also said two people were reported to have drowned on Friday (local time) in flooding around Nadi, the country's tourism capital on the west coast of the main island Viti Levu. Heavy rain is forecast to continue falling early this week. | Floods | March 2007 | ['(ABC News Australia)'] |
The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, concedes defeat as continued counting in marginal seats indicates that the governing coalition of the Liberal Party and National Party will either win a narrow majority or be able to govern with the support of independents. Malcolm Turnbull will continue as Prime Minister of Australia and has claimed victory. , | SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared victory on Sunday in a marathon national election, with his coalition government retaining power and the opposition Labor Party conceding defeat.
Vote counting continues into an eighth day, with Turnbull’s coalition expected to win two of the five seats still in doubt, enabling it to form a majority government, after having already won 74 of the 150 lower house seats up for grabs in the poll.
“We have won the election,” Turnbull told a news conference in Sydney. “We have gone through this election with fiercely fought arguments, issues of policy, issues of principle and we have done so peacefully and it’s something we should celebrate.”
Although he is expected to form a majority government, Turnbull’s gamble in calling the election backfired badly, with a swing to the center-left Labor opposition and a rise in the popularity of minor parties and independents.
Turnbull’s narrow margin of victory over Labor leaves him likely to be forced to rely on independents, who won five seats, to ensure the passage of legislation. That raises questions about how effective his government will be in the long term.
Labor, on course to win 69 seats, conceded defeat.
“It is clear that Mr Turnbull and his coalition will form a government,” its leader, Bill Shorten, told a news conference.
Labor vowed not to unduly disrupt the new parliament, although it and several independents oppose much of the coalition’s jobs and growth agenda, from how to return to budget surplus to a proposal for a A$50-billion ($38 billion) corporate tax break.
“We need to ensure that all the vital government services are provided, and at the same time, we have to ensure we bring our budget back into balance,” said Turnbull.
The difficult legislative pathway after the election could force changes to some proposed legislation, several government figures said.
“None of us should have a tin ear to the public’s view about a number of issues, including superannuation,” Immigration Minister Peter Dutton told the Daily Telegraph newspaper, referring to proposals on tax breaks for pensions.
Standard and Poor’s cut Australia’s credit rating outlook to negative from stable last week, threatening a downgrade of its coveted triple A status, over a potential budget impasse.
“We really want to see them start achieving some of their forecasts,” S&P official Anthony Walker told a briefing, adding that the cost of refinancing Australia’s debt is up to three times more than its foreign currency earnings.
| Government Job change - Election | July 2016 | ['(Reuters)', '(The Guardian)'] |
In Zimbabwe, new electoral court rules that jailed opposition politician Roy Bennett, member of the Movement for Democratic Change, can take part of parliamentary elections on March 31. | Roy Bennett was sentenced to 12 months in prison for attacking the justice minister in a debate on land last year.
This is the first ruling made by the court, which was set up under new regional guidelines.
The court also postponed the election in his constituency by a month to give his team time to campaign. Elsewhere, elections are due on 31 March.
Mr Bennett's wife had planned to contest his Eastern Highlands seat in Chimanimani.
His lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, told the BBC News website that the decision should be final but as it was the court's first decision, it was not clear.
Chimanimani has long been an opposition stronghold
"There is no precedent for us to go by," she said.
He attacked Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who had called Mr Bennett's ancestor "thieves and murderers", last October.
His appeal against the 12-month sentence was last week rejected by the High Court.
His Chimanimani farm has been occupied on several occasion by loyalists of the ruling Zanu-PF party.
Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi confirmed that Mr Bennett would be the party's candidate.
Meanwhile, Mr Chinamasa has ruled that the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions will not be allowed to send observers to the elections.
The ZCTU helped set up the MDC.
Zimbabwe has been accused of only inviting election observers from groups which backed controversial elections in 2000 and 2002.
The European Union has been banned, along with the SADC parliamentary forum, which the United Nations news agency, Irin, says was the only African group to say the 2002 presidential poll was not free and fair. | Government Job change - Election | March 2005 | ['(AllAfrica)', '(Reuters AlertNet)', '(BBC)'] |
An Iranian and a Tajik are jailed for 25 years in Dubai over the 2009 killing of a Chechen militant commander. (People's Daily Online) | A court in Dubai has jailed two men - an Iranian and a Tajik - for 25 years over their role in the assassination last year of a Chechen commander.
Sulim Yamadayev, a rival of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in a car park near his beach-front apartment in Dubai on 28 March 2009. The two convicted men pleaded not guilty. They will be deported from the United Arab Emirates after their term. Dubai police say an aide to Mr Kadyrov, Adam Delimkhanov, ordered the killing. Last year Interpol issued arrest warrants for seven Russians in connection with the killing. Mr Delimkhanov, a Chechen deputy prime minister and a Russian MP, rejects the allegations and has accused the police of incompetence. It is alleged that the Iranian handed over a briefcase containing the murder weapon. The Tajik was accused of collecting intelligence for the assassination and of helping the killers flee the UAE. Yamadayev led an elite division of Chechnya's security forces and was once close to President Kadyrov, but fell out with him in 2008 and fled Russia. In September 2008 Yamadayev's brother Ruslan was shot dead in Moscow. Mr Kadyrov has denied any involvement in the killings. Both he and Yamadayev were Chechen separatist commanders in the first Chechen war against Russia in 1994-96, but they switched sides when Russian forces poured into the breakaway republic in 1999 to retake it. Yamadayev then became commander of the elite Vostok security forces battalion, a unit of former rebels who have helped quell separatist resistance. In 2005, he was named a Hero of Russia, the country's top honour. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | April 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The Washington Post)', '(Miami Herald)', '[permanent dead link]', '(Reuters)', '(The Star)'] |
France's Sébastien Ogier at the wheel of his Volkswagen Polo R WRC wins 2013 Rally México, the third stage of the 2013 WRC season. | Ogier had a scare after the morning's opening Guanajuatito stage when he had to spend 20 minutes fixing a sensor issue on his Volkswagen.
With that resolved, Ogier went on to win the following bonus-points power stage and win outright by over three minutes from Mikko Hirvonen's Citroen.
Having won two of this year's three rallies, Ogier already holds a 44-point cushion over nearest title rival Hirvonen. The now part-time Sebastien Loeb is still second in the points, 31 down on Ogier.
Hirvonen started Sunday under pressure from Thierry Neuville. The Belgian went flat-out to try and snatch second place, but a trip off the road on the first stage convinced him to back off and let Hirvonen take the position.
Third was still Neuville's first podium in the World Rally Championship.
That was comfort for his M-Sport Ford team after Mads Ostberg encountered electrical problems when running second on Saturday, having earlier fought Ogier for the lead.
Evgeny Novikov recovered to 10th following an ECU gremlin on day one, while Nasser Al-Attiyah produced one of his best World Rally Car drives yet in the fourth M-Sport entry to take fifth, having matched fourth-placed Dani Sordo's pace for much of the weekend.
On what is currently a one-off in Khalid Al Qassimi's regular Citroen, Chris Atkinson recovered from leg one steering damage to take sixth.
Seventh was still a career-best for Ken Block, while Production champion Benito Guerra must wait to see if eighth is sufficient to secure the full-time top-class drive his sponsors have hinted at.
While one VW driver celebrated 28 points, Ogier's team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala had to settle for one power stage bonus point, having broken his suspension just three corners into Friday's first stage.
Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari dominated WRC2 all weekend.
Rally Mexico: Neuville will attack Hirvonen not settle for podium
Ken Block keen to increase World Rally Championship programme
For the second WRC gravel rally in a row, a promising Friday for Hyundai turned into desolation as Toyota gratefully picked up the pieces. This time it was championship leader Sebastien Ogier who took full advantage after Ott Tanak and Dani Sordo retired to score a memorable victory, having swept the road on the first two days
At one point Hyundai held the top three positions in Portugal, but when trouble struck the Korean marque's two leading chargers, a grateful Elfyn Evans was on hand to see off Hyundai third man Dani Sordo and become the third different winner in four rallies
Three years after a Dakar Rally crash resulted in him being airlifted to hospital, Andre Villas-Boas is preparing to make his debut on his home round of the World Rally Championship later this month. His goals for the event are modest, but the same cannot be said for the charities he plans to promote where his true impact could be felt
Hyundai Motorsport boss Andrea Adamo was vocal in his criticism of his team's tyre choices on Rally Croatia and declared that he "had better move my ass and solve it". Doing so will be vital to getting Hyundai's 2021 WRC title hopes back on track, but finding the root of the problem won't be the work of a moment Sebastien Ogier was already in an incredibly tight fight at Rally Croatia before a surprise collision with public road traffic at the start of the final day. But the defending champion held his nerve to take a narrow victory and create further World Rally Championship history
The WRC's support categories are in a process of streamlining that will spell the end of a formalised 2WD world championship-level category. While its relevance to the top level has been questioned for some time, that doesn't mean it should be swept quietly under the carpet
With all three major manufacturers committing to the World Rally Championship’s hybrid era from 2022, the future of the series is assured for now, but it could lead to trickier twists and turns further down the road
Ott Tanak made up for a disastrous Monte Carlo Rally by leading all the way on the snow-kissed stages of the Arctic Rally Finland and in the process hit back at an event Toyota had been expected to dominate | Sports Competition | March 2013 | ['(WRC)', '(Autosport)'] |
Syrian troops arrest 300 people in a raid on the Damascus suburb of Saqba and tanks and troops are also reported to have been sent to other to quell anti-government demonstrations in Homs and Hama. | Syrian troops arrested 300 people in a Damascus suburb on Thursday even as they started to pull back from the protest hub of Dera'a after a military lockdown of more than a week.
Activists, meanwhile, vowed a "Day of Defiance" on Friday to press a seven-week-old anti-regime campaign in which 607 people have been killed, according to rights groups, while 8,000 people have been jailed or gone missing.
The sweep in the Damascus suburb of Saqba came despite appeals from UN chief Ban Ki-moon, the United States and Italy for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to end the deadly clampdown on anti-regime demonstrators.
"Security service agents backed by troops detained more than 300 people in Saqba, among them a number of clerics," an activist said.
He said at least one of those arrested was shot and wounded before being taken away by security forces.
Troops "tore down a banner in the main square, renamed 'Martyrs' Square,' with the photos of those killed attached to it," the activist said, adding that seven Saqba residents had died since Syria's protest movement broke out on March 15.
The activist said that more than 2,000 troops and security agents had taken part in the sweep through the suburb and those detained were driven away in waiting coaches.
In southern Syria, troops began withdrawing from the protest centre of Dera'a which has been under a complete military lockdown since April 25.
About 350 soldiers in armoured personnel carriers and trucks plastered with portraits of Assad drove out of the town at around 10am (0700 GMT), according to reports.
"We have begun our withdrawal after having completed our mission in Dera'a," said General Riad Haddad, director of the military's political department. "The army will have pulled out of Dera'a completely by the end of the day."
Dozens of people were killed during military assaults in Dera'a, launched with what activists termed "indiscriminate" shelling of the town.
But Gen Haddad insisted that troops "did not confront the protesters. We continue searching for terrorists hidden in several places. As the army, we never confronted the protesters."
Twenty-five soldiers were killed in Dera'a and 177 wounded, he said.
Even as the Dera'a pullback began, around 100 tanks and troop transports converged on Ar-Rastan town, another hotbed of protests, an activist said on Wednesday.
"Reinforcements continue to mass at the northern entrance to Ar-Rastan and, according to our estimates, there must be 100 tanks and troop transports on the highway between Homs and Hamah," said the activist.
Ar-Rastan residents have toppled a statue of the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, who was succeeded on his death in 2000 by his son, Bashar.
Ban appealed to Assad to end the deadly clampdown.
"The secretary general reiterated his calls for an immediate end to violence against and mass arrests of peaceful demonstrators," UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said on Wednesday.
The UN leader called for a "full and early implementation of all the reform measures" promised by Assad's government "and emphasised the importance of engaging a genuine inclusive dialogue and a comprehensive reform process."
The United States and Italy also called for an end to the bloodshed.
"The Syrian government must immediately stop the violence and resume a path of dialogue," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said at a joint news conference with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. | Armed Conflict | May 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(The Telegraph)'] |
New York archbishop Timothy Dolan is voted president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. | BALTIMORE The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops elected Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York to be its president on Tuesday in a surprise move that reaffirmed the conservative direction of the Roman Catholic Church in America. The vote makes Archbishop Dolan the most visible face of the church in the United States. It also suggested that the bishops were seeking a powerful and reliably orthodox voice to reassert the church’s teaching in the court of public opinion and to disarm critics who insist that the bishops have lost their moral authority as a result of their role in the sexual abuse scandals.
. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | November 2010 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
As China struggles to deal with flooding in the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, Anhui, Hubei, and Jiangsu, the city of Chongqing is hit with the largest rainstorm in the city's meteorological records, killing 32. 12 people are reported missing. The city's transportation network has been shut down completely. | Thirty-two people have been killed and 12 missing as rainstorms hit southwest China's Chongqing municipality, the Ministry of Civil Affairs reported on Wednesday. More than 5.16 million people were affected by the rainstorms, and 267,800 people were evacuated, according to the ministry. More than 19,600 houses were destroyed, and 152,750 hectares of farmland were damaged, with direct economic losses exceeding 2.1 billion yuan (US$282 million), said the ministry. The city of Chongqing received 266.6 mm of rainfall from Monday night to Tuesday afternoon, the largest volume since records began in 1892, the municipal meteorological bureau said. The previous record was set on July 21, 1996, when Chongqing received 206.1 mm of rainfall, it said. Earlier reports said the rain triggered landslides and mud-rock flows in 22 of Chongqing's 40 counties and districts in the southern, central and western parts. Rainstorms worst in 115 years Torrential rain and lightning storms considered the worst in 115 years hit southwest China's Chongqing Municipality since yesterday.
Up to a thousand local residents are trapped in knee-deep flood water in Bishan County, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality on July 17, 2007. Continuous heavy rainstorm has turned the county into an "isolated island" with disrupted transportation, communication, and electricity supply. [Chongqing News]About 113,100 people were evacuated from their homes, Xinhua news agency reported. Five people were missing.
In the city's urban areas, rainfall reached a record of about 266.6 millimeters, triggering landslides and mud-rock flows in 22 of its 40 counties and districts in the southern, central and western parts while the temperature dived 7.8 degrees Celsius, the Oriental Morning Post reported. The National Headquarters on Inspection of Flood Control and Drought Relief has enacted a third-level emergency plan and sent a work team to Chongqing to cope with flooding in the nation's southwestern areas, according to Xinhua news agency. The country has four levels of plans for floods with the first level the most serious. A total of 41,672 lightning bolts were recorded in Chongqing from early morning to 4pm yesterday, causing 48 power lines to go down, more than 300 power faults and more than 200 fires across the city, the report said. The heavy rains also destroyed more than 10,000 houses and ruined 118,060 hectares of crops, causing losses of more than 863 million yuan (US$114.1 million). Traffic in the city was almost paralyzed due to the rain as thousands of cars and buses were trapped on roads submerged in water and most gas stations closed for safety reasons, the report said. Almost all trains coming in and out of the city were canceled due to alerts about landslides. Chongqing's only light railway had to suspend service for about three hours after its electric power system was experienced problems when a tree, hit by lightning, was knocked down, the report said. There's no relief in sight.
More rain was forecast to fall in the city in the next three days, the Chongqing Meteorological Administration said, which released its first red alert for rainstorms this year yesterday. China is now struggling to handle rainstorms in Sichuan, Guizhou, Anhui, Hubei provinces, as well as the Xinjiang Uygur and the Inner Mongolia autonomous regions. Jiangsu Province, downstream of the Huaihe, is also expected to experience the worst flooding since 2003, according to previous reports. Premier Wen Jiabao asked the nation to prepare for the flood situation to worsen as the country enters the main rainy season. The central government has allocated 232 million yuan to help flood-hit areas around the Yangtze River and the Huaihe River. | Floods | July 2007 | ['(Xinhua via China Daily)'] |
Andrew Wiles wins the 2016 Abel Prize for his solution to Fermat's last theorem. |
British number theorist Andrew Wiles has received the 2016 Abel Prize for his solution to Fermat’s last theorem — a problem that stumped some of the world’s greatest minds for three and a half centuries. The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced the award — considered by some to be the 'Nobel of mathematics' — on 15 March.
Wiles, who is 62 and now at the University of Oxford, UK, will receive 6 million kroner (US$700,000) for his 1994 proof of the theorem, which states that there cannot be any positive whole numbers x, y and z such that xn + yn = zn, if n is greater than 2.
Soon after receiving the news on the morning of 15 March, Wiles told Nature that the award came to him as a “total surprise”.
That he solved a problem considered too hard by so many — and yet a problem relatively simple to state — has made Wiles arguably “the most celebrated mathematician of the twentieth century”, says Martin Bridson, director of Oxford's Mathematical Institute — which is housed in a building named after Wiles. Although his achievement is now two decades old, he continues to inspire young minds, something that is apparent when school children show up at his public lectures. “They treat him like a rock star,” Bridson says. “They line up to have their photos taken with him.”
Lifelong quest
Wiles's story has become a classic tale of tenacity and resilience. While a faculty member at Princeton University in New Jersey in the 1980s, he embarked on a solitary, seven-year quest to solve the problem, working in his attic without telling anyone except for his wife. He went on to make a historic announcement at a conference in his hometown of Cambridge, UK, in June 1993, only to hear from a colleague two months later that his proof contained a serious mistake. But after another frantic year of work — and with the help of one of his former students, Richard Taylor, who is now at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton — he was able to patch up the proof. When the resulting two papers were published in 1995, they made up an entire issue of the Annals of Mathematics1,2.
But after Wiles's original claim had already made front-page news around the world, the pressure on the shy mathematician to save his work almost crippled him. “Doing mathematics in that kind of overexposed way is certainly not my style, and I have no wish to repeat it,” he said in a BBC documentary in 1996, still visibly shaken by the experience. “It’s almost unbelievable that he was able to get something done” at that point, says John Rognes, a mathematician at the University of Oslo and chair of the Abel Committee.
“It was very, very intense,” says Wiles. “Unfortunately as human beings we succeed by trial and error. It’s the people who overcome the setbacks who succeed.”
Wiles first learnt about French mathematician Pierre de Fermat as a child growing up in Cambridge. As he was told, Fermat formulated his eponymous theorem in a handwritten note in the margins of a book in 1637: “I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain,” he wrote (in Latin).
“I think it has a very romantic story,” Wiles says of Fermat's idea. “The kind of story that catches people’s imagination when they’re young and thinking of entering mathematics.”
But although he may have thought he had a proof at the time, only a proof for one special case has survived him, for exponent n = 4. A century later, Leonhard Euler proved it for n = 3, and Sophie Germain's work led to a proof for infinitely many exponents, but still not for all. Experts now tend to concur that the most general form of the statement would have been impossible to crack without mathematical tools that became available only in the twentieth century.
In 1983, German mathematician Gerd Faltings, now at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, took a huge leap forward by proving that Fermat's statement had, at most, a finite number of solutions, although he could not show that the number should be zero. (In fact, he proved a result viewed by specialists as deeper and more interesting than Fermat's last theorem itself; it demonstrated that a broader class of equations has, at most, a finite number of solutions.)
The winning number
To narrow it to zero, Wiles took a different approach: he proved the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture, a 1950s proposal that describes how two very different branches of mathematics, called elliptic curves and modular forms, are conceptually equivalent. Others had shown that proof of this equivalence would imply proof of Fermat — and, like Faltings' result, most mathematicians regard this as much more profound than Fermat’s last theorem itself. (The full citation for the Abel Prize states that it was awarded to Wiles “for his stunning proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem by way of the modularity conjecture for semistable elliptic curves, opening a new era in number theory.”)
The link between the Shimura–Taniyama conjecture and Fermat's theorum was first proposed in 1984 by number theorist Gerhard Frey, now at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. He claimed that any counterexample to Fermat's last theorem would also lead to a counterexample to the Shimura–Taniyama conjecture.
Kenneth Ribet, a mathematician at the University of California, Berkeley, soon proved that Frey was right, and therefore that anyone who proved the more recent conjecture would also bag Fermat's. Still, that did not seem to make the task any easier. “Andrew Wiles is probably one of the few people on Earth who had the audacity to dream that he can actually go and prove this conjecture,” Ribet told the BBC in the 1996 documentary.
Fermat's last theorem is also connected to another deep question in number theory called the abc conjecture, Rognes points out. Mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki of Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Japan claimed to have proved that conjecture in 2012, although his roughly 500-page proof is still being vetted by his peers. Some mathematicians say that Mochizuki's work could provide, as an extra perk, an alternative way of proving Fermat, although Wiles says that sees those hopes with scepticism.
Wiles helped to arrange an Oxford workshop on Mochizuki's work last December, although his research interests are somewhat different. Lately, he has focused his efforts on another major, unsolved conjecture in number theory, which has been listed as one of seven Millennium Prize problems posed by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Oxford, UK. He still works very hard and thinks about mathematics for most of his waking hours, including as he walks to the office in the morning. “He doesn’t want to cycle,” Bridson says. “He thinks it would be a bit dangerous for him to do it while thinking about mathematics.”
Wiles, A. Ann. Math. | Awards ceremony | March 2016 | ['(Nature)'] |
Anglican bishop David Vunagi is sworn in as Governor–General of Solomon Islands. | The Governor General Elect, Right Reverend David Vunagi, has officially taken up his role as Governor General after being sworn in by Chief Justice Sir Albert Palmer at the Lawson Tama stadium during celebrations to mark the country’s 41st Independence Anniversary.
The Governor General took is oath of allegiance in accordance with Section 29 of the Constitution and will serve as Governor General for the next five years.
Right Reverend David Vunagi replaces Sir Frank Kabui who completed his second term – the maximum tenure one can serve in the position. Sir Frank now leaves office after ten years of service.
Right Reverend David Vunagi was Archbishop of Melanesia from 2009 until his retirement in 2016. He returned to his village on the island of Isabel. He was later appointed Principal of Selwyn College, a position he held until his election as Governor General.
Right Reverend David Vunagi will become the country’s seventh Head of State, and the first from Isabel Province to hold the position.
The Governor General is elected by the state’s National Parliament as the Queen’s personal representative on the islands. The role is largely ceremonial, but the post holder does retain some reserved powers. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | July 2019 | ['(Solomon Times)'] |
The Prime Minister of New Zealand calls an emergency Cabinet meeting while Bob Parker, the Mayor of Christchurch, declares a state of emergency. | Survivors were being still being pulled from the rubble of buildings in central Christchurch overnight on Tuesday, in the aftermath of a powerful earthquake that is known to have killed 65 people.
Police say the death toll will rise as they are still finding bodies, though they also say people are continuing to be recovered alive.
The 6.3-magnitude quake struck at 12.51pm on Tuesday, 10km south-east of the central city at a depth of 5km. Scores of strong aftershocks have been felt and a state of emergency has been declared for at least the next five days.
Hundreds of search and rescue personnel, fire service staff, army personnel and volunteers have been working under floodlights through the night to get to those who are still trapped.
Superintendent Dave Cliff says the scene is grim, but over 100 people have been freed so far and another 100 are still thought to be trapped. People trapped in buildings have been texting for help.
Roads, buildings, homes and core infrastructure have been extensively damaged. Civil Defence says cordons have been set up around the one-way system in the central city.
Deputy Prime Minister Bill English says people must leave central Christchurch because it is not safe. Police are urging people to stay at home and check on their neighbours, while schools in the greater area are closed until further notice.
Hundreds of people have spent the night at welfare centres for quake victims. Centres have been established at Burnside School and Hagley Park North, and a third, at Addington Raceway could not take any more people on Tuesday night.
Christchurch is still recovering from a 7.1-magnitude quake that hit the Canterbury region on 4 September last year, causing widespread damage but no deaths.
Earlier in February, survivors gathered for the 80th anniversary of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Napier, in which at least 256 people died.
The number for information about emergency centres is 0800 779 997
The Red Cross call centre for people worried about friends and family in Christchurch is 0800 RED CROSS, or 0800 733276.
The Pyne Gould building in Cambridge Terrace has collapsed and fire fighters are trying to free trapped people.
22 people have been rescued alive from the building so far and police were talking to others still trapped inside as they worked to free them overnight.
The Canterbury Television Building has also collapsed and was on fire on Tuesday night, while the spire of the historic Christchurch Cathedral crumbled when the quake struck.
Power supplies were cut to 70% of Christchurch. Lines company Orion said about 150,000 households were without power and it was impossible to say when supplies would be restored.
Civil Defence says there is no water supply to 80% of the city.
Search and rescue teams have arrived from other parts of the country, and an Australian Hercules with 150 people is expected with an urban rescue team early on Wednesday.
About 200 extra police officers have been drafted in from throughout the country. The Defence Force says it has approximately 200 soldiers in Christchurch helping officers maintain cordons around the city.
Fire fighters were arriving from Timaru to help overworked fire crews, who said they could not cope with the volume of quake-related callouts.
Army medical teams are working at four different locations, while Defence Force fire fighters are also working with local fire brigades.
An Air Force plane carrying 20 St John Ambulance officers and sniffer dogs was due to arrive in Christchuch late on Tuesday night.
Two Iroquois helicopters have arrived to help with rescue efforts, while an Orion is taking aerial photographs of affected areas.
Three Navy vessels, including the Canterbury and Resolution are in Lyttelton Harbour and sailors are assisting rescue efforts. A fourth navy vessel is on its way from Oamaru.
Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker says a state of emergency has been declared. The damage in the city is "immense" and the city will need help from other parts of New Zealand.
Mr Parker says the central city has been cordoned off and it was not safe for people to go into the area. Search and rescue personnel would be visiting "dozens" of buildings overnight on Tuesday.
Many buildings have also collapsed in Lyttelton. Chief fire officer Mark Barclay says 60% of the buildings in the main road, London Street, have fallen.
Christchurch Hospital remains open and large numbers of seriously injured people are being treated in the emergency department.
Triage centres have been set up at Latimer Square, the Sanitarium Factory in Papanui, the Beasley Avenue 24-hour Medical Centre, Princess Margaret Hospital and Christchurch Hospital.
Some 70 army medical staff have been deployed and will be based at the central police headquarters.
Wellington Regional Hospital and hospitals throughout the South Island are discharging patients and cancelling non-urgent surgery to free up beds for quake victims.
Local roads have sustained major damage and there are reports of liquefaction and surface flooding. However, main roads to Christchurch are open.
The New Zealand Transport Agency said the Lyttleton Tunnel had been reopened on Tuesday for emergency vehicle use only.
The Ferrymead bridge is reported to be impassable because of rising water.
However, the Rakaia Bridge on SH1 south of Christchurch and the Waimakariri Bridge on SH1 north of the city are open, the Transport Agency says.
Christchurch Airport is closed to all but emergency flights.
Police say the emergency 111 service is working, although callers are having problems getting through due to network damage, congestion and overloaded lines.
Trapped or injured people should keep trying 111, police said.
Civil Defence and Telecom are asking people to make only emergency calls so that injured or trapped people can get through to emergency services. | Government Policy Changes | February 2011 | ['(Radio New Zealand)', '(New Zealand Herald)'] |
Puerto Rico defaults on a $422 million debt payment. The Governor of Puerto Rico Alejandro García Padilla calls the situation a "humanitarian crisis". This is the third time Puerto Rico has defaulted on bond payments. | Business The island was unable to make a $422 million debt payment due Monday. It's another alarm bell of how bad the situation is getting on the island. Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla calls it a "humanitarian crisis," which a step above an economic emergency. He claims he is prioritizing paying Puerto Rico's police and teachers over Wall Street. "I had to make a choice. I decided that essential services for the 3.5 million American citizens in Puerto Rico came first," the governor said in a speech Sunday. This is the third time the island has defaulted on bond payments. The island paid the interest due Monday, but not the principal amount, resulting in a default of about $370 million, Puerto Rico's largest yet. Related: Puerto Rico is losing a doctor a day Puerto Rico is deep in debt. It owes over $70 billion to creditors. For months, Garcia Padilla has warned that Puerto Rico doesn't have enough money to pay its creditors. Another huge payment is due July 1. The island's best hope is that Congress will act before then to provide some sort of relief, such as granting a temporary moratorium on payments until a plan can be worked out. "We're very far from the end," says Philip Fischer, the managing director of municipal bond research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "It's clear Congress doesn't know how to handle this." Related: Puerto Rico has become 'dead dog island' Congress is in the midst of finalizing an aid package for Puerto Rico. The big sticking point is whether there will be some sort of "Oversight Board" overseeing the island's finances for awhile, similar to the model used for Washington D.C. in the late 1990s. Garcia Padilla and others on the island hate the current proposal. They argue Puerto Rico would lose its democratic rights if the Oversight Board can make decisions that supercede those of elected officials on the island. The governor believes the solution is simple: Puerto Rico should be granted Chapter 9 bankruptcy rights -- or something similar -- to make it easier for the island to restructure some of its debts, akin to what Detroit did. But many creditors and Republican lawmakers argue that the island has had years of political and financial mismanagement and needs someone from the outside to come in and restore credibility. The island still has not completed its 2014 audit, for example. "Congress has a Constitutional and financial responsibility to bring order to the chaos that is unfolding in the U.S. territory," Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said last month. "Legally, this is very complicated," says the long-time municipal bond expert Fischer, who is a lawyer himself. Related: I've lost over $200,000 on Puerto Rican bonds The missed debt payment Monday is on bonds issued by the Government Development Bank, the economic development arm of the island's government. The big fear is that Puerto Rico will default on what is known as General Obligation debt in July. Puerto Rico owes $1.9 billion on July 1. "Our resources are so scarce that we are struggling to pay the fuel supplier for the police patrol cars and emergency response vehicles," Governor Garcia Padilla says. . | Financial Crisis | May 2016 | ['(CNN)'] |
Tens of thousands of Palestinians protest on the border of Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces reports some in the crowds were planting or hurling explosives, and that many were flying flaming kites into Israel. The Gaza Health Ministry reports at least 58 killed and over 2,400 wounded by Israeli forces using live fire and tear gas. | Amid the wail of sirens and the urgent to and fro of ambulances from the front line, Gaza’s hospitals struggled on Monday to cope with the influx of dead and wounded after Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian protesters. Witnesses described morgues filling up and a sense of panic as hundreds of relatives converged on hospitals seeking news.
Among the 40,000 Palestinians who flocked to Gaza’s border fence, it was clear to many that the day would end with death.
“Today is the big day when we will cross the fence and tell Israel and the world we will not accept being occupied for ever,” said Ali, a science teacher who declined to give his last name. “Many may get martyred today, so many, but the world will hear our message: occupation must end.”
But after weeks of similar protests in which at least 40 Palestinians have died, the violence at Monday’s “Great March of Return” – coinciding with the controversial ceremony in Jerusalem to mark the relocation of the US embassy – was shocking even by the standards of the recent demonstrations.
Within the space of a few hours, at least 55 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, including five minors, in the single most deadly day in Gaza since the end of the last war in 2014. In line with previous protests in recent weeks that have resulted in dozens of Palestinian fatalities, there were no reports of any dead or injured on the Israeli side.
It was soon clear that repeated calls on Israel to show restraint were being swept away by volleys of teargas and live bullets, with most of the casualties concentrated in the southern Gaza towns of Khan Younis and Rafah.
The violence began as it would continue. In one area, about 150 metres from the border fence, reporters watched two men who tried to advance towards the border fence being shot in the legs by Israeli troops. Scores more were hit in the upper body, according to health workers.
Included among the Palestinian fatalities were three men the Israeli military said it had killed as they tried to place an explosive device near the border fence; 14-year-old Az-Adin Asamak; a medic; and a man in a wheelchair who had been pictured on social media using a slingshot, while Al Jazeera television said one of its reporters had been injured by Israeli live fire.
Israeli jets launched airstrikes against five Hamas outposts and Israel said it was preparing for the risk of retaliatory rocket fire from Hamas in Gaza.
Many of those drawn to the protests spoke of mounting desperation in Gaza where Israel’s blockade has devastated the economy, leaving unemployment for under-25s at more than 60%.
“I’m here because we want our land returned. We have nothing to lose,” said Mohammad Nabieh, 25, who had been burning tyres to provide cover for the protesters. Nabieh said he was the descendant of refugees from a village near the Israeli city of Ashdod but had never been able to visit the place his family came from. “Nobody cares about us, so why to wait to die slowly. The blockade put us in a big cage – we have to get out. I’m 25 and have almost no work. What am I supposed to do? Rely on aid?”
Said Gherbawi, 28, who was black with soot, had also been burning tyres. “I have no work. This is my work now. We have to keep Israelis bothered by the smoke. I don’t know any better way than this. We have to fight,” he said.
Ismail Radwan, a senior Hamas figure, said the mass border protests against Israel would continue “until the rights of the Palestinian people are achieved”.
Israeli troops had been reinforced along the border before the protests that coincided with Palestinians marking Nakba – or “catastrophe” – day, the annual commemoration of the displacement of Palestinians during the foundation of Israel in 1948.
Israeli planes dropped leaflets warning Palestinians not to approach the fence, while amateur Israeli drone racers were recruited to bring down “incendiary kites” launched over the fence.
“Even if the fence is breached,” warned Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus in advance, “we will be able to protect Israeli civilians from attempts to massacre or kidnap or kill them.” | Riot | May 2018 | ['(The New York Times)', '(The Guardian)'] |