title
stringlengths 1
7.43k
| text
stringlengths 111
32.3k
| event_type
stringlengths 4
57
| date
stringlengths 8
14
⌀ | metadata
stringlengths 2
205
⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
At least 11 people are dead after a bus and truck collide in Vietnam's Gia Lai province. |
HANOI (AFP) - A truck driving in the wrong direction on a one-way road smashed into a bus in Vietnam's central highlands on Sunday (May 7) killing at least 11 people, state media said.
The accident in Gia Lai province occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning, also injuring 23 passengers, according to state-controlled Vietnam News Agency.
The truck was believed to have hit the bus head-on. The bus was carrying 36 passengers, state media said.
The coach driver was among the dead, the report added. It is not known whether the truck driver survived.
"The victims were trapped inside the coach. The authorities and local residents had to break the bus door to rescue them and take them to hospital," online newspaper VnExpress quoted Pham Van Uan, head of Gia Lai province's traffic police, as saying.
Road accidents are common in Vietnam, with nearly 9000 people killed last year.
Narrow highways, poorly maintained vehicles and drivers' disregard for road safety and traffic rules are blamed for most fatalities. | Road Crash | May 2017 | ['(The Straits Times)'] |
The governments of Romania and Hungary sign a framework agreement for opening 20 cross–border roads, strengthening traffic links with the entire European Union. (Nine O'Clock) | The governments of Romania and Hungary have signed a framework agreement for opening 20 cross-border roads, including five in Arad (western Romania), County Council chairman Nicolae Iotcu announced in a press conference on Tuesday.
Vice prime minister and minister of regional development and public administration Liviu Dragnea signed on behalf of Romania; Iotcu mentioned that the roads connect Nadlac to Csanadpalota, Pecica to Battonya, Variasu Mic to Dombegyhaza, Graniceri to Elek, and Iermata Neagra to Denesmajor (all pairs of Romania and Hungary, respectively); they allow the traffic of passengers and of freight up to 3.5 tonnes.
‘We are glad about Romania’s Government respecting our work and efforts – both of Arad County Council and of local administrations – which strengthened the road links with Hungary, and implicitly with the European Union. Thus, Arad has new opportunities of economic and tourist development, as the free movement of people, services, goods and capitals is a fundamental principle of the European Union,’ said Iotcu.
The agreement has been sent to the Hungarian government for ratification; it will come into force 30 days after the last mutual notification of the two governments about the completion of all the necessary internal procedures.
‘It’s worth mentioning that the free access of individuals, vehicles, merchandise and other goods will be possible when Romania joins the Schengen [Area], except for festive moments, which require special approvals. Until then, these roads will have barriers and obstacles on the territory of both states,’ added the official of Arad. | Sign Agreement | August 2014 | [] |
Protesters in Malaysia attempt to shut down the Malaysiakini newspaper which has been at the center of opposition towards Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak. | Najib Razak supporters say news site an ‘agent for foreign powers’ after grant from George Soros-backed fund emerges
Last modified on Mon 7 Nov 2016 00.38 GMT
Hundreds of pro-government protesters in Malaysia have demanded the closure of independent news portal Malaysiakini, rallying against what they said was a foreign-backed attempt to usurp the prime minister, Najib Razak.
Dressed in red shirts, the demonstrators chanted “close down Malaysiakini” outside the company’s offices in Petaling Jaya, near Kuala Lumpur, on Saturday in a largely peaceful gathering that lasted several hours.
Police prevented the group of about 500 people from entering Malaysiakini, an organisation that has reported extensively on a corruption scandal that has engulfed Najib.
Amnesty International said the calls to close Malaysiakini were “the latest instance of the right to freedom of expression coming under attack in the country”.
Jamal Yunos, a member of the prime minister’s ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) party, led the rally and vowed to “tear down” the offices. But after several hours in the street, the protesters left.
The demonstration was organised after documents leaked last month by whistleblower site DC leaks suggested Malaysiakini had received funds from the Open Society Foundations (OSF), set up by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
Soros is regarded with deep suspicion in Malaysia following accusations he deepened the devastating 1997-98 Asian financial crisis by selling the Malaysian ringgit short.
And Jamal said the OSF money was directed at influencing the next general election.
“Our demonstration today is very important for Malaysians so that we don’t allow Malaysiakini to be an agent for foreign powers,” he added.
OSF said it was non-partisan and proud to have supported civil society in Malaysia during the past decade. While it denied accusations it was supporting attempts to overthrow Najib, it said in a statement its grants were to “support justice, accountability and democratic practice around the world”.
Malaysiakini’s editor-in-chief, Steven Gan, said his portal had received a grant from OSF but it was very small. The bulk of Malaysiakini’s shares are owned by Gan and his co-founder, Premesh Chandran, he said. Twelve percent are owned by Malaysiakini staff, he added.
“When it comes to outsiders or even Malaysiakini shareholders influencing our editorial policy, that is completely impossible,” Gan said at a media conference. “Even I would it find it very hard to control the editorial policy of Malaysiakini.”
The leak said Malaysia’s biggest civil society group, Bersih, which seeks to reform the electoral system in Malaysia, had also received money from the foundation. OSF said over 2011/2012 it provided small grants to Bersih, a coalition of about 80 non-governmental organisations tackling corruption.
Bersih, whose members wear yellow, have planned a rally for 19 November that will again call for Najib to step down over the graft allegations. The pro-Najib red shirt movement also has plans to rally that day, leading to concerns about potential clashes.
The Najib scandal emerged in July 2015 when media reports said investigators had found that nearly US$700m (£450m) from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state fund was transferred into the prime minister’s bank accounts.
The administration and its supporters have cracked down on the media and civil society groups, attempting to silence criticism of Najib’s alleged involvement
Najib, who founded 1MDB, has strongly denied any wrongdoing. In July, US prosecutors filed civil lawsuits alleging that 1MDB had been defrauded of more than $3.5bn. Najib was not mentioned as involved.
Although protest leader Jamal is a prominent member of UMNO, there was no indication the government organised the attempt to close Malaysiakini.
Malaysiakini editor Gan said Jamal had a right to hold a peaceful assembly. But he added: “Let them have their say. But they should also respect the right of others to speak their minds, too.”
Last month, the New-York based advocacy group Human Rights Watch released a report saying the government actions have signalled an ever-broadening crackdown on freedom of expression and assembly in the country.
The 40-page report, titled “Deepening the Culture of Fear: the Criminalization of Peaceful Expression in Malaysia”, documented the government’s recent use of vaguely worded laws to criminalise peaceful speech and assembly. “As Prime Minister Najib’s political fortunes fall, Malaysia’s intolerance of critical speech seems to rise,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Malaysia’s future as a rights-respecting nation shouldn’t become hostage to defending the Najib government’s reputation.” | Organization Closed | November 2016 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Cuban president Raúl Castro prepares to step down as Miguel Díaz-Canel is elected as his successor. This marks the first time since the Cuban Revolution that the country is not led by a member of the Castro family. | HAVANA — Cuba’s National Assembly on Thursday officially confirmed 57-year-old Miguel Díaz-Canel as Cuba’s new head of state, ending Castro rule after nearly 60 years and shifting power toward a younger generation born after Cuba’s revolution.
Walking next to Raúl Castro — the 86-year old who took over from his brother Fidel Castro in 2008 — Díaz-Canel entered the assembly hall in a dark suit and red tie to a standing ovation. Díaz-Canel’s name was put forward Wednesday as the sole candidate to head Cuba’s council of state, a post that effectively serves as the presidency. On Thursday, officials announced the results of the vote: 603 to 1 backing his nomination as Cuba’s new leader. Díaz-Canel’s selection amounts to the dawn of a new era in a country deeply identified with the Castros, who led the revolution that triumphed in 1959 and resulted in the most enduring communist system in the Western Hemisphere. But Díaz-Canel, a consensus-builder, is almost sure to make decisions in concert with the country’s communist brain trust. As the country’s first vice president since 2013, he was wary of the thaw in relations with the United States under then-President Barack Obama and has tended to echo concerns that economic change should not occur abruptly.
In his inaugural speech, Díaz-Canel paid homage to the Castro brothers, Raúl and Fidel, as well as “the historic generation” of older revolutionaries who have run Cuba for the decades. He vowed to bring “continuity to the Cuban revolution,” and to involve Raúl Castro “in the process of making the most important decisions to the future of the nation.”
He talked of cautious change, but always in the context of Cuban socialism. ‘There is no room for those who aspire to a capitalist restoration,” he said. “We will defend the revolution and continue to perfect socialism.”
Analysis: Cuba heads toward post-Castro era, with or without Trump
Under Raúl Castro, considered more reform-minded than his long-ruling brother, Cuba has cautiously tested greater economic and social freedoms, often taking two steps forward and one step back. It will be up to Díaz-Canel to balance two realities: the need to respond to Cubans’ growing frustration over economic stagnation and the reluctance of the Communist Party to embrace faster reforms.
His touchstone, analysts say, will remain Raúl Castro — who will keep the influential job of head of the powerful Communist Party.
“You can look at Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel as mentor and disciple,” said Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban diplomat.
The son of a mechanic, Díaz-Canel was born in the central province of Villa Clara. He became an electronics engineer at the Central University of Las Villas before joining Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. Afterward, he was a college professor and built ties to the Communist Party.
In 1987, he was assigned to be a liaison to Nicaragua, whose leftist Sandinista government received significant aid from Cuba. Díaz-Canel worked his way up to party secretary in his home province during Cuba’s “special period” in the early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in a cutoff of subsidized oil and an economic crisis.
Visual story: Castro rule through the decades
He developed a reputation as an approachable, efficient manager who held impromptu front porch meetings in shorts and T-shirts. He also showed something of an independent streak — resisting party pressure, for instance, to shut down a newly established meeting place for gays and lesbians in his province.
In 2013, when he was education minister, Díaz-Canel intervened in a dispute involving a group of professors at Cuba’s University of Matanzas. They had started an independent blog — La Joven Cuba (Young Cuba) — offering critiques and commentary on Communist Party policies and personalities.
After their site was blocked on the university servers, a request came in to the professors. Díaz-Canel wanted to meet them.
“We had big speeches prepared, about how our blog was valuable to Cuban society,” said Harold Cárdenas, one of the professors. “But then, when we got there, [Díaz-Canel’s] first words were, ‘What do you need to keep doing what you do? And how can I help?’ ”
Cárdenas is now among those who see Díaz-Canel’s new role as a chance for measured change in Cuba.
“In the 1990s, he was one of the first Cuban leaders using a laptop, and now you see him using his tablet,” he said. “I do think Díaz-Canel can bring change, while also keeping continuity” in the system.
Trump’s Cuba policy tried to define “good” tourists to the island
Still, Díaz-Canel’s position on freedom of expression may have hardened in recent years.
A video leaked last year, for instance, shows Díaz-Canel in a party meeting, threatening to block a website for acting “against the revolution.”
Since the video leaked, journalists at the site singled out by Díaz-Canel — OnCuba, a Miami-based outlet with offices in Havana — say they have received no official pressure to change their middle-of-the road editorial line. But the outlet has been the subject of attacks from pro-government bloggers, attacks that have served as a kind of message.
“We speak of Fidel as a man, not as a god, and of the Cuban community in Miami as being people who are not totally against this island,” said Mónica Rivero, editor in chief of OnCuba. She continued: “But it’s not really about us. It’s more about whether you can or can’t have this kind of change when it comes to expression . . . . Díaz-Canel is going to be in the shadow of Raúl and those who fought with Raúl and Fidel.”
Yet with new leadership, Cuba is indeed changing. The list of names presented for Cuba’s Council of State, which Díaz-Canel is set to head, notably excluded José Ramón Machado Ventura — an arch-conservative who fought in the revolution with the Castro brothers.
The new candidates also included the first black Cuban to hold the post of first vice president, and three female vice presidents. The results of the assembly vote are to be announced Thursday, but there is little doubt that those on the list will be approved.
All of those named to the powerful council are party loyalists. But their relative youth — the list includes Yipsi Moreno, a 37-year old former Olympic hammer thrower — suggested a passing of the torch.
“It’s very significant. It shows that Raúl has been successful in bringing into retirement much of the octogenarian group,” said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a former Cuban government analyst who is now a professor of political science at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Before his death in 2016, Fidel Castro had sought to prevent the creation of a personality cult, forbidding statues or street names honoring him. In perhaps a nod to that policy, Cuba’s official news media was largely devoid on Wednesday of ponderous coverage of the Castro family’s ceding power.
Cuban television announcers used words such as “unity” and “continuity” in their broadcasts. State media tweeted under the hashtag #SomosContinuidad (We are continuity). The message was clear: The end of the Castro era does not mean the end of Cuba’s communist system.
For some elderly Cubans, the moment was hard to comprehend. “For me, not having a Fidel or Raúl, it’s almost impossible to conceive of. It’s almost out of my realm of understanding,” said Giraldo Baez, a 78-year-old former factory administrator. “But even as they go, I feel we still need to follow their ideas.”
Some Cubans, however, harbored cautious optimism that a new generation of leaders would be less tethered to Cuba’s past.
“For us, this is like trying to imagine a new color, one that you haven’t seen before,” said Charlie, a 22-year-old DJ who declined to give his last name. “We don’t want capitalism. That won’t work for us. But what we want is something that we haven’t seen yet.”
A new system will take time to come about, he said. “No one is expecting change overnight.”
Rachelle Krygier in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.
In wake of Castro’s death, his legacy is debated
A socialist vision fades in Cuba’s biggest housing project
On Havana’s rooftops, a hidden city
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | April 2018 | ['(Washington Post)'] |
Three people are killed when a microlight aircraft crashes into a home in Wesel, NRW, Germany. | Three people have died after a microlight aircraft crashed into a home in Wesel, in north-western Germany, officials say.
The identities of the dead are not yet known. A child was also treated for injuries and shock. The aircraft could have carried two people.
Images show severe damage to the roof of the home with emergency workers attending a now-extinguished fire.
Police told Bild newspaper the aircraft had taken off from Marl airfield.
Police chief Peter Reuters said emergency services were called at 14:42 local time (12.42 GMT), adding: "Three deceased people were found in the attic of the apartment building. They are adults. A child was also slightly injured and shocked. The microlight aircraft had taken off from the Marl airfield with two occupants and landed again in Wesel for a stopover."
One eyewitness told Bild there had been an explosion and a fireball.
A parachute was found close to the crash site and is believed to be the aircraft's emergency brake system.
| Air crash | July 2020 | ['(BBC)'] |
U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan endorses Donald Trump for President of the United States. , | House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) ended a month-long holdout by formally backing his party’s presumptive presidential nominee: Donald Trump.
On Thursday, the speaker penned a guest column for his hometown newspaper in which he trumpeted the controversial real-estate mogul as someone who could support the speaker’s conservative agenda. The move consolidated Trump’s backing from Republican congressional leaders and most party leaders, leaving a small-but-influential bloc of conservatives who have vowed to never support the real-estate mogul isolated and without a significant leader carrying their flag.
Like many senior Republicans, Ryan’s endorsement came with its share of caveats about the speaker and the presumptive nominee’s remaining policy differences. It did not signal any level of comfort with Trump’s sometimes bombastic style compared to the Midwestern values the speaker tries to embody. Instead, Ryan’s decision came down most squarely to attempting to prevent another Democrat from claiming the Oval Office.
“It’s a question of how to move ahead on the ideas that I—and my House colleagues—have invested so much in through the years. It’s not just a choice of two people, but of two visions for America,” Ryan wrote, citing the “bold” policy agenda that he will begin rolling out next week and contrasting that with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s platform.
“Donald Trump can help us make it a reality,” Ryan said.
[How Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell took such different approaches to supporting Trump]
The move marks a big about-face for Ryan, who four weeks ago declared he was “not there yet” in terms of endorsing Trump and questioned whether the controversial businessman was even a conservative. According to Ryan’s team of advisers, the speaker made the decision to support Trump earlier this week — and by late Wednesday, his senior staff began working on the op-ed for the Gazette in Janesville, Wis.
Trump responded to the announcement on Twitter:
Ryan and Trump met once in person in mid-May when the billionaire crisscrossed Capitol Hill for meetings with House and Senate leaders. The speaker’s advisers said they spoke by phone several other times, with the last call coming last week. Senior Ryan advisers have also remained in close contact with Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, a Republican lobbyist with longtime ties to influential GOP leaders.
Throughout the talks, neither side agreed to switch any of their policy positions, Ryan’s advisers said, and one aide suggested that Thursday’s endorsement should not be construed as the sort of “real unification” of Republicans that Ryan has called for repeatedly since first announcing he was not ready to endorse Trump.
Indeed, it’s still not clear if Ryan will ever campaign side-by-side with Trump — his focus remains on helping elect House Republicans. And at the moment, Ryan still has no formal speaking role at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in late July, beyond his job as convention chairman, which has been a largely honorific role in recent years.
But Ryan’s move may also signal that the speaker and other top Republicans are worried about keeping the House and Senate in Republican hands come November, and believe the best way to do that is to unite the party.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was among the first top leader to say he would back Trump.
With his support, Ryan became the last senior Republican congressional leader to throw his weight behind Trump’s candidacy. While the speaker did not use the word “endorse,” he tweeted that he would vote for his party’s nominee in November.
And Ryan’s chief communications adviser, Brendan Buck, said reporters need not mince words to figure out what it all meant.
His decision may also surprise some of his closest associates, one of whom said as early as this week that Ryan and Trump could not be more different.
“Paul Ryan in many ways is the antithesis of Donald Trump; he’s everything that Donald Trump is not. He’s a decent human being. He is a conservative. He is steeped in public policy. He cares about ideas. He’s a person who conducts himself with civility and grace in public life. He doesn’t put down his opponents,” said Peter Wehner, a former policy aide to President George W. Bush and a personal and ideological compatriot of Ryan’s for two decades.
[How Paul Ryan thinks about Donald Trump]
Ryan’s column in his local newspaper left no doubt where he stood after speaking “at great length” with Trump since he initially declared hesitation about his candidacy.
“Through these conversations, I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve people’s lives. That’s why I’ll be voting for him this fall,” Ryan wrote.
Democrats pounced on the news, and stressed their campaign strategy of tying Republican congressional candidates to Trump, who they argue is fatally unpopular with Latinos and women, among other important constituencies.
“House Republicans will be inseparably tied to their toxic front-runner in November, case closed,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign spokeswoman Meredith Kelly. “Ryan’s dragged out decision underscores how truly vulnerable Donald Trump makes House Republicans in swing districts, but ultimately Ryan has only caused them further damage.”
Initially, the speaker, who likes to call himself a “policy guy” and a “movement conservative,” was at odds with Trump’s positions on key policy planks dear to mainstream Republicans of the past 40 years, including a free trade agenda and the effort to rein in federal spending on entitlements.
Those issues were the hallmark of Ryan’s early congressional career and Trump stands squarely against them. Additionally, Trump’s proposals to ban all Muslim travel into the United States and the candidate’s brusque comments regarding minorities, women and the disabled gave Ryan pause.
[Ryan, McConnell denounce plan to bar Muslims from the U.S.]
Those concerns appear to remain, and Ryan vowed to speak out against Trump if he crosses lines again.
“It’s no secret that he and I have our differences. I won’t pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, I’ll continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement,” he wrote.
| Government Job change - Election | June 2016 | ['(CNN)', '(Washington Post)'] |
China's Li Na defeats Slovakia's Dominika Cibulková 7-63, 6-0 to win the women's final. | Tennis is a game that places great store by hierarchy. In this tournament, the women's natural order was threatened and undermined as rarely before. In Saturday night's final, Li Na was set up for the last and biggest fall, and at first she played as if the idea was oppressing her. Then she and the game came to their senses. Emphatically, in the end, Li Na put the record straight.
Li Na's reaction upon winning said it all. It was at about the level of a regulation second round win. She raised her racquet, but did not leap, twirl or swoon. She hugged Dominika Cibulkova, clasped hands with one or two in her contingent, but shed not one tear. She projected not elation, but relief. This tournament was a triumph for her, but not necessarily this night in isolation. Cibulkova cried. As much as she would be loath to admit it, just to make the final was her major.Third time's a charm for Li Na as she lifts the Australian Open trophy for the first time, having lost in her two pervious final appearance.
This was as assymetrical a final as can be imagined. It was Nos 4 versus 24, previous major winner and three-time finalist versus unheralded maiden, crowd favourite - almost pet - versus a player who was barely in the conscious of the tennis-dwelling public a fortnight ago. Li Na was the good player with the dream draw, beating two 16-year-old qualifers and, as it transpired, no-one ranked higher than Cibulkova at 24 to win this title. Cibulkova was the plodder who somehow had to beat a French Open winner and four top 16 opponents even to make the final, and did.
Li Na had finely honed courtcraft and a fissile backhand. Cibulkova depended not on any one shot, but on dynamism, sputtering about the court like an escaped firecracker. Her name means "little onion", and for two weeks, she made the eyes of opponents of greater stature in all senses water.
Li Na kisses her trophy after defeating Dominika Cibulkova in straight sets in the final.Twenty-five times as many Chinese watched Li Na win the 2011 French Open as there are Slovakians. Only when counting sylllables did Cibulkova have the numbers.
For two weeks, Ciblkova's will had overcome all that weighed against her. Momentarily, it bore her on Saturday night. After a tentative beginning, she played Li Na on equal terms. But adrenalin is like a coach's pep talk; it will get a sportsperson only so far.
In truth, this final was far from a classic. In the first set, both players were nervy and erratic. The most significant points were double faults. Rather than bid one another up, they dragged each other down, and it was this that caused the set to run for 70 minutes. In the second, Li Na threw off the shackles, and 27 minutes was enough. She has form as a shaky closer, but this time was out of sight of her opponent, and she waltzed over the line.
At last, she could make the speech that she has twice had to pocket. In it, she demonstrated the natural humour that has so endeared her to the Melbourne crowd, and is a window onto the intelligence she brings to her tennis. "Thanks Max, agent, make me rich," she said. Then she turned to her husband, hitting partner and former coach, Jiang Shan, who has become a famous incidental in this tournament. "Thanks, my husband - famous in China," she said. "Thanks a lot, you are nice guy. Also, you are so lucky, to find me!" It is one thing to speak another language, quite another to be funny in it. Li Na gave us the last laugh.
Li Na after completing a straight sets win in the women's final.Credit:Justin McManus
So to Sunday night, and the billing is the much the same, Nadal v Wawrinka. The first set on Saturday night offered hope for Wawrinka and romantics. The second set destroyed it. | Sports Competition | January 2014 | ['(Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
Voters in Poland go to the polls to elect a new government. The incumbent right-wing Law and Justice is expected to slightly increase its plurality. | WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party narrowly won a second term in power, final results from Sunday’s parliamentary election showed, but its drive to push through its conservative agenda may be hampered by a loss of the upper house.
PiS has campaigned on a promise to expand its massive welfare program and deepen reforms of the judiciary, an overhaul that has sparked unprecedented legal action from the European Union and drawn criticism of subverting democracy.
Speaking after a final count showed PiS had secured 235 seats in the 460-seat legislature, party chief Jaroslaw Kaczynski said “everything we consider important will be fulfilled, with all certainty.”
The Electoral Commission said PiS, a eurosceptic group with a left-leaning economic agenda, had won 43.6% of votes, more than the 37.6% it secured in an election four years earlier. Under Poland’s complex electoral rules, the wider victory did not translate into any gains in the legislature.
The main opposition grouping, the Civic Coalition, an umbrella organization that includes the Civic Platform (PO) formerly led by EU Council President Donald Tusk, secured 134 seats in parliament, with 27.4% of votes.
Four years of PiS rule have shifted the political climate in Poland, dividing the country over issues such as gay rights and media freedom, with critics saying PiS has fomented homophobia and turned public broadcasters into a mouthpiece for its agenda.
Tapping in to widespread dissatisfaction with economic prosperity among many Poles since the collapse of communism, PiS told voters it will aim to replace the business and cultural elites to ensure fair distribution of the nation’s wealth.
Related Coverage
See more stories
Underlying divisions, election turnout at 61.7% was the highest in any parliamentary vote since a 1989 vote that ushered in the end of communism.
“There is a shift in the people’s consciousness, which moves in the direction of blocking PiS’s authoritarian tendencies,” Izabela Leszczyna, a PO lawmaker who kept her mandate, told Reuters.
In a sign of an expanding political spectrum in Poland, three candidates from Poland’s small Green party secured seats in parliament, as part of the Civic Coalition.
Electoral Commission data showed PiS secured 48 seats in the 100-seat Senate, meaning the opposition will have a chance to delay some its legislative efforts and have a say on the appointment of key officials such as some rate-setting members of the central bank and the civil rights ombudsman.
Coming on the day that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a key PiS ally, suffered his first defeat in about a decade by losing control of the capital Budapest, the result in Warsaw marked another setback for nationalists in the European Union who want to wrest back power from Brussels.
During its first term in power PiS gained a reputation for pushing through legislation at breakneck speed, with hastily called late-night sittings of the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, followed by quick approval from the upper house.
PiS, which fought the election with pledges to defend patriotic and Catholic values and further increase welfare spending, had been hoping for a two-thirds majority of seats in the Sejm which would have allowed it to reshape the constitution.
In a further sign of deepening divisions, a group of far-right politicians and activists, the Confederation, won seats in parliament for the first time, securing 6.8% of the vote, just above the 5% threshold needed to enter the legislature.
“We saved Poland. ... It is time to complete decommunisation. It is time to stop the LGBT dictate!” Deputy Digitalization Minister Andrzej Andruszkiewicz, who is seen as close to far-right politicians, wrote in a tweet.
PiS had campaigned on a promise to enshrine more Catholic and patriotic values in public life, branding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights an “invasive foreign influence” that threatens Poland’s national identity.
The election also resulted in the return of Janusz Korwin-Mikke, 76, a firebrand right-wing politician, to parliament.
Korwin-Mikke attracted international media attention in 2017 when he said in a European Parliament debate that women should earn less than men “because they are weaker, they are smaller, they are less intelligent.”
EU leaders congratulated PiS on its election victory, though Brussels has taken Poland to court over the party’s previous judicial reforms and has criticized some of its other policies.
| Government Job change - Election | October 2019 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The acting President of Ukraine, Olexander Turchynov, calls an emergency cabinet meeting to respond to protests in the cities of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv. | Ukraine's acting president has called an emergency security meeting in response to pro-Russian protests in three eastern Ukrainian cities.
Olexander Turchynov cancelled a visit to Lithuania to deal personally with the unfolding events, his office said.
Protesters stormed government buildings and called for a vote on independence in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv.
The unrest comes amid tensions between Russia and Ukraine over Russia's annexation of Crimea.
The move, condemned as illegal by Kiev and the West, followed the ousting of Ukraine's pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych in February.
Thousands of Russian soldiers are reported to have been deployed along the border between Ukraine and Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow has the right to protect the Russian-speaking population Ukraine.
Ukraine's leaders deny the country's Russian speakers are under threat and have said they will resist any intervention in their country.
Meanwhile, Nato Secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged member nations to step up their defence spending after warning that Russia is trying to "carve up Europe into new spheres of influence."
President Turchynov called a meeting of the country's security chiefs in the capital, Kiev, after Sunday's disturbances. No further details have so far been released about the meeting.
In Donetsk, a large group of activists broke away from a crowd rallying in the main city square to attack and occupy the regional government seat.
After clashing with riot police and breaking through their lines to enter the building, they raised the Russian flag and hung a banner from the building. Protesters outside cheered and chanted: "Russia, Russia."
A spokesman for Donetsk local police, said a large group had taken part in the storming of the building.
Around 100 protesters had barricaded themselves inside, he added.
In Luhansk, police fired tear gas at dozens of protesters who broke into the local security service building in an attempt to force the release of 15 pro-Russian activists who were arrested earlier in the week and accused of plotting violent unrest.
Local news reports said at least two people had been injured in clashes, and TV pictures from the scene showed a riot policeman being taken away on a stretcher.
And in Kharkiv, several dozen people also entered the regional government building after breaking through police lines.
They waved Russian flags out of windows as a crowd outside cheered and chanted. Police officers reportedly refused to use force against the crowd and moved away from the government building after the pro-Russian supporters broke in.
Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov accused President Putin and Mr Yanukovych - who was forced from office following months of street protests and is now living in exile in Russia - of "ordering and paying for another wave of separatist turmoil in the country's east".
In a message posted on his Facebook account, he said: "The people who have gathered are not many but they are very aggressive. The situation will be brought under control without bloodshed. But at the same time, a firm approach will be used against all who attack government buildings, law enforcement officers and other citizens." The new administration in Ukraine has faced continuing opposition from Ukraine's Russian-speaking regions.
Writing in British newspaper The Daily Telegraph on Monday, Mr Rasmussen said that events in Ukraine had shown that "defence matters as much as ever".
The Nato chief acknowledged the "challenging" economic climate but urged the alliance's member states to "invest the necessary resources in the right capabilities". "In the long run, a lack of security would be more costly than investing now and we owe it to our forces, and to broader society," he wrote
| Protest_Online Condemnation | April 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
Convicted Indian spy Sarabjit Singh dies after being attacked by fellow inmates in a Pakistani prison. He is flown home to India where the government of Punjab has declared him a martyr. | Hundreds of grieving people waited for hours with Sarabjit Singh's family to receive his body. Minister of State in the External Affairs Ministry Preneet Kaur represented the government at the Amritsar airport. After a ceremony at the Amritsar airport, Mr Singh's body was taken to his ancestral village Bhikhiwind in a chopper. The body was later taken to Patti where an autopsy will be conducted tonight. The cremation will take place at Bhikhiwind tomorrow at 2pm.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has demanded that "criminals responsible for the barbaric and murderous attack on Sarabjit must be brought to justice." Sarabjit Singh was attacked with bricks by six men in jail on Friday evening and was brought comatose to hospital, where doctors warned that he was unlikely to recover. He died at 12.45 last night.
The PM said in his statement that, "It is particularly regrettable that the government of Pakistan did not heed the pleas of the government of India, Sarabjit's family and of civil society in India and Pakistan to take a humanitarian view of this case." The Indian government had made three formal appeals to the Pakistan government since the attack on Friday, asking for Mr Singh to be sent home for treatment. The government said today, "This was, put simply, the killing of our citizen while in the custody of Pakistan jail authorities."
The Indian Parliament condoled Mr Singh's death in a resolution. An emotional Dalbir Kaur, Mr Singh's sister, has accused the Pakistan government complicity in the fatal attack on the 49-year-old. "Pakistan stabbed India in the back," she said in Delhi. (Read) Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi visited Mr Singh's family in Delhi today and was seen hugging Dalbir Kaur. He reportedly wept. (Read) Two prisoners on death row in the Kot Lakhpat jail have been charged with Sarabjit Singh's murder. The chief minister of Punjab province in Pakistan has announced a judicial inquiry. In a statement, Pakistan said Sarabjit's death was an "unfortunate incident." Mr Singh had been in jail for the last 22 years after being convicted of terrorism charges. He was given the death sentence in 1991 for bombings a year earlier in Lahore and Faisalabad in which 14 people were killed. His family says his conviction was a case of mistaken identity.
| Famous Person - Death | May 2013 | ['(NDTV)'] |
Russian baritone singer Eduard Khil, made famous overseas by the "Trololo" internet meme, dies from complications of a stroke in St. Petersburg. | Eduard Khil, known to most Western audiences as Internet star “Mr. Trololo,” died early Monday in St. Petersburg after suffering a stroke in April. He was 77.
Khil, a baritone who was popular in the 1960s and ‘70s in what was then the Soviet Union, received a number of awards during his career, including the People’s Artist of Russia honor, but it wasn’t until a 1976 TV performance surfaced online in late 2009 and hit big in early 2010 that he enjoyed international fame.
“The death of the exceptional singer, Eduard Khil, is an irretrievable loss to Russian culture,” Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Monday in a statement expressing his condolences. “He was truly a people’s artist. Several generations of people loved his songs not only in this country but also abroad.”
That notorious TV clip -- described by the Ministry in 2010 as “the high-speed freeway chase of music videos” -- was uploaded to YouTube in November 2009 and later renamed “Mr. Trololo original upload,” according to the Know Your Meme website. The original upload has notched almost 12.5 million views, with copycats racking up millions more.
The baritone learned of his newfound fame courtesy of his grandson, according to a St. Petersburg journalist who knew him personally.
“From his grandson he learned that T-shirts and mugs with his image had become available in the West, and he joked that he never earned a kopeck from them,” Mikhail Sadchikov told the Associated Press on Monday. “He was also very optimistic, positive and ironic at the same time.”
The kitschy (and oh-so-catchy) wordlessness of the Trololo song, more properly known in rough translation as “I Am So Happy That I’m Finally Coming Home,” interestingly had its roots in Cold War-era history. After the original lyrics about a cowboy riding his horse home in Kentucky didn’t fly with Soviet censors -- it’s unclear if the ban was official or unofficial -- the words were turned into vocalizations instead.
And decades later, a star was born.
A civil funeral will be held at a theater in Moscow, Khil’s son Dmitry told the Voice of Russia. He’ll be buried at Smolenskoye Cemetery in St. Petersburg -- while “Mr. Trololo” lives online in perpetuity.
RELATED:
Meet the Trololo guy -- you’ll *never* forget him
The Muppets’ ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’: What’s not to love?
Inside the business of entertainment
The Wide Shot brings you news, analysis and insights on everything from streaming wars to production — and what it all means for the future.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
Follow Us
Christie D’Zurilla covers breaking entertainment news. A USC graduate, she joined the Los Angeles Times in 2003 and has 30 years of journalism experience in Southern California. | Famous Person - Death | June 2012 | ['(Los Angeles Times)'] |
A statement is posted, apparently from al-Qaeda in Iraq, on several websites claiming responsibility for a recent Katyusha bombardment of northern Israeli towns. (Ha'aretz) | (CNN) -- In what may be a sign that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror group is expanding its operations, Al Qaeda in Iraq has posted a statement claiming responsibility for firing missiles from Lebanon into northern Israel earlier this week.
The statement, posted Thursday on Web sites used previously by al Qaeda in Iraq, cannot be independently verified by CNN.
The three rockets were fired late Tuesday from Lebanon into the Israeli town of Kiryat Shimona. The attack resulted in minor damage and no casualties.
However, the Al Qaeda in Iraq statement called the attack a success.
"After days of monitoring and surveillance, ... a lion launched 10 Grad (Russian) missiles ... from the Muslims' lands in Lebanon on selected targets in the northern part of the Jewish state," the statement said. "The brothers had accomplished the attack successfully, exactly as they designed it."
It is not clear why Al Qaeda in Iraq -- a Sunni Arab terror group that has launched attacks against Shiite targets inside Iraq -- would be operating in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah frequently fires rockets across the border into Israel. Hezbollah has strong ties with Iran, a Shiite country.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office had no comment on the statement, which was posted on several Web sites used previously for similar claims of responsibility by al Qaeda in Iraq.
The Israeli military said it held Lebanon's government responsible for not dismantling terror groups operating within its borders. Hours after Tuesday's strike, Israeli warplanes dropped missiles on a terrorist training camp near Beirut, run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Al Qaeda in Iraq has claimed responsibility for two other attacks outside of Iraq: last month's deadly hotel attacks in Amman, Jordan, and a rocket attack in August that targeted but missed two U.S. warships in the Jordanian port of Aqaba | Armed Conflict | December 2005 | ['(CNN)'] |
Police clash with local residents who object to Italian government plans to build a European Union–funded rail link with France near their homes in the Italian Alps. The police intervention follows a peaceful candlelight nighttime prayer vigil featuring thousands of people. | Police have clashed with demonstrators in the Italian Alps over the construction of a new high-speed rail link with France.
Tunnelling is set to start for a line from Turin to Lyon, which is expected to cut the travel time by nearly half.
Local residents built barricades to prevent heavy machinery from starting work in the picturesque Val di Susa, in northern Italy.
Police used fire hoses and tear gas to disperse them.
Police had to escort the contractor's bulldozers to the high Alpine site where work is due to begin. Demonstrators set on fire barricades erected to keep out intruders, but failed to halt the works. Despite environmental objections, the Italian government is determined to go ahead with the project, which is heavily backed by EU money and is estimated to cost 15bn euros (£13bn). Work is due to start by 30 June or the country risks losing the hundreds of million euros the EU is contributing, a minister said at the weekend.
Earlier, more than 3,000 people took part in a peaceful, overnight candle-lit prayer vigil against the project.
"The majority of residents of the valley are against this project which damages the environment and is an absurdity for public finances," said Paolo Ferrero, secretary of Italy's Communist Refoundation Party.
Residents fear that, despite safeguards built into the multi-billion euro project in a deal signed in 2001, an area of outstanding natural beauty is going to be spoilt.
Other protests have been announced on the internet, with a demonstration due in Rome on Tuesday, reports say. | Riot | June 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
27 people are killed in various arson incidents in Karachi, capital of Pakistan's Sindh province. | Three vehicles were also set ablaze in different parts of the city. — Photo by AP
KARACHI: At least four people were killed in different incidents of firing in Karachi on Saturday, DawnNews reported.
Three vehicles were also set ablaze in different parts of the city.
Security had been put on high alert in Karachi ahead of the arrival of slain Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Dr Imran Farooq’s body from London.
The city wore a deserted look and public and private transports remain off the roads and commercial centres remained closed. — DawnNews | Fire | November 2010 | ['(The Deccan Chronicle)', '(Dawn)'] |
At least 32 people are killed and 90 injured following a car bomb and suicide-bomb attack in the al-Zahra district of the Syrian city of Homs. | BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least 32 people were killed and 90 wounded in two bomb explosions in the Syrian city of Homs on Monday, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The blasts, one from a car bomb and another from a suicide attack, struck the Zahra district in the middle of the city, said the Britain-based Observatory, which monitors the conflict through a network of contacts on the ground.
Syria’s state news agency SANA reported two car bomb blasts, but gave a lower initial toll of six dead and 37 wounded.
It was the second major attack in the city since a ceasefire deal took effect earlier this month, paving the way for the government to take over the last rebel-controlled area of Homs.
Twin blasts on Dec. 12, also in Zahra, killed at least 16 people. Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack, saying it had detonated a suicide car bomb.
Under the Homs ceasefire deal, at least 700 insurgent fighters and members of their families left the last rebel-controlled area of the city, al Waer district. | Armed Conflict | December 2015 | ['(Reuters)'] |
English professional boxer Ricky Hatton loses to Ukrainian Vyacheslav Senchenko in his comeback fight at the Manchester Arena. Ricky announces his retirement at the press conference after the fight. | Last updated on 25 November 201225 November 2012.From the section Boxingcomments136
Ricky Hatton's return to the ring ended in a devastating defeat, the hometown hero knocked out by Vyacheslav Senchenko at the Manchester Arena. Hatton started brightly but his Ukrainian opponent was in charge of the fight by the middle rounds and landing with some damaging right hands.
And a heavily marked Hatton, 34, was floored by a left to the kidney at the end of the ninth, from which he was unable to recover.
The defeat means Hatton, who had not fought since being knocked out by Manny Pacquiao in 2009, is unlikely to fight on.
"Ricky was a bit too aggressive. Will he look at himself in the mirror tomorrow morning and want to punch himself in the face? Nobody would have criticised him for taking a 'tune up' opponent. A year ago Senchenko was a world champion - you shouldn't walk back into those fights. I don't know what he was thinking when he took this fight."
"I am really heartbroken," he said. "It was a good shot - I should have realised he was looking for that. I suppose that is what three and a half years out of the ring does.
"I am just gutted. I am not a failure. That is not how my career should end but I have to have a good think about it now."
The former two-weight world champion, who now has 45 wins and three defeats as a professional, said he was returning for redemption after three years of struggling with depression and substance abuse.
And 20,000 raucous fans at the Manchester Arena, plus a host of celebrities and boxing royalty seated ringside, were proof there is still no greater draw in British boxing than Hatton.
The pre-fight atmosphere, replete with choruses of "There's only one Ricky Hatton", was redolent of his most glorious nights at the venue, including his defeat of IBF light-welterweight champion Kostya Tszyu in 2005.
But there was to be no fairytale return for Hatton against a former world champion whom many had warned against him fighting.
Hatton admitted it would be a struggle to shackle his emotions on his comeback but he made a circumspect start.
He managed to get inside Senchenko's long jab to land with a couple of flurries but was already noticeably marked up after the first round.
Hatton backed Senchenko on to the ropes at the start of round two but when the Ukrainian hit back with a few hurtful right hands it was clear Hatton was in a fight. The Manchester fighter went to work on the body in round three, landing with some punishing left hooks, but Senchenko landed with a juddering right cross towards the end of the round that drew gasps from the crowd.
This was only 35-year-old Vyacheslav Senchenko's fourth fight away from his home in Ukraine, but his impressive record now reads 22 KOs in 33 wins from 34 contests.
The tall, upright Senchenko continued to get through with jabs in round four but Hatton landed with two big right hands that appeared to rattle his opponent for the first time in the fight.
With Hatton coming forward in straight lines, Senchenko continued to pepper him with jabs in the fifth and probably did enough to win the round.
Senchenko stopped his rival in his tracks with two more ramrod overhand rights midway through the sixth, a round the visitor won by some distance.
Hatton opened a cut under Senchenko's left eye at the start of the seventh and both men looked extremely fatigued as they made their way to their corners at the end of the round, which was probably Senchenko's again.
Hatton's legs appeared to sag under the weight of another right hand at the start of the eighth and there was an increasingly desperate air about the Englishman's work as the fight entered its final rounds.
With both eyes heavily swollen and his left hook becoming wilder and wilder, Hatton shipped some heavy punishment in the ninth before Senchenko delivered the coup de grace, a devastating left to the kidney.
For a moment it looked like Hatton would rise from his knee but he was eventually counted out by referee Victor Loughlin, to the disbelief of the crowd. Hatton required treatment in the ring before dissolving into tears, his hopes and dreams, and those of his fanatical supporters, having turned into a nightmare.
Hatton had hoped to fight Paulie Malignaggi, whom he beat in 2008 and who won the WBA welterweight crown from Senchenko earlier this year.
Malignaggi had already said he would take a rematch but that bout, as well as potential bouts against domestic rivals Amir Khan and Kell Brook, is now highly unlikely to happen.
Hatton, who has learned what many other boxers have learned before him, namely that coming back is hard to do, will probably now concentrate on his training and promoting commitments. | Sports Competition | November 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Thousands of farmers protest in New Delhi against legislation they say will devastate crop prices. | NEW DELHI (AP) — Thousands of farmers in and around the Indian capital on Saturday pressed on with their protest against agricultural legislation they said could devastate crop prices, while the government sought talks with their leaders.
Some protesters burned an effigy of Prime Minister Modi and shouted “Down with Modi,” as they rallied on New Delhi’s border with Haryana state.
The protesting farmers were allowed to enter New Delhi late Friday after a day of clashes with police, who used tear gas, water cannons and baton charges to push them back.
Television images showed some of them moving into the capital while thousands still remained at the outskirts of the city. The Press Trust of India news agency said more protesters were heading for New Delhi from northern Punjab state.
Many farmers have camped out on highways in Punjab and Haryana states for the last two months to protest the passing of the legislation. They say the laws could cause the government to stop buying grain at guaranteed prices and result in their exploitation by corporations that would buy their crops cheaply. They want the laws scrapped.
The government says the legislation brings about much needed reform agriculture that will allow farmers the freedom to market their produce and boost production through private investment.
Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said he has invited representatives of the farmers for talks on Dec. 3. “We have talked before and are still ready for talks,” Tomar said late Friday. There was no immediate response from the farmers. The protesters said they would not return to their homes until their demands were met.
“We are fighting for our rights. We won’t rest until we reach the capital and force the government to abolish these black laws,” said Majhinder Singh Dhaliwal, one of the leaders.
Opposition parties and some Modi allies have called the laws anti-farmer and pro-corporation.
Farmers have long been seen as the heart and soul of India, where agriculture supports more than half of the country’s 1.3 billion people. But farmers have also seen their economic clout diminish over the last three decades. Once accounting for a third of India’s gross domestic product, they now produce only 15% of gross domestic product, which is valued at $2.9 trillion a year.
Farmers often complain of being ignored and hold frequent protests to demand better crop prices, more loan waivers and irrigation systems to guarantee water during dry spells. | Protest_Online Condemnation | November 2020 | ['(AP)'] |
Venezuela's National Electoral Council announces that Hugo Chávez's presidency will be subject to a recall referendum on 15 August, with general elections to follow within 30 days if the vote goes against the president. | Ezequiel Zamora of the National Electoral Council said elections would follow in 30 days if Mr Chavez loses. Had the poll been held after 19 August and Mr Chavez had lost, the vice-president would have taken over, without holding new elections. Last week, the council said that the opposition had collected enough signatures to force the recall vote. Chavez's warning
After almost a year of delays and bitter arguments, Venezuela's opposition finally has what it wanted - a referendum vote on President Chavez's term in office and crucially a date for that vote. But Mr Chavez says he has no intention of losing the referendum. He has already begun campaigning, warning voters of the consequences of an opposition victory. The president claims the opposition would dismantle all of his programmes for improving health and education amongst the poor. The opposition say they are trying to free Venezuela from the clutches of a tyrant who has done little to improve people's standard of living. But it is just a loose coalition of groups from across the political spectrum. Their challenge will be to choose a leader and a strong set of policies if they are to defeat a man who has dominated Venezuelan politics for the last five years. | Government Job change - Election | June 2004 | ['(BBC)'] |
Thousands protest outside the Japanese parliament in Tokyo against the relocation of a U.S. military base on Okinawa Island. Residents cite noise, pollution, and crime as reasons for not wanting a new base built. | TOKYO (Reuters) - Thousands of people surrounded Japan’s parliament on Sunday to protest against government plans to relocate a U.S. military base on Okinawa island, local media reported.
Kyodo news agency said some 28,000 protesters had ringed parliament house in central Tokyo, holding hands and shouting: “Don’t build the base”. Hundreds more held similar protests across the country, it also reported.
Okinawa was the site of Japan’s only land battles in World War Two and many residents there resent the fact that it hosts tens of thousands of U.S. troops and military.
The United States and Japan agreed in 1996 to relocate the base, currently in a heavily populated area, to a new site in Henoko, but many residents of the island have rejected the proposal and want the base moved altogether.
Many residents of Okinawa say they associate U.S. bases with noise, pollution and crime.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | February 2016 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Journalists in South Africa launch a campaign to oppose possible legislation which may limit freedom of the press. | South African journalists have launched a campaign against proposed legislation which they say would curtail press freedom and threaten democracy.
In a declaration published in papers on Sunday and Monday, more than 30 prominent editors called on the government to abandon the planned laws.
The proposals would allow the government to classify material that is currently not secret.
And a special tribunal could fine or jail journalists for inaccuracies.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) says new legislation is needed to make journalists legally accountable for inaccurate reporting.
"Free speech and access to information are the lifeblood of our democracy and we are at the very heart of the struggle for freedom," the editors' statement, known as the Auckland Park Declaration, said.
"We appeal to the South African government and the ruling ANC to abide by the founding principles of our democracy, and to abandon these proposed measures."
BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says the new laws would leave journalists facing jail terms of between five and 25 years, if they disclose information prejudicial to the country. Even possession of classified documents would be an offence, he says.
Some journalists have said the planned tribunal reminds them of methods used to control journalists during the time of apartheid.
Last week, the Law Society of South Africa (LSSA), which represents the country's 20,000 lawyers, said the proposed legislation contains a definition of "national interest", which was "so broad that it could potentially cover every aspect of a citizen's life".
The co-chairperson of the LSSA, Max Boqwana, said the legal plans would tarnish South Africa's reputation as a free country.
"Quite honestly it will be a sad day, not only for the media but for democracy," he told the BBC.
"We continue to pride this nation as the country that has got one of the best entrenchment of freedoms throughout the civilised world.
"And, this will not have, only a negative impact on the media, but it will have a negative impact on our country in general."
Country profile: South Africa
SA satirists pulling the strings
Laughing all the way to the polls?
ANC
Law Society of South Africa
South African National Editors Forum
UN calls for end of arms sales to Myanmar
In a rare move, the UN condemns the overthrowing of Aung San Suu Kyi and calls for an arms embargo.
The ethnic armies training Myanmar's protesters. VideoThe ethnic armies training Myanmar's protesters
Tokyo Olympics: No fans is 'least risky' option
Asia's Covid stars struggle with exit strategies
Why residents of these paradise islands are furious
The Gurkha veterans fighting for Covid care. VideoThe Gurkha veterans fighting for Covid care
Troubled US teens left traumatised by tough love camps
Why doesn't North Korea have enough food?
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 | Protest_Online Condemnation | August 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
In association football, Swansea City beat Bradford City 5–0 to win the 2013 Football League Cup Final. | From the section Footballcomments377
Swansea City secured the first major trophy in their 101-year history as League Two Bradford City were thrashed in the Capital One Cup final at Wembley.
The Bantams had beaten Premier League trio Wigan Athletic, Arsenal and Aston Villa on the way to becoming the first side from English football's fourth tier to reach this final since 1962.
"A sumptuous Swansea performance. Bradford City blown away. A win for Wales and a win for the Premier League over the League Two club."
But Swansea proved a step too far and there was to be no storybook ending to this remarkable campaign as Bradford were taken apart by Michael Laudrup's side en route to the biggest win in the final of this competition.
The Bantams were swiftly out of their depth and goals from Nathan Dyer and Michu gave Swansea a comfortable half-time lead that was no more than their ordered passing game merited.
Dyer's second goal just after half-time removed any remaining doubt about the destination of the trophy and a thoroughly chastening experience for Bradford was encapsulated by Swansea's fourth on the hour. Goalkeeper Matt Duke, a hero of the run to Wembley, was sent off for bringing down Jonathan de Guzman, who scored from the spot.
De Guzman added his own second in stoppage time - not that this stopped Bradford's supporters rising to acclaim the team that has given them and their city so much to be proud of as they went up to collect their runners-up medals.
The victory capped a fine first season in south Wales for Laudrup after he succeeded Brendan Rodgers in the summer. The Dane, along with chairman Huw Jenkins, can now plan for a campaign in next season's Europa League.
It is back to the business of reaching the League Two play-offs for Parkinson and Bradford - but they can still reflect on this achievement with great satisfaction after illuminating the season with one its most heart-warming stories.
Wembley was awash with colour before kick-off, especially the claret and amber of the West Yorkshire contingent as they savoured the sort of occasion that was surely beyond their wildest dreams at the start of the season.
It soon became clear, however, that Swansea were in no mood to suffer a similar fate to Bradford's previous Premier League victims as they passed through and picked off opponents swiftly condemned to 90 minutes of desperate ball-chasing.
Thirteen years ago - almost to the day - Swansea were beating Chester City 2-1 in Division Three while Bradford were in the Premier League. The Swans dominated possession and were ahead after just over quarter of an hour. Duke could only push out Michu's shot and Dyer reacted first to score from an acute angle.
Bradford offered nothing as an attacking force, taking until three minutes from time for Gary Jones to bring a save from Gerhard Tremmel, and were never in a position to utilise the expertise at set-pieces that so unsettled Villa over two legs in the semi-final.
Manager Parkinson would have been delighted and relieved to reach the interval only one behind but it was not to be as Swansea went further ahead with a goal superbly created and finished. The outstanding Pablo Hernandez played in Michu, who used Carl McHugh as a shield before passing the ball through the defender's legs and beyond Duke with wonderful precision.
And the contest was finished off two minutes after the restart when Dyer played the ball into Wayne Routledge before taking the return and finishing powerfully past Duke. Even the normally ice-cool Laudrup recognised the significance of the moment with a dance of air-punching delight in his technical area.
Swansea's fourth actually brought the only moment of dissent in what was an otherwise smooth and uninterrupted path to glory.
Referee Kevin Friend had no alternative but to send Duke off for tripping De Guzman as the Dutchman went round the grounded keeper. In the background Dyer, who wanted to take the penalty for his hat-trick, was involved in a furious exchange with designated penalty taker De Guzman, an argument only settled when Michu returned from the technical area with instructions from Laudrup.
De Guzman stayed calm to beat substitute keeper Jon McLaughlin - and he rounded off the perfect afternoon for Swansea with his second and their fifth by bundling in from close range.
The celebrations of the Swansea fans had started long before then and they moved into top gear once the final whistle blew on an outstanding, thoroughly professional performance as captain on the day Ashley Williams and club captain Garry Monk lifted the trophy. | Sports Competition | February 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
Taiwan's opposition leader Tsai Ing–wen launches her presidential bid. | TAIWAN'S opposition leader Tsai Ing-wen on Friday announced she intended to run in next year's presidential election, pledging to make the island 'its own master'. Ms Tsai, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is tipped to challenge Beijing-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou who is widely expected to run for a second term. 'Young people don't understand why (the government) gives up the democracy and freedom we fought so hard for,' said Ms Tsai, whose party favours Taiwan's independence from China. 'I hear Taiwan's voice saying Taiwan wants to be its own master... I will shoulder the responsibility of the future to win Taiwan back.' Ms Tsai, 54, became DPP chief in 2008 following its humiliating defeat in presidential polls and has since led the party to victory in several regional elections. China and Taiwan have been governed separately since the end of a civil war in 1949 but Beijing still sees the island as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary. Ties between Taiwan and China were strained under the former DPP government but have improved markedly since Mr Ma took office in 2008 promoting trade and tourism with the mainland. | Government Job change - Election | March 2011 | ['(Focus Taiwan)', '(Straits Times)'] |
The death certificate of American pop star and entertainer Michael Jackson is amended to reflect his cause of death as homicide via "injection by another". | The document has been changed to specify that his death was caused by "injection by another". Investigators had concluded that a powerful concoction of prescription drugs killed the pop star. The coroner's further homicide verdict increases the chances of criminal charges being brought against Jackson's doctors. 'Hoax videos'
Jackson died at his Los Angeles home in June, aged 50. Police have interviewed his personal physician Dr Conrad Murray but he has not been named as a suspect. He has strenuously denied any wrongdoing. Jackson is expected to be buried in a private sunset ceremony in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in California. Only close family and friends of Jackson will be in attendance for the event. Meanwhile, a hoax video apparently showing the singer emerging from a coroner's van has emerged. German channel RTL posted the footage on YouTube and received 880,000 hits in one day. Heike Schultz, spokeswoman for the network, said it had been an experiment. "We wanted to show how easily users can be manipulated on the internet with hoax videos," she said. "Therefore, we created this video of Michael Jackson being alive, even though everybody knows by now that he is dead - and the response was breathtaking." What are these? | Famous Person - Death | September 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
Tens of thousands of people, including Howard University students and NAACP members, arrive in the U.S. city of Jena, Louisiana, to protest in support of six black teenagers involved in a schoolyard brawl. | Spurred by the Internet and a popular disc jockey's nationwide urban radio program, tens of thousands of people are expected to descend on a sleepy rural Louisiana town to protest what they say are excessive criminal charges against six black teenagers involved in a schoolyard brawl.
About 500 tour buses bearing thousands of riders were scheduled to depart from cities across the United States in the wee hours today for Jena, La., about 230 miles northwest of New Orleans. They will join others who will travel by airplane, automobile caravans and motorcycle convoys in what organizers say is a protest reminiscent of the Freedom Rides of the 1960s.
The demonstration was originally set to coincide with the sentencing of one of the defendants. But even though a state appeals court dismissed his battery conviction last week, organizers decided to go ahead with the rally. In addition, they asked people across the country to dress in black today to show solidarity with the demonstrators.
As of Wednesday, according to the local NAACP and news reports, organizers said they were hoping up to 40,000 people would converge on Jena, a two-lane-highway town of 3,500. Though no one is sure whether the crowd will be that large, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) has ordered the chief of the state police to work with the LaSalle Parish sheriff on crowd control.
Even if the numbers do not reach the organizers' hopes, the march is another example -- the immigration rights protests of last year being another -- of how radio, the Internet and word of mouth can create a buzz and a unity of purpose in one of the country's largest subcultures that takes hold beneath the radar of the mainstream news media.
The prosecutions in Jena, which at one point included charges of conspiracy to commit murder, and the racial clashes that preceded them received scant news coverage but roared through the Web. Google searches for "Jena 6" and "Jena Six" yield nearly 2 million hits.
The pending protest has drawn the attention of presidential candidates. The three leading Democratic contenders, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and former senator John Edwards (N.C.) -- all of whom need strong black support to gain their party's nomination -- issued statements supporting the marchers and condemning Jena authorities for their tough prosecution of the six teenagers.
Earlier this month at Howard University, more than 1,500 students rallied in support of the Jena 6, packing an auditorium, with hundreds outside. Yesterday morning, 50 students, all dressed entirely in black, left by bus for Louisiana. Two buses from Prince George's County, paid for in part by donations from volunteers, are also en route.
"This is a shocking abuse of justice in the 21st century and harkens to our sort of Neanderthal era of politics in America fashioned around legalized racism," said former county executive Wayne K. Curry. "For this to be happening now is such a jolt. The absence of dialogue on the subject from many of our elected officials is astounding. . . . Exultations of attempted murder for a fistfight in a school. What's going on?"
Michael Baisden, whose nationally syndicated afternoon drive-time show is credited with being a primary catalyst for the demonstration, has also appealed to people interested in the case to wear black today, regardless of where they are.
"They're fed up," he said. "Our slogan is 'enough is enough.' This could be their sons. People have personalized this in a way they haven't since the civil rights movement. It's the child thing that's taken this to some other level."
At first organizers saw the rally as a protest to the sentencing of Mychal Bell, 17, who was tried as an adult and convicted of aggravated second-degree battery by an all-white jury in June. But last week, a state appeals court threw out that conviction, saying Bell should have been tried in a juvenile court. He was 16 at the time of the altercation, had spent a year in jail and faced up to 15 more years in a state prison. | Protest_Online Condemnation | September 2007 | ['(Washington Post)'] |
A fire occurs at a detention center for migrants in Sanaa, Yemen, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 170 others. | The U.N. migration agency says a fire broke out in a detention center for migrants in Yemen’s capital, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 170 others
CAIRO -- A fire broke out Sunday in a detention center for migrants in Yemen’s capital, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 170 others, the U.N. migration agency said.
The International Organization for Migration said the cause of the fire at the detention center, south of the city of Sanaa, was not immediately clear. Over 90 wounded migrants were in serious condition, it said. The death toll could be much higher, it said.
The detention center is run by the Houthi rebels, who have controlled the capital since the outbreak of Yemen’s conflict more than six years ago. The rebels said civil defense teams managed to extinguish the fire and that investigations were ongoing to determine its cause.
A U.N. official said the fire broke out in a hangar close to the main building of the detention center, which was housing more than 700 migrants.
Most of the migrants were arrested in the northern province of Saada, while trying to cross into Saudi Arabia, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to brief the media.
“But this is just one of the many dangers that migrants have faced during the past six years of the crisis in Yemen,” said Carmela Godeau, IOM's regional director for MENA region, in a tweet.
The narrow waters between the Horn of Africa and Yemen have been a popular migration route despite Yemen’s ongoing conflict. Tens of thousands of migrants, desperate to find jobs as housekeepers, servants and construction workers, try to make their way through Yemen every year to the oil-rich Gulf countries.
Some 138,000 migrants embarked on the arduous journey from the Horn of Africa to Yemen in 2019, but this number decreased drastically to 37,000 last year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Over 2,500 migrants reached Yemen from Djibouti in January, according to IOM.
Those migrants are vulnerable to abuse by armed trafficking rings, many of them believed to be connected to the armed groups involved in the war. Earlier this month, at least 20 migrants were dead after smugglers threw 80 overboard during a voyage from Djibouti in East Africa to Yemen, according to the IOM. | Fire | March 2021 | ['(ABC News)'] |
Jamaican "drug lord" Christopher "Dudus" Coke is sentenced to 23 years in a U.S. prison. | Notorious Jamaican drug lord Christopher "Dudus" Coke has been sentenced to 23 years in a US prison, the maximum sentenced he faced.
Coke, 43, pleaded guilty to drug and gun-trafficking charges in August 2011.
A five-week operation to capture him in 2010 saw clashes in Jamaica's capital, Kingston, in which scores died.
His Kingston-based criminal organisation trafficked marijuana, cocaine and firearms and enjoyed protection from Jamaica's ruling party.
When Coke was first indicted in the US in 2009, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding initially fought his extradition, arguing that it was based on flawed evidence. Mr Golding's parliamentary constituency is in West Kingston's Tivoli Gardens, the district Coke's Shower Posse and the Presidential Click had controlled.
But after months of delays and amid growing local and international criticism, Mr Golding agreed to extradite Coke and signed an arrest warrant.
Coke was handed 20 years on the trafficking charge and three for conspiracy to commit assault with a dangerous weapon.
Coke had written a letter to the judge ask for leniency, describing good deeds he said he did for slum-dwellers in Tivoli Gardens.
In court on Friday, he sat stoically in grey prison clothes, and briefly told Judge Robert Patterson: "I am a good person".
Prosecutors argued Coke terrorised and destroyed anyone who interfered with his drug operation, and several women abused by his gang in Jamaica begged the judge for a harsh punishment.
But many of his supporters in impoverished parts of Kingston describe him as a benefactor.
Earlier this week, prosecutors had said Coke was so powerful that he enjoyed "virtual immunity from the reach of law enforcement." Coke's lawyer, Stephen Rosen, said he believed Coke would be released in his 60s and allowed to return to his home country.
He said his client will not appeal against the sentence. Jamaica divided on role of 'Dudus' Coke | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | June 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
28 of 33 miners rescued in the 2010 Copiapó mining accident are secretly discharged from hospital in Chile, with 2 remaining inside. | A further 28 rescued miners have been discharged from hospital in Chile in secret, a health official has said.
Paola Neumann, head of regional health, said their release was not publicised in order to protect them and their families.
Just two of the 33 men who were freed in an operation that was viewed around the world remained in hospital, she told reporters.
They would be transferred to different hospitals, she added.
Dr Neumann said one was suffering from a dental infection and the other had vertigo. She described vertigo as like a dizziness that made it difficult for the patient to maintain balance and walk properly. The first three of the miners were allowed home late on Thursday, and Dr Neumann said a decision had been taken to discharge the others on Friday without telling the media.
"This is not necessarily because of the media. Please don't take it personally," she told reporters.
The 33 miners spent 69 days trapped deep underground after a cave-in at the San Jose mine, near Copiapo in northern Chile's Atacama region.
For 17 days no one knew if they still lived, until a probe lowered through a narrow bore hole made contact with them.
They had survived by eking out rations meant to last only a few days.
Supplies were then lowered to them while they waited for a rescue shaft to be drilled to them, 624m (2,047ft) below ground.
There have been scenes of jubilation in Copiapo as the miners released from hospital have returned home to be greeted by relatives, friends and neighbours.
Ariel Ticona and his wife Elizabeth Segovia hugged their baby girl Esperanza, born while Mr Ticona was trapped underground.
None has yet given a detailed account of their time trapped in the mine. Some of those who have spoken say that all 33 have agreed not to speak about their experiences underground. Despite the pact, Juan Illanes described the first 17 days of the ordeal as a nightmare, before they were discovered by rescue workers.
Speaking to the BBC, Omar Reygadas said he was likely to return to mining, the only occupation he knew.
"That's my life. As footballer plays for as many years as his body allows him, I will go back to the mine because that is simply my job. My life is working in a mine... I love working underground and I know I am coming back."
By contrast, Richard Villarroel thought he would be entombed forever. "We were waiting for death," Mr Villarroel, 26, told the Washington Post.
"We were wasting away. We were so skinny. I lost 26lbs (11.8kg). I was afraid of not meeting my baby, who is on the way. That was what I was most waiting for." The government has promised the men it will help find them new jobs although their salaries are only due to be paid for another month.
Health Minister Jaime Manalich said the miners would all be closely monitored over the next six months and he predicted that tough times lay ahead of them.
"They have to adapt to a new life. Therefore we are prepared to stay with them and to work at least in the next six months," he said.
Edison Pena, who was released from the Copiapo hospital on Thursday, has expressed his anger about the accident, saying that when they were trapped he thought they were going to die.
"Why do these things have to happen? Because the employer wants to make money," Mr Pena said.
Speaking to reporters outside his home, he said he was worried about what the future had in store for him and his colleagues.
"But I'm afraid in three months, when the interviews are over, it may be difficult for me and my colleagues to find a job. I may end up selling sweets in the town square," he said.
The men have reportedly had offers ranging from invitations to attend football matches in Europe, to holidays, to television appearances. They have even been invited by President Sebastian Pinera to form a football squad and play a team of government officials. | Mine Collapses | October 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Pope encounters thousands of Facebook protesters after a seven-week online campaign against his views on contraception and HIV/AIDS. |
The pope admitted today that the Catholic church was entirely responsible for the child abuse scandal that has spread across Europe, silencing conspiracy theorists in the church as he arrived in Portugal to be met by hundreds of protesters distributing condoms.
In his most strongly worded condemnation of the priests involved in paedophile cases, Pope Benedict said the church's greatest enemy was "sins from within", not the campaigners who have exposed its culture of laxity and secrecy.
"The greatest persecution of the church doesn't come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sins within the church," Benedict told journalists travelling with him to Portugal. "The church needs to profoundly relearn penitence, accept purification, learn forgiveness but also justice." It was a first sign that the pope was prepared to stop church officials trying to blame the abuse scandal on a supposed conspiracy hatched by outsiders, including pro-choice and pro-gay marriage groups.
Despite the Vatican's initially defensive response to reports of hundreds of cases of clerical abuse across Europe, Benedict has recently pledged the church will protect children and make abusive priests face justice. He has already accepted the resignations of several bishops who either admitted they had molested young people or covered up for priests who did.
In some countries, such as Spain, the church itself has begun to report suspected cases of sexual abuse to the police.
In Portugal today the pope was greeted by thousands of faithful lining the streets of Lisbon, alongside a protest against the Vatican's refusal to sanction the use of condoms as a way of fighting HIV and Aids.
The protest began as a modest Facebook group only seven weeks ago but has since become a nationwide campaign backed by thousands of mostly young people in one of the most devoutly Roman Catholic countries in Europe. "We never imagined that we would one day have 14,500 people supporting us," the campaigners said yesterday after their Facebook group, formed on 20 March, mushroomed into a full-scaled protest against the Vatican's stance on Aids.
Hundreds of those supporters turned up at 22 distribution points around Lisbon and the northern city of Porto in order to hand out some 28,000 free condoms today. "Millions of people are still dying around the world because of this virus," the campaigners said. "Our initiative is not an affront to the pope," one of the organisers, Diogo Figueira, said yesterday. "Aids is not a question of religion, but of public health." The pope's visit comes as Portugal, where 90% of people say they are Roman Catholics, increasingly turns its back on the Vatican's preaching. President Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who met the pope today, is expected to sign off shortly a bill passed by parliament that will make Portugal the sixth European country to permit gay marriages.
Portugal's centre-left Socialist government has also introduced a law allowing a judge to grant a divorce even if one spouse is against it. The same government, led by Prime Minister José Socrates, passed a law in 2007 finally allowing abortion in Portugal. Benedict sharply criticised the abortion law today, saying public officials must give "essential consideration" to issues that affect human life. "The point at issue is not an ethical confrontation between a secular and religious system, so much as a question about the meaning that we give to our freedom," he said.
Half a million people are expected at a mass at the shrine in Fatima, northern Portugal, on Thursday on the anniversary of the day in 1917 when three Portuguese shepherd children reported having visions of the Virgin Mary.
The condom campaign has promised to stay away from what, for devout Roman Catholics, is the holiest site in Portugal. | Protest_Online Condemnation | May 2010 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Taiwan scrambles its air force to intercept Chinese jets after they circled the island during a combat drill. The drill is denounced by the Taiwanese Defense Ministry as a violation of its sovereignty. | TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan’s air force scrambled for a second day in a row on Monday to intercept Chinese jets that approached the island claimed by Beijing as its own, as tensions between the two took on a potentially dangerous military dimension.
Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said Chinese jets, accompanying H-6 bombers, briefly crossed an unofficial mid-line in the Taiwan Strait that separates the two, prompting its air force to rush to intercept and give verbal warnings to leave.
The Chinese aircraft then withdrew to the western side of the line, the ministry added, without identifying the jets.
The H-6s were on a training mission in the Pacific having passed through the Bashi Channel that separates Taiwan from the Philippines, the ministry added and shared a picture of a Taiwan F-16 accompanying one of the H-6 bombers.
China has been flying what it calls “island encirclement” drills on-off since 2016 when Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen first took office. Beijing believes Tsai, who won re-election last month, wishes to push the island’s formal independence.
Tsai says Taiwan is an independent country called the Republic of China, its official name.
On Sunday too, Chinese jets, including J-11 fighters, flew into the Bashi Channel then out into the Pacific before heading back to base via the Miyako Strait, located between Japan’s islands of Miyako and Okinawa, to the northeast of Taiwan.
According to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency, the F-16s scrambled on Sunday carried live missiles.
There was no immediate comment from China on Monday’s incident. This is only the second time since 2016 that Taiwan has said that Chinese jets had crossed the strait’s median line. Their military aircraft tend to keep to their own sides.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, though, urged Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) “not to play with fire”.
The DPP have been “adopting a stance that increases cross-strait confrontation, intensifying new moves for Taiwan-U.S. collusion, using the opportunity to seek independence and openly carrying out dangerous provocations”, it added.
Related Coverage
China’s Eastern Theatre Command described Sunday’s fly-by of military’s combat ready patrol as a “completely legitimate and necessary action aimed at the current situation in the Taiwan Strait and safeguarding national sovereignty”.
The latest fly-bys came as Taiwan’s vice-president elect, William Lai, was returning from a visit to Washington, where he attended the high-profile National Prayer Breakfast, at which U.S. President Donald Trump spoke. China denounced Lai’s trip.
Washington is Taipei’s most important backer and arms supplier, despite the absence of official diplomatic ties.
China says Taiwan is the most sensitive issue in its relations with the United States.
Relations between the Taipei and Beijing have further soured recently over the coronavirus outbreak, with Taiwan accusing China of preventing the island from accessing full information from the World Health Organization or attending its meetings.
China should focus on controlling the spread of the virus, rather than threatening Taiwan, Tsai said on Monday.
Taiwan’s China-policy making Mainland Affairs Council said the island’s 23 million people would not bow down to threats.
“In recent years, Communist aircraft and warships have frequented the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait and attempted to use arms to force unification,” it said.
“Various provocative acts have seriously damaged the status quo of the Taiwan Strait and have increased regional tensions.”
Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Yimou Lee; Editing by Himani Sarkar
| Military Exercise | February 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
A military transport plane has crashed in a mountainous area of Oum El Bouaghi Province in eastern Algeria, killing 77 people. , | An Algerian military transport plane has crashed in the north-east of the country, killing all but one of the 78 people on board.
The Hercules C-130 crashed into a mountain in Oum al-Bouaghi province, en route to Constantine, in bad weather conditions.
One survivor is being treated for head injuries, reports said.
The government and military say 78 people were on board - not 103 as reported by officials and local media.
Most of those on board were military personnel and their family members. "I saw the military plane crashing, and it was cut into two pieces," a firefighter, Mohamed, told Reuters news agency at Ouled Gacem, near the crash site.
Women and children were among the 77 bodies recovered from the crash site.
Dozens of rescue workers reached the scene, despite the mountainous terrain and wintry weather conditions.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika sent his condolences to families of the "martyrs" and has decreed three days of national mourning to begin on Wednesday, said state TV.
The plane was originally reported to have been carrying 99 passengers and four crew members.
Its departure point was the Sahara Desert garrison city of Tamanrasset, 1,500km (950 miles) south of Constantine. It made a stop in Ouargla.
A source told radio station Ennahar - which has close links to the government and army - that contact was lost with the military plane between Oum al-Bouaghi and Constantine as it was descending to land.
It crashed into Djebel Fertas mountain, some 380km (240 miles) east of the capital Algiers.
"The plane crashed into a mountain and exploded. Several bodies were burnt to ashes and could not be identified," an official told Reuters.
The defence ministry said it had set up a commission to investigate the crash and that Ahmed Gaid Salah, who is both army chief of staff and deputy defence minister, would go to the crash site, Reuters reported.
In a statement, the defence ministry blamed "very bad weather conditions, involving a storm and heavy snowfall", for the crash.
This is the worst plane crash in Algeria for more than 10 years and the third involving an Algerian military Hercules.
An Air Algerie Boeing 737 crashed on take-off from Tamanrasset in 2003, killing all but one of the 103 people on board.
| Air crash | February 2014 | ['(Reuters)', '(BBC)'] |
China announces that 5,335 schoolchildren died during an earthquake in Sichuan on May 12, 2008. | China said today that 5,335 schoolchildren and students had died or remained missing after last year's Sichuan earthquake, the first official tally in what became a politically charged issue because of allegations of corruption and shoddy school construction.
The overall death toll in the May 12 quake was unchanged at 68,712. Almost 18,000 people are still listed as missing, the head of Sichuan civil affairs department, Huang Mingquan, said in the provincial capital of Chengdu.
The government began a count of the dead and missing within hours of the magnitude 7.9 quake, which destroyed huge portions of Sichuan, but authorities have refused until now to say how many pupils were killed when thousands of classrooms collapsed while buildings around them remained intact.
The issue has been an enduring source of grief for parents. They say the schools crumbled so easily because corruption and mismanagement led to slipshod construction methods and weak buildings that were not up to standard. Some say materials meant for school construction projects were sold by contractors for personal gain.
Parents who protested have been detained or warned against speaking out. Activists sympathetic to their cause have been harassed or taken away by police.
Officials blamed the power of the quake for the number of flattened schools, and said compiling and confirming the names of the pupils was a complicated process.
No reason was given for the release of the figures today , days before the first anniversary of the disaster.
In a transcript of the press conference posted on the Sichuan government's website, officials said that "once there is concrete evidence to prove that problems exist in building designs and construction, relevant departments will investigate according to law".
Liu Xiaoying, whose 12-year-old daughter was killed when the three-storey Fuxin No 2 primary school collapsed, said she was sure the toll was much higher. "I hope the investigation will continue and that the people responsible will be seriously punished," she said.
Liu is under surveillance after travelling to Beijing twice to petition the central government. "I hope the government will really do what they say they would and not brush off us parents," she said. "If this is the case, the hearts of my husband and I will be more at ease."
Ai Weiwei, an artist and high-profile critic of Beijing's policies, said the announcement was a sign that the government may be caving in to "pressure of the common people, pressure from the media," but it was still an empty gesture.
"There's no significance to this announcement because it didn't give any names or any other information on where they died, which schools or which classes they were in," Ai said. "This is nonsense."
In his blog, Ai has confirmed almost 5,000 pupil names and estimates that the toll could reach 8,000. He said that at least 20 of his helpers had been detained by local authorities.
Tan Zuoren, who conducted his own investigation into 64 schools in the quake zone, has estimated that more than 5,600 pupils are dead or missing. Tan, who has since been detained on suspicion of subversion, said that number was incomplete.
The official China Daily newspaper today reported that a circular issued by the cabinet had ordered safety controls for the construction of schools to be strengthened. The circular those who engaged in illegal practices would be severely punished. | Earthquakes | May 2009 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
President-elect Donald Trump names RNC Communications director Sean Spicer as White House Press Secretary, and Jason Miller as the White House Communications Director. | At the same time, the transition team announced that Trump campaign press secretary Hope Hicks will become director of strategic communications, Jason Miller, a top spokesperson on Trump's presidential campaign, will be director of communications, and Trump social media guru Dan Scavino will be director of social media. "Sean, Hope, Jason and Dan have been key members of my team during the campaign and transition. I am excited they will be leading the team that will communicate my agenda that will Make America Great Again," Trump said in a statement. Spicer, 45, has spent six years as RNC communications director and 15 years in communications for Republicans in Washington. He has well-established relationships with the Washington press corps and is a familiar face on both cable news and the D.C. social circuit. Miller, who has spent two decades in political press relations, was a senior communications advisor to Ted Cruz's presidential campaign before joining Trump for the general election. He also served on Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign in 2008, and has been a consultant to several Republican congressional campaigns. Hicks, who is just 28, came to the Trump Organization after handling press relations for Ivanka Trump's fashion line. She officially joined the organization in 2014 and served as press secretary on Trump's campaign. As director of strategic communications, she will manage the President-elect's media opportunities. Scavino first met Trump when he was 16 years old, working as a golf caddie. Trump happened to visit the course, which he would later buy, and their conversation eventually led to Scavino becoming general manager of the Trump National Golf Club. Over the years, Scavino became a trusted member of Trump's inner circle, and in February was tapped to direct the Trump campaign's social media operation. Related: How a golf caddie became Trump's campaign confidant For Washington reporters who fear Trump's treatment of the press, Spicer's appointment may be seen as a positive sign. While Spicer can be combative with critics and, like Trump, is known for unleashing his Twitter account on reporters and news organizations, he is also a veteran of the Washington press relations game and likely to provide an open line of communication into Trump's White House. Related: Donald Trump postpones news conference until January One of Spicer's first tasks will likely be to address concerns that Trump intends to limit media access and do away with the practice of daily press briefings. The Trump transition has long insisted that Trump will uphold the practice, even as his future chief of staff Reince Priebus has hinted at the need for changes. Since Trump became the Republican nominee, Spicer has been one of his staunchest defenders, doggedly sticking up for the billionaire through the campaign and the transition. Last Wednesday, Spicer praised Trump for transparency -- despite Trump's decision to postpone his first press conference as president-elect until January. Related: Three ways Trump already faces a conflict of interest "What we've seen in government for so often is that people have been shady -- about their roles, hiding things, not releasing things," Spicer said in an interview with CNN's Kate Bolduan. "We have a camera for goodness sake. Every single person who enters Trump Tower, you get to see them go up, go down, they talk to the press." Trump hasn't held a press conference since July. Spicer beat out a number of other candidates who were said to be under consideration for the press secretary role, including conservative pundits Laura Ingraham and Monica Crowley. Last Thursday, the transition announced that Crowley had been appointed senior director of strategic communications for Trump's National Security Council. Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2019 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc.2019. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2019 and/or its affiliates. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | December 2016 | ['(CNN)'] |
Strikes in France: French transport workers' strike against President Nicolas Sarkozy's pension reform enters its second day, but energy workers and CFDT members return to work. | More trains were running than on Wednesday, but millions of people still struggled to get to and from work.
The misery looks set to continue after state rail and Paris transport workers voted to continue striking on Friday.
Mr Sarkozy has called for a speedy end to the strike, saying conditions for talks with the unions have been met.
Germany also faces rail disruption in its worst ever transport strike, with only two-thirds of trains running on main lines. Passenger and freight train drivers have taken the action over a pay demand. Deutsche Bahn says it will not make a new pay offer, and drivers' unions have raised the prospect of open-ended strikes. Breakthrough hopes
France's largest rail union, the CGT, said 46% of employees at the state-run SNCF train company were on strike on Thursday, compared with 64% the day before.
Only 150 of the usual 700 TGV high-speed trains were running.
'SPECIAL' PENSIONS SYSTEM
Benefits 1.6m workers, including 1.1m retirees
Applies in 16 sectors, of which rail and utilities employees make up 360,000 people
Account for 6% of total state pension payments
Shortfall costs state 5bn euros (£3.5bn; $6.9bn) a year
Some workers can retire on full pensions aged 50
Awarded to Paris Opera House workers in 1698 by Louis XIV
In pictures: French strikes
Can street protests succeed?
Solidarity amid French crisis
Have you been affected?
The Paris public transport company RATP said 27% of metro workers were on strike Thursday, down from 44% on Wednesday.
Major roads in the Paris region were clogged, with a reported 300km (180 miles) of traffic jams early in the day.
Members of the CFDT union, on strike on Wednesday, went back to work.
Most workers at the EDF electricity and GDF gas utilities also returned to work after taking action on Wednesday.
Commuters across the country have been forced to find other ways to get to work - car sharing, cycling or roller-blading along traffic-choked roads.
More disruption
Hopes of a breakthrough were raised on Wednesday evening after Mr Sarkozy said conditions for talks had been created.
In a letter to the unions, labour minister Xavier Bertrand proposed a month of negotiations between all parties.
The head of the CGT railway branch, Didier Le Reste, said the letter contained some "new elements", but members have voted to continue the strike until at least Friday morning.
All rail services were disrupted
Workers from other unions have also voted to stay on strike.
"We imagine that Friday will go much the same way as today," CGT spokesman Jacques Eliez said.
The strike began on Tuesday night and follows a previous walkout on 18 October.
The last time a French government tried to overhaul "special" pensions was in 1995 and it sparked three weeks of strikes that forced then-President Jacques Chirac to climb down.
But the polls have so far broadly supported Mr Sarkozy, who says France can no longer afford to let some public service employees retire on a full pension as early as 50. | Strike | November 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
Booker Prize winning writer of historical fiction Barry Unsworth dies in Italy. | British novelist Barry Unsworth, who won the Booker prize for his story about the 18th-century slave trade, Sacred Hunger, has died in Italy aged 81.
The Durham-born author had lived in Umbria for many years. His publisher Hutchinson confirmed the news of his death this morning.
"Barry was a wonderful writer and this is a great loss," said publishing director Jocasta Hamilton. "Barry's work was characterised by a willingness to tackle big subjects with great humanity. His writing brought enormous pleasure as well as being thought-provoking and illuminating. We are incredibly proud to have had the opportunity to publish his last novel, The Quality of Mercy, which has been shortlisted for the Walter Scott prize. Many of us met him in 2010 and were as charmed in person as we had been thrilled by his novels."
From Morality Play, a 14th-century murder mystery, to Pascali's Island, set during the last years of the Ottoman Empire, many of Unsworth's 17 acclaimed novels explored different aspects of history.
Born in 1930 in a small mining community in Durham, the author travelled extensively in Greece and Turkey during the 1960s, teaching at the universities of Athens and Istanbul and starting to try to write. He published his first novel The Partnership in 1966.
Unsworth shared the 1992 Booker prize with Michael Ondaatje for his 10th novel Sacred Hunger, in which a ship's doctor leads a rebellion on an 18th-century slave ship and sets sail for Florida to create an egalitarian society which lives in denial of that "sacred hunger", profit. He was shortlisted twice more for the UK's highest literary honour, for Morality Play and for Pascali's Island, set in the summer of 1908 on a Greek island where a Levantine informer is found out by the islanders, and was longlisted for 2006's The Ruby in Her Navel, which takes place during the 12th century.
Writing about the past, Unsworth told the journal Littoral, has the "great advantage" of freeing the author "from a great deal of surface clutter". "One is enabled to take a remote period and use it as a distant mirror (to borrow Barbara Tuchman's phrase), and so try to say things about our human condition – then and now – which transcend the particular period and become timeless," said the novelist.
"Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can't be disproved or shown to be false. We are quite at ease in this no man's land of ignorance and doubt and dispute, absorbed in the ambiguities of trying to reach truth by mixing fact with invention. The search for truth in historical fiction – in fiction of any kind – is really a search for intensity of illusion. If this is achieved, the events and characters will take on a deeper reality than could ever be achieved by fidelity to the facts of the matter."
The novelist Ursula Le Guin said that reading Unsworth's 2009 novel Land of Marvels, set in the spring of 1914 in Mesopotamia, was "like watching an Olympic athlete about to win the gold: the seamless flow of action, the mastery of technique, seemingly effortless yet demanding attention and eliciting admiration as an end in itself".
The award-winning poet Sean O'Brien, in an appreciation of Unsworth for the British Council, said that the author was "a distinguished member of the long and various tradition of English writer-travellers in the ancient world. Unlike some of its exponents, Unsworth has not been tempted into inert exoticism, though he is clearly drawn to the sensuality and glitter of Mediterranean light and landscape, to the textures of stone and water, which he can render with a poet's rich economy. He is likewise drawn also to the sense of ancient mystery, of a world almost within reach." | Famous Person - Death | June 2012 | ['(The Guardian)', '(The New York Times)'] |
The death toll from floods in northwestern Pakistan exceeds 1,000. | The number of people known to have been killed by floods in north-west Pakistan has passed 1,100, officials say.
About 30,000 troops have joined the relief effort, with large parts of the north-west submerged by the worst monsoon rains in memory.
There are also fears that with more rain forecast for the next 24 hours, some areas face further threats.
Part of the main north-south motorway into the region was reopened on Sunday, before reportedly closing again.
The opening allowed some aid supplies into the flooded area while permitting some people to flee the region.
The BBC's Aleem Maqbool, in the capital Islamabad, says officials fear that once access to affected areas improves, the full picture will show that the situation is much worse than known so far. A spokesman for the disaster management authority of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province - formerly known as North West Frontier Province - said an aerial survey was being conducted to determine the full extent of the flooding.
"It has shown that whole villages have been washed away, animals have drowned and grain storages have been washed away," said the spokesman, Latifur Rehman.
"The destruction is massive."
The Pakistani government says 19,000 people in the worst-hit areas had been rescued by soldiers by Saturday night, but that thousands more remained stranded.
About one million people in the north-west of the country are estimated to be affected by the flooding.
Among the hardest-hit areas are:
There have been reports that the flood water is receding in some areas but officials fear that relief operations could be hampered by more rain, with a new monsoon system forecast to arrive in the next 24 hours. Officials are concerned that more heavy rains could push the flooding south into Sindh province.
Military and rescue workers have been using helicopters to deliver essential supplies to areas that have had transport and communication links cut off. "Virtually no bridge has been left in Swat. All major and minor bridges have gone, destroyed completely," said army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas.
The army has deployed 43 helicopters and over 100 boats to try to reach people still trapped by the floods, said Mr Rehman.
The Chairman of Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, Gen Nadim Ahmed, said it would be necessary to rely on helicopters to shift people and drop aid supplies for some time.
He said the UN was responding to a request for help with food, shelter, water and sanitation and medicines.
The US has also provided about 50,000 meals, four rescue boats and two water-filtration units, said US and Pakistani officials.
The American embassy in Islamabad said it would be providing 12 temporary bridges to replace some of those knocked out by the flooding.
There have been complaints from some that emergency shelters have been inadequate or even non-existent in some areas.
Relief agencies have also warned that there is a risk of disease in the flood-affected areas.
"There is now a real danger of the spread of waterborne diseases like diarrhea, asthma, skin allergies and perhaps cholera in these areas," said Shaharyar Bangash, the head of operations in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa for the aid charity World Vision.
As well as the more 1,000 deaths in Pakistan, at least 60 people have died across the border in Afghanistan, where floods have affected four provinces.
In pictures: Pakistan flood misery
South Asia's deadliest threat?
NW Pakistan 'a massive lake'
Asian monsoon
Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa government
Edhi Foundation
National Disaster Management Authority
Pakistan government
| Floods | August 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(Aljazeera)', '(The Nation)'] |
The Saudi government appoints former energy minister Khalid A. Al–Falih to head a new investment ministry replacing the General Investment Authority, and sacks the media minister, among other changes to the cabinet. | RIYADH (Reuters) - The man sacked as Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in September has been tapped to head a new investment ministry, in a cabinet reshuffle announced on Tuesday that also created ministries for tourism and sports.
Khalid al-Falih, who previously chaired state oil company Saudi Aramco and oversaw more than half the economy of the world’s top oil exporter, was widely seen as having fallen out of favor when he was removed from the energy ministry.
Attracting billions of dollars in foreign investment is key to ambitious plans championed by de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to end the economy’s dependence on crude exports and open up its long-cloistered society.
According to royal orders published in state media, Falih’s new ministry replaces the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), which had been responsible for issuing investment licenses to foreign companies but did not control other key regulations.
“Falih’s return is a small surprise,” said Hasnain Malik, a managing director at Tellimer. “More important is the upgrade of the General Investment Authority to a full ministry, which underlines the importance of private sector home-grown and foreign direct investment (FDI) for the future of Saudi.”
It was not immediately clear if the restructuring would expand investment entity’s authorities. As energy minister, Falih had one of the highest international profiles of any Saudi official.
FDI rose to $3.50 billion in the first nine months of 2019 from $3.18 billion a year earlier, but still lags behind Riyadh’s ambitions.
The cornerstone of Prince Mohammed’s plans to open the gates of foreign capital was supposed to be the initial public offering of Aramco, but many global investors steered clear when the oil giant debuted on the Riyadh bourse in December.
Falih was privately opposed and had lobbied against it, fearing he would have to step down as chairman of the company, sources close to the matter told Reuters last year.
He was ultimately removed from that position three months before the listing, replaced by Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund PIF.
Other royal orders on Tuesday elevated commissions into ministries for tourism and sports, identified by Riyadh as two big growth areas. Ahmed al-Khateeb and Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki al Faisal were named ministers respectively.
The civil service ministry, which is responsible for millions of public employees, was also merged into the labor ministry.
The media minister was removed and the file given to Commerce Minister Majid al-Qasabi, while Housing Minister Majid al-Hoqail was handed additional responsibility for municipalities and rural affairs.
Additional reporting by Nafisa Eltahir and Davide Barbuscia in Dubai; editing by John Stonestreet and Ed Osmond
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | February 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump wins enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination. | WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has clinched the Republican Party nomination, surpassing the necessary delegate threshold.
Trump, who had only token opposition, now has more than the 1,276 delegates needed after winning Tuesday’s Florida and Illinois primaries, according to The Associated Press’ delegate count.
That makes Trump the undisputed Republican nominee as Democrats continue to wage a contested primary contest between former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
This is the earliest the delegate calendar permits a Republican to clinch the nomination.
“It shows the enthusiasm behind President Trump, it shows how unified Republicans are behind President Trump and how intense their support for him is,” said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh, who noted Trump has set record vote tallies, even in largely uncontested contests.
“Republicans and President Trump’s supporters have been just itching to get involved in the process that will end with his reelection in November,” Murtaugh said.
Trump had 1,141 delegates going into Tuesday’s Florida and Illinois primaries (Arizona was not holding a Republican primary) and he needed 135 more to win. The wins in Florida and Illinois were big because their primaries awarded all delegates to the winner.
Regardless of the order of the race calls, Trump’s campaign intended to credit Florida for putting him over the top as it tries to highlight a state that was crucial to Trump’s 2016 victory and will likely be required for him to win again in 2020.
The president had accumulated all but one of the available delegates this primary season, with former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld winning a single delegate in the Iowa caucuses.
That lone Weld delegate can now vote for Trump if he is the only candidate nominated, according to GOP rules.
Trump’s re-nomination came much faster than in 2016, when he passed the magic number in late May in North Dakota. Trump marked the occasion with a news conference in Bismarck, during which he shook hands with the two delegates who had carried him over the threshold.
Besides the lack of big-name opponents, Trump was bolstered by rules changes in the Republican nominating process that the White House had aggressively pushed, including canceled primaries and caucuses long before the coronavirus pandemic, higher thresholds to get delegates and more winner-take-all contests.
“The rules were tweaked in a big number of states to make it much harder for the also-rans for the nomination to compete in any meaningful way,” said delegate expert and political scientist Josh Putnam of Frontloading HQ.
But it also “speaks to something we kind of knew going into this,” Putnam said. “The party, at least the folks opting to turn out to vote, were unifying behind their president.”
Trump is deeply popular within the Republican Party despite his overall low job approval numbers, and his campaign has been in general election mode since Trump filed for reelection back in January 2017.
The results come as Biden and Sanders continue their fight for the Democratic nomination, despite Biden’s commanding lead.
While securing the nomination before his eventual Democratic rival “in regular times would be a decent advantage” for Trump, the novel coronavirus pandemic that has upended American life could change that, Putnam said.
Trump can no longer hold the signature mass rallies that have fueled his campaign and the economy is now in free fall. But Murtaugh argued his team is better equipped than Democrats’ for a virtual campaign thanks to a data advantage fueled, in part, but years worth of rallies that serve as voter information collection powerhouses.
“The amount of work that we can do digitally and virtually can’t be matched by the other side,” Murtaugh said.
| Government Job change - Election | March 2020 | ['(PBS)'] |
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who previously gave most of the country's 2.8 million state employees Fridays off through May, announces public workers will also have Wednesdays and Thursdays off for at least two weeks as an energy–saving measure. Full salaries will still be paid despite the two–day week. | CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela’s socialist government ordered public workers on Tuesday to work a two-day week as an energy-saving measure in the crisis-hit South American OPEC country.
President Nicolas Maduro had already given most of Venezuela’s 2.8 million state employees Fridays off during April and May to cut down on electricity consumption.
“From tomorrow, for at least two weeks, we are going to have Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays as non-working days for the public sector,” Maduro said on his weekly television program.
Drought has reduced water levels at Venezuela’s main dam and hydroelectric plant in Guri to near-critical levels. The dam provides for about two-thirds of the nation’s energy needs.
Water shortages and electricity cuts have added to the hardships of Venezuela’s 30 million people, already enduring a brutal recession, shortages of basics from milk to medicines, soaring prices, and long lines at shops.
Maduro, 53, who succeeded the late Hugo Chavez in 2013 and is facing an opposition push to remove him through a recall referendum, appealed for understanding and support.
“The Guri has virtually become a desert. With all these measures, we are going to save it,” he said, adding that the daily drop in water level had slowed to 10 centimeters from 20.
After months of unscheduled outages, the government began programmed electricity rationing this week across most of Venezuela, except the capital Caracas, prompting sporadic protests in some cities.
Maduro has also changed the clocks so there is half an hour more daylight in the evening, urged women to reduce use of appliances like hairdryers, and ordered malls to provide their own generators.
Regarding the public sector measure, the government is excluding workers in sensitive sectors such as food.
Full salaries will still be paid despite the two-day week.
Critics have derided Maduro for giving state employees days off, arguing it would hurt national productivity and was unlikely to save electricity because people would simply go home and turn on appliances there instead.
“Maduro says that ‘we in government don’t stop working for a second’. Of course. Except for Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays!” satirized Leonardo Padron, a columnist for pro-opposition El Nacional newspaper, via Twitter.
Officials said the El Nino weather phenomenon is responsible for Venezuela’s electricity woes. But critics accuse the government of inadequate investment, corruption, inefficiency and failure to diversify energy sources.
| Government Policy Changes | April 2016 | ['(Reuters)'] |
John Kerry, along with the other Group of Seven foreign ministers, laid wreaths at Japan's Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum to the victims of the 1945 U.S. nuclear attack. Kerry is the first Secretary of State to visit the memorial. Then-U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was previously the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the memorial, in 2008. The Hiroshima foreign ministers meeting is part of the preparations for the 42nd G7 summit the end of next month at Japan's Kashiko Island, Shima, Mie Prefecture. | HIROSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday called his visit to a memorial to victims of the 1945 U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima “gut-wrenching” and said it was a reminder of the need to pursue a world free of nuclear weapons.
John Kerry's historical Hiroshima memorial visit
00:58
The first U.S. secretary of state to visit Hiroshima, Kerry said President Barack Obama also wanted to travel to the city in southern Japan but he did not know whether the leader’s complex schedule would allow him to do so when he visits the country for a Group of Seven (G7) summit in May.
Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum, whose haunting displays include photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.
“It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” he said. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation everyone of us in public life carries ... to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons,” he told a news conference.
After the tour by Kerry and his fellow G7 foreign ministers, the group issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to building a world without nuclear arms but said the push had been made more complex by North Korea’s repeated “provocations” and by worsening security in Syria and Ukraine.
The ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States laid white wreaths at a cenotaph to the victims of the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing, which reduced the city to ashes and killed some 140,000 people by the end of that year.
While he is not the highest-ranking U.S. official to have toured the museum and memorial park, a distinction that belongs to then-U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi in 2008, Kerry is the most senior executive branch official to visit.
Related Coverage
”Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial. It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself,” the chief U.S. diplomat wrote in a guest book.
Asked later if this meant Obama should come, Kerry said: “everyone means everyone. So I hope one day the president of the United States will be among the everyone who is able to come here. Whether or not he can come as president, I don’t know.”
‘FIRST STEP’
At Kerry’s suggestion, the ministers also made an impromptu visit to the Atomic Bomb Dome, the skeletal remains of the only structure left standing near the hypocenter of the bomb explosion and now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Three days after a U.S. warplane dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, on Aug. 9, 1945. Japan surrendered six days later.
A visit by Obama could be controversial in America if it were viewed as an apology. A majority of Americans view the bombings as justified to end the war and save U.S. lives, while the vast majority of Japanese believe it was not justified.
Hopes for Obama’s visit to Hiroshima were raised after an April 2009 speech in Prague when he called for a world without nuclear weapons. He later said that he would be honored to visit the two nuclear-attacked cities.
The G7 foreign ministers’ trip to the museum and memorial is part of Japan’s effort to send a strong nuclear disarmament message from Hiroshima, the world’s first city to suffer atomic bombing.
“I think this first-ever visit by G7 foreign ministers to the peace memorial park is a historic first step towards reviving momentum toward a world without nuclear weapons,” Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in a statement.
He later told a news conference that it was “inconceivable” that Japan would ever decide to have nuclear weapons. Last month, U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Japan and South Korea should build such weapons to deter enemies.
In a separate, detailed statement, the G7 ministers singled out North Korea for sharp criticism, condemning its recent nuclear test and launches using ballistic missile technology.
And in a statement on maritime security, they voiced their strong opposition to provocative attempts to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas, an apparent reference to China, which is locked in territorial disputes with other nations including the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan. | Diplomatic Visit | April 2016 | ['(G7)', '(Reuters)', '(Channel NewsAsia)'] |
UN Security Council election: The contest between Guatemala and Venezuela for a seat on the United Nations Security Council remains stalemated after a second day of voting. | Voting has ended for a second day at the United Nations. After 22 rounds, Guatemala continues to lead but is still short of a two-thirds majority.
Washington has been lobbying hard for Guatemala, describing Venezuela as too confrontational to merit a seat. The deadlock has led to calls for a compromise Latin America candidate.
'Blackmail'
In the final round for Tuesday, Guatemala won 102 votes to Venezuela's 77, similar to many previous rounds but still short of decisive. A winner needs 124 votes.
We have made our position in a very low-key way
John Bolton,US Ambassador to UN
Skirmish for UN seat of power Press mulls UN seat deadlock Voting resumes on Thursday, allowing for negotiations on a possible Latin America compromise nation.
But President Chavez said: "Venezuela doesn't give up. I say it here to the whole world, Venezuela will continue waging this battle."
He accused the US of "blackmail, pressure, threats of all sorts".
US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, denied pressuring anyone.
"We have made our position in a very low-key way. It's motivated by our concern for Venezuela's behaviour," he said.
A 1979 battle between Cuba and Colombia took three months of voting to resolve, with Mexico eventually winning as the compromise candidate.
This time, Costa Rica, Panama and Uruguay could emerge in a compromise.
With Iran, Darfur and North Korea on the agenda of the council in the coming months, a position on the Security Council gives some influence over key decisions. Five of the UN Security Council seats are held permanently by China, the US, Russia, the UK and France.
The others are held by regional blocs from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Western Europe and Eastern Europe.
Other regional seats, which are rotated every two years, went to Indonesia, South Africa, Italy and Belgium in the first round of voting. | Government Job change - Election | October 2006 | ['(BBC)'] |
A train derailment in Toukh, Qalyubiyya, Egypt, leaves at least 11 people dead and another 98 injured. | At least 11 people have been killed and 98 others injured after a train derailed in Egypt’s Qalyubia Governorate, according to an Al Arabiya correspondent.
Several victims are trapped underneath overturned carriages, according to an eyewitness. The driver, an assistand and eight others have been arrested and an investigation by the country’s public prosecution is underway, according to local media.
Egypt's cabinet said in a statement that four carriages of the train heading from Cairo to Mansoura, a Delta city, came off the tracks.Dozens of ambulances were dispatched to the site, the health ministry added, and investigators have been sent to determine the accident's cause.
President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi tasked the military's engineering authority on Sunday with investigating the latest incident, which came on the heels of a deadly train crash last month that left at least 20 people dead.
Eight of the carriages overturned near the city of Benha on Sunday, according to the governor of Qalyubia.
Egyptian daily Youm7 reported that 20 ambulances attended the scene after the 949 Cairo-Mansoura derailed.
It is the second derailment in Egypt in one week, after an incident that happened at Minya al-Qamh in which around 15 people were injured according to Youm7.
The incident comes weeks after at least 18 people were killed and many more injured when two trains collided in Egypt’s Sohag province on March 26.
Several victims are trapped underneath overturned carriages, according to an eyewitness. The driver, an assistand and eight others have been arrested and an investigation by the country’s public prosecution is underway, according to local media.
Egypt's cabinet said in a statement that four carriages of the train heading from Cairo to Mansoura, a Delta city, came off the tracks.Dozens of ambulances were dispatched to the site, the health ministry added, and investigators have been sent to determine the accident's cause.
President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi tasked the military's engineering authority on Sunday with investigating the latest incident, which came on the heels of a deadly train crash last month that left at least 20 people dead.
Eight of the carriages overturned near the city of Benha on Sunday, according to the governor of Qalyubia.
Egyptian daily Youm7 reported that 20 ambulances attended the scene after the 949 Cairo-Mansoura derailed.
It is the second derailment in Egypt in one week, after an incident that happened at Minya al-Qamh in which around 15 people were injured according to Youm7.
The incident comes weeks after at least 18 people were killed and many more injured when two trains collided in Egypt’s Sohag province on March 26. | Train collisions | April 2021 | ['(Al Arabiya English)'] |
Tibetan students protest Chinese government education policies that limit the teaching of Tibetan language. | (CNN) -- Thousands or hundreds of Tibetan students have taken to the streets in protest this week, depending on divergent accounts -- one from advocates for a free Tibet and another from the ruling Chinese government.
The students say their culture is being wiped out as China overhauls curriculum and limits the use of the Tibetan language in schools.
"The protest resulted from a new education policy which reduces Tibetan language teachings," an official identified only as Mr. Wang, speaking for the International Information Office of the Qinghai government, said Thursday.
The government said 800 students protested in western China on Tuesday. The activist group Free Tibet said 4,000 to 6,000 students protested. Independent verification is severely restricted by Chinese restrictions on media freedom.
"We want equality of culture," the students chanted in Tongren county in Huangnan Autonomous Prefecture.
"The protests were sparked by Chinese educational reforms in Rebkong, which stipulate that all subjects will be taught in Chinese and that all textbooks will be in Chinese, except for Tibetan language and English classes. These reforms have already been implemented in other areas across the Tibet Autonomous Region, including in primary schools," the group Free Tibet said. "The use of Tibetan is being systematically wiped out as part of China's strategy to cement its occupation of Tibet."
Police did not interfere with the protest, but officials warned that "ringleaders" would be expelled if the demonstration continued, the activist group said.
"The new education policy is made according to relevant national regulation," Wang said. "Huangnan Prefecture held a conference after the protest happened, and formed a working team headed by a deputy director of provincial education department. The working team went to Huangnan, explained the new education policy to the students. The students ended the demonstration shortly afterward."
"Right now, the provincial government is communicating with the local schools, and the working team is communicating with local students as well," he added. "If the suggestions of protesting students are reasonable, it's likely that the government will take their suggestions."
In a news release, the Free Tibet group quoted an unidentified former middle school teacher in Rebkong as saying: "The Chinese are enforcing reforms which remind me of the Cultural Revolution. This reform is not only a threat to our mother tongue, but is in direct violation of the Chinese constitution, which is meant to protect our rights. For Tibetans, the Chinese constitution is meaningless."
Secondary education is taught only in Mandarin and university entrance exams are in Chinese, keeping Tibetans disadvantaged and poor, Free Tibet said.
Many Tibetans want independence from China. The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, has said he does not advocate violence or a separate and independent Tibet. He has said he wants a genuine autonomy that preserves the cultural heritage of Tibet. The Chinese government accuses him of inciting Tibetan activists to violent protest.
Tibetans say China invaded their country in 1950. Beijing says the remote Tibetan plateau has historically been part of China. | Protest_Online Condemnation | October 2010 | ['(CNN)'] |
The global Cruise Lines International Association bans trips to mainland China and says that it "will deny boarding to any individual, whether guest or crew, who has travelled from or through mainland China within the previous 14 days". | Cruise lines worldwide will deny boarding to passengers and crew who have recently travelled to China, the global Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) said Monday, as fears grow over the deadly new coronavirus.
“CLIA Members have suspended crew movements from mainland China and will deny boarding to any individual, whether guest or crew, who has travelled from or through mainland China within the previous 14 days,” the body’s Hamburg office said in a statement.
CLIA represents the world’s best-known cruise lines, including TUI, AIDA, MSC and Carnival Cruises. | Government Policy Changes | February 2020 | ['(Al Arabiya English)'] |
In the Australian Football League's premiership–deciding match for season 2005, the Sydney Swans defeat the West Coast Eagles 8.10 – 7.12 to win their first AFL premiership in seventy–two years. | Sydney defied the weight of 72 years of history, logic, a better-credentialled opposition and the critics to win a historic AFL premiership today.
The Swans fought back from a 10-point deficit early in the last quarter to beat West Coast 8.10 (58) to 7.12 (54) in front of 91,898 fans at the MCG.
It will go down as one of the great AFL grand finals and the four-point margin was the tightest since the North Melbourne-Collingwood draw of 1977.
It was also the lowest winning grand final score since Carlton's 7.14 (56) in '68.
But the most important piece of history was the South Melbourne-Sydney club winning its first flag since 1933.
"Clearly, I think it just puts an exclamation mark on the Sydney Swans - we're no longer the only team that hasn't won a premiership, we're now a premiership team," said coach Paul Roos of the club that relocated north after the 1981 season.
"I don't think that can be understated how significant that is - Sydney Swans footy club, 2005 premiers - that will be there forever.
"It can only help, there's no question."
Today the Swans were the better of two teams who took turns at trying to lose.
For the Swans supporters who stuck after the club was transplanted to Sydney after the 1981 season, and those whose allegiance is to the club whose jumper has the outline of an opera house on its front, it was simply a victory for the red-and-white.
After a week which began in nervous controversy when their captain Barry Hall faced suspension, the Swans came out more composed and more determined.
Against a team boasting the Brownlow medal winner and runner-up and, arguably, the best player in the league in Chris Judd, the Swans had the edge in spirit and desperation.
The Swans somehow recovered from a 10-point deficit early in the last quarter to win 8.10 (58) to 7.12 (54), breaking the longest premiership drought in the league's history.
Sydney defender Leo Barry took a match-saving mark in the frenetic last few seconds and his teammates mobbed him when the final siren sounded.
Showing the spirit they had displayed through the finals, the Swans controlled the first half and recovered from a third-quarter lull to take the match.
West Coast midfielder Chris Judd was voted best afield.
Sydney captain Barry Hall, who escaped suspension earlier this week, was outstanding with two goals and key defender Lewis Roberts-Thomson was rock-solid.
The premiership followed comments earlier in the season from league chief executive Andrew Demetriou that Sydney had to change its style of play, amid widespread criticism of the Swans' form.
Sydney led by two points at the last change, but suffered a hiccup at three minutes into the last quarter when Luke Ablett kicked across goal.
Eagles captain Ben Cousins intercepted the pass and his goal put West Coast in front for the first time since the opening term.
Three minutes later, Adam Hunter marked on the goal line and put his side 10 points up, although the Swans protested that the kick was touched.
But Sydney rallied and a goal to Amon Buchanan at 18 minutes gave the Swans the lead by a point.
Sydney then kicked four behinds in a row to keep West Coast in the match, but Brett Kirk took a vital mark deep in defence with a couple of minutes left.
West Coast was in massive trouble late in the second term when it trailed by three goals, but Sydney kicked three successive behinds either side of halftime as it failed to break the game apart.
The Eagles could only manage two goals in the first half as the Swans set the tempo of the match and shut down West Coast's forwards.
Sydney seemed to wilt in the third term and West Coast lifted with three goals to set up the outstanding last quarter.
West Coast's Mark Nicoski kicked a goal on the run at three minutes into the match to open the scoring, but Swans ruckman Darren Jolly responded at six minutes.
West Coast midfielder Daniel Kerr, second in the Brownlow Medal count behind Cousins earlier this week, left the field early in the first term.
While he returned after quarter-time, he was well off his best.
The Eagles briefly took control when they rebounded strongly on attack and Darren Jolly ran down the wing for an outstanding goal from 50m. West Coast then could only manage four successive behinds as they failed to capitalise.
Just when Sydney looked in some trouble, Jared Crouch somehow paddled the ball forward on the wing and Adam Schneider kicked a running goal.
A few seconds before quarter-time, Hall kicked a goal from a free kick and the Swans were in front for the first time in the match.
With Roberts-Thomson superb at centre half-back and Barry keeping Michael Gardiner quiet in the goalsquare, the Sydney defence was all over the Eagles forwards.
Sydney kicked 3.3 to three behinds in the second term to put West Coast under stifling pressure, taking a 20-point lead into the main break.
West Coast small forward Phil Matera was a late withdrawal when he did not recover in time from his groin injury and he made way for Kasey Green, for only his second senior game of the season.
Some consolation for the Eagles was Chris Judd winning the Norm Smith Medal as best player on the day. | Sports Competition | September 2005 | ['(58)', '(54)', '(Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
State media reports preliminary indications incumbent President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has won 90% of the vote with a 41% turnout. | Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has been re-elected for a second four-year term, preliminary results suggest.
State media said Mr Sisi had secured a landslide victory against his sole challenger, Moussa Mustafa Moussa, winning more than 90% of the vote.
But initial estimates placed turnout among the 60 million eligible voters at about 41% - below that seen in 2014.
Opposition figures had called for a boycott after several potential candidates withdrew or were arrested.
Mr Sisi led the military's overthrow of Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, in 2013 following mass protests against his rule.
Since then, he has overseen what human rights groups say is an unprecedented crackdown on dissent that has led to the detention of tens of thousands of people.
With Mr Sisi's re-election appearing certain before voting began on Monday, many analysts said turnout would be an important measure of his legitimacy.
It was 47% at the last election in 2014, when Mr Sisi won 97% of the vote.
The state-run Al-Ahram newspaper reported on Thursday that Mr Sisi had won 92% of the 25 million ballots cast. Mr Moussa - a little-known party leader who had supported the president's re-election until his last-minute decision to enter the race - got 3%, it added.
A source told Al-Ahram that 5% of the ballots had been spoiled, including by voters inserting the names of candidates not among the two approved. In an attempt to boost turnout on the final day of voting on Wednesday, the election commission kept polling stations open for an extra hour. It also warned that people who did not vote would be fined 500 Egyptian pounds ($28; £20) - a threat rarely acted upon in previous polls.
There were also reports that some people were offered incentives of money and food to cast their ballots, or promised improved public services.
A spokeswoman for the Sisi campaign told the BBC that it was a "one million per cent democratic process". She said: "The evidence is that all the Egyptian people, including big numbers of youths and elderly, have come out to vote."
Mr Sisi hailed the participation of Egyptians in the polls on Wednesday night, saying it reflected "the greatness of the country".
"The votes of Egyptian masses will certainly remain a witness that our nation's will is strongly prevailing," a statement on his Facebook page said.
The final results are expected to be announced on Monday.
Last month, 14 human rights groups dismissed the poll as "farcical". They said the authorities had "trampled over even the minimum requirements for free and fair elections", stifling basic freedoms and eliminating key challengers.
Three potential candidates dropped out of the race, while a fourth - a former military chief - was arrested and accused of running for office without permission.
Mr Sisi insisted last week that the withdrawals were not his doing, telling an Egyptian TV channel: "I wish we had one, or two, or three, or 10 of the best people and you choose however you want." | Government Job change - Election | March 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
In a speech in Munich, Angela Merkel says that Europe must not rely on its former allies. | Angela Merkel – or “leader of the free world” as she is now to be known – did not wait long to see the back of Donald Trump before she made it clear that things have changed. She told a rally of 2,500 people in Munich where she kicked off her campaign to be re-elected that the EU must now be prepared to look after itself, that it could no longer depend on the UK or America. “The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over … I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans have to take fate into our own hands.”
This is a truly dramatic statement from a leader who doesn’t do drama. She is not going to be holding Trump’s hand any time soon. He may be relieved to hear that, but then the underestimation of Merkel as a dowdy physicist has often allowed her to run rings around egotistical male leaders.
It was said to be a coincidence that she met Barack Obama the same day as Trump. It took a while for her to establish a friendship with Obama. She apparently disliked the “atmospherics” around him when he was first elected and wanted a more “conversational” relationship. She got it.
Watching her at the G7, her statesmanship, her ease, her ability to broker deals and relationships is ever more impressive. More and more I hear people say they that they like her. Even those on the left respect her though she is a centrist. While Trump shambled around Europe with his goon display of ignorance of other languages, cultures or even basic manners, Merkel was in her element. While he was trailing behind in a golf cart as he lacked the stamina to actually walk anywhere at all, she strode out with the other leaders.
Every gif of Trump shows him vacantly bumbling away, arrogantly shoving or being batted away by Melania. Gifs of Merkel, on the other hand, are a delight: her bemused expression when she has to deal with him, that twinkle, that little shrug she gives. She is at the top of her game – a game he has no idea how to play.
Vladimir Putin knew she was afraid of dogs, so brought a labrador to meet her on 2007. She didn’t flinch, later observing: “I understand why he has to do this – to prove he’s a man … He’s afraid of his own weakness.” No wonder Emmanuel Macron pulled off that wonderful swerve last week walking straight to Trump but greeting Merkel first.
Of course not everyone likes her. The Irish, the Portuguese, the Greeks, the Spanish and the Italians have felt the force of her pushing through stark austerity measures as the price of EU membership. At one point Greek protesters portrayed her with a Hitler moustache. Her expansionary politics, whereby every other country should seek to be as wealthy as Germany, have come at a huge price to countries she sees as fiscally irresponsible. Critics in Germany say she achieved a kind of “paralysed consent”. They complain about the number of opinion polls she has commissioned and her methodical, scientific way of dealing with politics.
Yet this, in reality, is why Mutti is considered so good at crisis management. Theatrics don’t interest her but there is a vision, a morality, a core to her that meant she could push through a policy of taking in refugees that required real guts.
Asked if she was a feminist while sitting next to Ivanka Trump, Ivanka immediately raised her hand to say she was, and Merkel, who has done so much for women, hesitated and then said: “If you think that I am one, go and vote on it.” Friends say that she always considered herself emancipated by her studies and growing up in East Germany, where it was normal for women to work. Her husband, professor of theoretical chemistry Joachim Sauer, needs no security. They lead an unshowy life. The pictures of Merkel nipping out for chips, ecstatic at the football, drinking beer, are not set up. It’s what she does, though she no longer smokes or bites her nails to the quick in the way she did when she was younger. This all added to the geekiness that helped her to rise up through the party.
And look where she is now, unlike our prime minister, able to oppose Trump directly and to say his America is not a friend of Europe.
What an extraordinary woman. There are no problems, she says, only “tasks” to be solved, as she sits rapidly texting in meetings. Refusing to see herself as a female leader, she prefers to think of herself as part of a class of political heavyweights. Increasingly she is in a class of her own and watching her, one thought comes to mind: this is what strong and stable actually looks like. | Famous Person - Give a speech | May 2017 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
A shooting at the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, leaves one person, a Jordanian, dead, and an Israeli and a Jordanian wounded. There is speculation the attack may be linked to recent events at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque. Another Jordanian man was killed inadvertently. | An Israeli guard has shot dead a Jordanian who attacked him with a screwdriver next to the Israeli embassy in Jordan, Israeli officials say.
A second Jordanian was inadvertently killed in the gunfire, Israel says. The guard was reportedly wounded.
The attacker was a carpenter working in a residential building used by the embassy, an Israeli statement said.
It is one of the most serious incidents between the two countries since they signed a peace treaty in 1994.
The second Jordanian, who died from his wounds in hospital, was identified as the building's landlord.
Jordanian police have sealed off the area around the heavily protected embassy in the Rabiyeh neighbourhood, an affluent part of the capital city. According to the Vienna Convention of 1961 the security man has immunity from investigation and arrest, the Israeli foreign ministry said.
The incident came at a time of heightened tension in the region over a Jerusalem holy site.
On Friday, thousands of Jordanians protested in Amman against Israel over the installation of metal detectors outside a site sacred to both Muslims and Jews in East Jerusalem.
Jordan, which occupied East Jerusalem from 1949 to 1967, is the custodian of the site, which is known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif and Jews as the Temple Mount.
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians over the site have surged in recent days in response to the metal detectors, which were put in place following the killing nearby of two Israeli policemen. | Armed Conflict | July 2017 | ['(The Atlantic)', '(Reuters)', '(BBC)'] |
North Korean state media says the country has successfully tested a new type of submarine-launched ballistic missile off the coast of Wonsan. | Just days before planned talks with the US, Pyongyang said it had successfully tested a new missile. North Korea's neighbors criticized the launch.
North Korea said on Thursday it had carried out a successful test of a new type of submarine-launched ballistic missile, state media reported.
"The new-type ballistic missile was fired in vertical mode," on Wednesday in the waters off Wonsan Bay, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
KCNA identified the tested ballistic missile as a Pukguksong-3 and said it was fired in "vertical mode" from the waters off Wonsan Bay in the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan.
KCNA released a photo of what appeared to be a missile launched from a submarine.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent "warm congratulations" to the research units involved in the launch, adding that it had "no adverse impact on the security of neighboring countries," KCNA reported.
Timed before talks
The test comes just days before Washington and Pyongyang are scheduled to resume denuclearization talks, which had been stalled for months.
Japan confirmed that a ballistic missile had fallen in its territorial waters and condemned the launch.
"The launch of ballistic missiles violates UN Security Council resolutions. We sternly lodge a protest over the launch and strongly condemn it," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters.
"We will do the utmost to protect the safety of the people and stay on high alert while coordinating with the United States and the international community," he added.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC) said it had detected a ballistic missile fired in an easterly direction from the sea.
The JSC said Pyongyang’s missile launches were "not helpful to efforts to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and we urge North Korea again to stop immediately." | Military Exercise | October 2019 | ['(SLBM)', '(Deutche Welle)', '(Reuters)'] |
Ecuador issues a volcano alert for Tungurahua covering nearby Tungurahua and Chimborazo provinces. | ECUADOR has issued an orange alert -- the second-highest warning level -- for towns near the Tungurahua volcano.
ECUADOR has issued an orange alert -- the second-highest warning level -- for towns near the Tungurahua volcano, as its level of activity rose, civil defence officials say.
The area of the warning covers the adjacent provinces of Tungurahua and Chimborazo, according to the national civil defence agency.
Greater activity has been building since Wednesday, along with a slight increase in gas emissions from the 5,029-metre volcano, located about 135km south of the capital Quito, the Geophysical Institute said.
Eruptions at Tungurahua, which means "Throat of Fire" in the indigenous Quechua language, peaked in 2006, killing six people in a Chimborazo village.
Several communities near Tungurahua, including the tourist town of Banos with 15,000 people, also were forced to evacuate during the volcano's violent eruption in 1999. Residents could only return to their homes a year later.
Originally published asEcuador declares volcano alert
| Volcano Eruption | December 2012 | ['(AAP via News Limited)'] |
At least 11 crew members are killed after two ships caught fire, as one vessel was transferring fuel to the other, in the Kerch Strait near Crimea. | Two ships in the Kerch Strait near Crimea caught fire on Monday when an explosion occurred, forcing crew members to jump into the sea, officials say. At least 11 people were killed.
The explosion happened on late Monday afternoon when a vessel transporting liquefied natural gas was transferring cargo to another ship south of Crimea, according to Interfax.
A total of 31 crew members were on board the Tanzania-flagged vessels, including citizens from India and Turkey. Some of them were forced to jump into the sea to escape the flames.
Eleven bodies were recovered by 9:30 p.m. and 8 others remain unaccounted for. Interfax said 12 crew members were rescued, some of whom were suffering from burns and hypothermia.
The cause of Monday’s explosion was not immediately known.
| Shipwreck | January 2019 | ['(BNO)', '(BBC)'] |
Jewish settlers in the West Bank set fire to the Muslim Al–Anbiaa mosque in Beit Fajjar area near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. Its rug ground and some parts of the Qur'an are burnt and anti–Islamic and anti–Palestinian slogans are written. | Israel is investigating Palestinian suspicions that a mosque in the West Bank was set alight by Jewish settlers.
Arsonists reportedly scrawled Hebrew graffiti on the walls of the mosque in Beit Fajjar, near Bethlehem. The mayor of a nearby settlement condemned the attack and said those carrying it out must have been "extremists".
The assault comes as Palestinian-Israeli peace talks have faltered over the issue of settlements.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967, housing nearly 500,000 Jews in more than 100 settlements. Some 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank.
Jewish settlements are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. Residents of Beit Fajjar said a group of settlers went into the mosque overnight and set fire to carpets and copies of the Koran. Reports say the word "revenge" was scrawled on the wall in Hebrew. A spokesman for the Israeli military said it was taking the burning of the mosque very seriously. "We are doing the utmost in order to reach those law-breakers," army spokeswoman Avital Leibowitz told reporters in Tel Aviv.
Meanwhile Shaul Goldstein, the mayor of Gush Etzion, a local settlement, told the BBC he condemned the attack. While extremists were present in every society, he said, "they do not represent the entire society. The settlers are against it." Previous Israeli investigations of mosque attacks have failed to produce results.
In April, a mosque was vandalised with Hebrew graffiti, cars were burnt and olive trees uprooted in the village of Hawara, near the Yitzhar settlement.
And in May, a mosque in the Palestinian village of Lubban al-Sharqiya, near Nablus, was gutted in a fire which also destroyed holy books.
No charges were brought against anyone in either case.
Mohammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, came to inspect the damage and talk to the locals.
"The settlers' message is: terrorise the Palestinian people," he told Reuters news agency.
"Crimes like these do not terrorise the Palestinian people. On the contrary, such attacks will only embolden the Palestinian people and increase our determination to achieve all of our rights," he reportedly said after delivering a brief sermon.
Some hard-line settlers advocate a "price tag" policy under which they attack Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements. The Palestinian leadership has said it will not continue peace talks with Israel unless a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank resumes, after building started again last week.
Israel refused to extend a 10-month partial ban on settlement building in the West Bank which expired last Sunday. Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians resumed in September after a break of nearly two years. | Riot | October 2010 | ['(Xinhua)', '(Al Jazeera)', '(BBC)'] |
Prithviraj Chavan is appointed Chief Minister of Maharashtra in India to replace Ashok Chavan who resigned in a corruption scandal. | India's Congress party has appointed a new chief minister in Maharashtra state, a day after his predecessor quit amid corruption allegations.
Ashok Chavan resigned amid claims that homes meant for war widows and veterans in an upmarket area of Mumbai (Bombay) went to relatives and officials.
He denies wrongdoing. His replacement Prithviraj Chavan, no relation, is a former federal junior science minister.
Commonwealth Games organiser Suresh Kalmadi also quit his party post.
His resignation, on the same day as Ashok Chavan, is being viewed as an attempt by the governing Congress party to send out a message that it is tough on corruption, as the winter session of the parliament begins.
The much-maligned Mr Kalmadi has been under investigation over the sleaze claims that dogged October's Commonwealth Games. He also denies wrongdoing.
The event's organising committee issued full-page advertisements in newspapers on Tuesday outlining its expenditure in an effort to counter what it called "inaccurate" media reports.
The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the resignations amount simply to a cosmetic "eyewash" by the ruling party.
"They prove that members of the Congress party were involved in corruption in the Commonwealth Games and had denied property rights to war widows in the Adarsh Society scandal," said BJP president Nitin Gadkari.
Mr Chavan has worked closely with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a minister in his office and is seen as a relative newcomer to Maharashtra politics.
He has an engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a member of India's upper house of parliament.
Ashok Chavan was forced to resigned on Tuesday by the Congress party.
Reports say he had offered to resign late last month, but the party leadership asked him to stay on for US President Barack Obama's visit to the city last week.
He denies involvement in a corruption scandal involving plush apartments in the upmarket Colaba district of southern Mumbai.
The homes - two- and four-bedroom apartments costing up to $1.5m - were supposedly reserved for veterans and widows of a brief conflict with Pakistan in 1999 in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Family members, bureaucrats and army officers were allegedly among those who obtained properties at the 31-storey Adarsh Housing Society block for a knock-down price.
It was a sudden fall from grace for Ashok Chavan, who just days ago was shaking President Obama's hand to welcome him to India. The western state of Maharashtra is one of India's most affluent.
It contributes more than 40% of national revenue and its capital, Mumbai, is India's financial centre and home to Bollywood, one of the world's largest film industries.
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | November 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
Bradley Manning is finally charged with leaking the Collateral Murder video to Wikileaks, along with other documents, after spending more than a month detained in Kuwait without charge. | An American soldier suspected of leaking video footage of a US Apache helicopter strike which killed civilians in Baghdad has been charged, the US military said.
The video of the July 2007 attack, in which two employees of the Reuters news agency were killed, made headlines around the world after it was posted on the Wikileaks website.
A US Army statement says Private First Class Bradley Manning, held in a military jail in Kuwait since last month, faces two charges of misconduct.
Wikileaks released a decrypted copy of the military video in April.
It shows several people, including the Reuters employees, being killed by fire from the helicopter gunship.
The statement said the first charge against Manning, 22, is for violating army regulations by "transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorised software to a classified computer system".
He is accused in a second charge of "communicating, transmitting and delivering national defence information to an unauthorised source".
WikiLeaks at the time said it obtained the video "from a number of military whistleblowers" and decrypted it.
The gun camera footage included audio conversations between Apache pilots and controllers in which they identified the men on a Baghdad street as armed insurgents and asked for permission to open fire.
Two of the men were later identified as Reuters employees Nameer Nuraddin Hussein, a 22-year-old photographer, and Saeed Chmagh, 44, a driver.
Their families, who said they have until now received no compensation for the incident, have demanded that the Americans responsible should stand trial.
After the leaked and graphic footage was released the White House described the incident as "tragic", insisting that US forces in war zones take pains to avoid civilian casualties.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2010 | ['(ABC)', '(AP)'] |
2007 Pacific typhoon season: The death toll from Typhoon Nari in South Korea rises to nine. | SEOUL (AFP) — The death toll rose to nine Monday after a powerful typhoon lashed the country's south, flooding hundreds of homes, roads and farmland, anti-disaster officials said Monday.
The National Emergency Management Agency also reported five missing after the torrential rain and gusts Typhoon Nari brought on Sunday. Some 740 people were left homeless in flooding.
The agency said the storm weakened overnight but the death toll could rise further as officials were still collecting damage reports from the affected areas.
The typhoon washed away roads, inundated farmland and temporarily cut power supplies on the resort island of Jeju and elsewhere.
It also grounded 280 flights and stranded 15,000 passengers on the island, according to airport officials. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | September 2007 | ['(AFP)'] |
Hurricane Beta, the first hurricane named with the Greek letter Beta, approaches Nicaragua and Honduras as a Category 3 storm, , and makes landfall on the Mosquito Coast at Category 2 intensity. Thousands of residents of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua have been evacuated to shelters. , | Beta made landfall as a Category Two hurricane, with winds of 175km/h (110mph) at 1100 GMT, ripping off roofs and uprooting trees. Flood and landslide warnings remained in place as the storm headed west, expecting to dump up to 38cm (15in) of rain in Nicaragua and Honduras.
Beta is the 13th hurricane of the Atlantic season - a record.
"These rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides," the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.
Urgent evacuation
Beta was initially forecast to hit the city of Puerto Cabezas on Nicaragua's north-eastern coast but changed direction.
They brought us here without telling us anything. We don't have food or water
Norma SmithPuerto Cabezas resident
It made landfall about 100km (62 miles) further south, damaging houses and uprooting trees in the villages of Sandy Bay and Karawala. No casualties have been reported.
Beta was expected to continue to lose strength as it moved inland on Sunday, US forecasters said.
An evacuation order had been in place in Puerto Cabezas, which has a population of 60,000, as authorities were expecting a direct hit from Beta.
Among the residents was Norma Smith, a mother of six, who had sought shelter in a school with about 200 other people.
"We had a very bad night. The water leaked in, the children were cold. They brought us here without telling us anything. We don't have food or water," she told the Reuters news agency.
Hurricane record
Earlier, Beta damaged low-lying wooden homes on the Colombian island of Providencia in the Caribbean, while residents took refuge in brick shelters built on high ground.
All the islanders were believed to be safe but many homes had been damaged, Capt German Collazos, chief of ports, told Associated Press.
This hurricane season has seen 23 named storms, more than at any point since record-keeping began in 1851. The previous record of 21 was set in 1933.
Last week Tropical Storm Alpha formed - the first time a letter from the Greek alphabet has been used because the list of storm names has been exhausted.
Alpha, which struck earlier this week, killed 26 people in the Caribbean and caused flooding and mudslides in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. It has now subsided.
| Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | October 2005 | ['(BBC)', '(VOA)', '(Scotsman)'] |
In Zambia, authorities arrest Michael Sata, leader of Patriotic Front, for sedition for inciting miners to riot | Lusaka — PRESIDENT Levy Mwanawasa yesterday disclosed that he instructed police to arrest Patriotic Front leader Michael Sata and vowed to stop violence with a strong hand.
Addressing Zambian diplomats at State House yesterday, President Mwanawasa said the culture of violence must be stopped and stopped with a strong hand, stressing that freedom of speech does not entail engaging in sabotage and espionage.
"I indicated when closing the MMD convention that you will see... that watch me in the few days. What has happened to Honourable Sata, he is not even honourable... to Mr Sata is part of a manifestation of what I said," he said.
President Mwanawasa said some opposition members wanted to make the country ungovernable and that Sata even issued a statement that he had instigated miners to riot and challenged him (Mwanawasa) to arrest him for inciting the miners.
"Yes, I have given instructions to have him arrested and prosecuted. He is in cells right now," said President Mwanawasa, amid applause from the diplomats. "You see we have a government to run and everyone has a moral duty to see to it that the country is removed from the pangs of poverty. Maybe it pleases some of our compatriots to see so much hopelessness and despair especially among our children."
President Mwanawasa said he would not allow lawlessness to prevail in the country including desperate attempts to divert people's attention to the progress of the nation as witnessed by striking miners on the Copperbelt.
"Those who want to bring back Cha Cha Cha have no place in this country. At least not in the safe streets of this country," he said. "And this man (Sata) who wants to be president, how would he feel if the opposition, as it would be them fighting against him?
"Freedom of speech does not mean you should engage in sabotage and espionage because suppose those bombs Sata incited the miners to plant... suppose lives were lost? Suppose the mine was incapacitated, was he going to employ them?"
President Mwanawasa told the diplomats to explain abroad that good governance issues were well attended to in Zambia but that some people were taking advantage of clarity of good governance under his administration.
He said his administration had in the last three years made a lot of strides and that the people of Zambia could now see all light around them.
"There has been negative reporting in the press and some of the compatriots who travel outside," he said.
President Mwanawasa said it was unfortunate that a picture painted abroad was that everything had broken down and that the economy was down beyond redemption.
"That the leadership in government is all corrupt," he said. "That's unfair. We are in charge and running affairs of the country in a manner that is second to none."
President Mwanawasa said at the last MMD convention he was elected convincingly as he beat his challenger Enoch Kavindele by over 1,200 votes to 68.
"If we had not been performing, my performance at the convention would not have been impressive," he said.
Closing the 5th MMD national convention in Kabwe, President Mwanawasa said "watch me in the next few days and you will see my recommitment to the fight against corruption".
President Mwanawasa regretted that while government was busy enticing foreign investors, some Zambians were also busy chasing away such investors by their riotous behaviour.
"Honesty is doing things as if everybody is watching me," said President Mwanawasa.
On Thursday, Sata claimed that he had incited the miners on the Copperbelt to riot.
Sata cautioned that the recent strike by miners at Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) was just the beginning of worse things to come.
Sata dared President Mwanawasa to arrest him for inciting the miners to riot.
In reaction, mines minister Kaunda described Sata as a terrorist who should not continue in the modern political dispensation. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | July 2005 | ['(AllAfrica)', '(Reuters SA)'] |
A federal indictment of a former official of Life for Relief and Development claims that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Intelligence Service paid for a U.S. congressional delegation's trip to the country during the buildup to the war. A spokesman for the Department of Justice said the congressmen on the State Department-approved trip were not aware of this, and that "one of the congressional representatives are accused of any wrongdoing." | WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency footed the bill for a U.S. congressional delegation's trip during a buildup to the Iraq war, according to a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday in the case of an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen charged with spying for the Iraqi government.
Muthanna al-Hanooti, a former official with an Islamic charity in Detroit, Michigan, was taken into custody Tuesday night. Hussein's spy agency secretly paid al-Hanooti 2 million barrels of oil, during the time the U.N. Oil for Food program was in place, for services rendered, the indictment states.
Those services included providing the Iraqi government with the names of U.S. members of Congress believed to favor the lifting of sanctions against Iraq, arranging for delegations of those members to visit Iraq and traveling with those delegations, the indictment states.
Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said no member of Congress was aware of al-Hanooti's alleged activities. "None of the congressional representatives are accused of any wrongdoing, and we have no information whatsoever that any of them were aware of the involvement of the Iraqi Intelligence Service," he said. According to the indictment, the Iraqi Intelligence Service paid $34,000 through an intermediary to Life for Relief and Development, the charity that employed al-Hanooti, to pay the delegation's travel expenses.
In September 2002, al-Hanooti traveled to Iraq with three members of Congress whom he believed to be sympathetic to lifting the economic sanctions against Iraq. The U.S. led an invasion into Iraq, starting the war, in March 2003.
The indictment did not name the lawmakers, but Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California made a trip to Iraq at that time.
McDermott spokesman Mike DeCesare said the congressman knew nothing about al-Hanooti. McDermott was asked to make the trip to discuss children's health issues because he is a physician, DeCesare said. Thompson said in a written statement that he made the trip "to learn as much as I could before voting on whether or not to commit U.S. troops to war." "The trip was approved by the U.S. State Department," he said. "The organization sponsoring the trip was licensed by the Office of Foreign Assets of the Department of Treasury and the United Nations. Obviously, had there been any question at all regarding the sponsor of the trip or the funding, I would not have participated." In his statement, Thompson did not say his trip was connected with the charity. News reports at the time, including CNN's, said McDermott, Thompson and Bonior traveled to Iraq together, however.
The three came under strong criticism from the Bush administration for arguing the White House was "laying the pretext or the path for war" before U.N. weapons inspectors had begun their work.
Members of Congress are required to file disclosures for any trips they take that are paid for by the government or by private organizations.
McDermott filed a disclosure reporting a trip he took from September 25 to October 1, 2002, paid for by the charity named in the indictment. The disclosure said the trip included stops in Baghdad and Basra in Iraq and in Amman, Jordan, and that its purpose was "fact-finding."
The cost of McDermott's portion of the trip, according to the records, was $5,510: $5,040 for travel; $320 for lodging; $100 for meals; $50 for "other."
Neither Bonior nor Thompson are mentioned in McDermott's filing.
Al-Hanooti appeared in court in Detroit Wednesday. He was charged with one count of being an unregistered agent for Hussein's government, one count of violating economic sanctions on Iraq and three counts of lying to U.S. investigators.
He was released on $100,000 bond and his passport was confiscated. E-mail to a friend All About Iraq War | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | March 2008 | ['[n]', '(CNN)'] |
Around 20,000 Palestinians protest near the Israel–Gaza barrier. Medical sources say that Israel Defense Forces killed two people and wounded at least 270 others, 50 of them with live bullets. | GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli troops killed two Palestinians and wounded scores of others taking part in weekly Gaza border protests on Friday, medics said, as Egyptian mediators tried to clinch a truce deal that would calm the impoverished enclave.
In Jerusalem’s Old City, another area that Palestinians want for a future state, Israeli police said they shot dead an Arab who attacked them with a knife after leaving a mosque complex.
After a more than four-month surge in confrontations over the Gaza Strip border, Israel this week eased its clampdown on the enclave’s commercial traffic and fishing. Cairo said it was finalizing details of a longer-term accommodation between Israel and the dominant Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
Some 20,000 people participated in Friday’s protests, which took place a few hundred meters from the fence, though dozens came closer, with some rolling burning tires, witnesses said.
Medics said Israeli gunfire killed two men and wounded at least 270 other Palestinians, 50 of them with live bullets.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops had responded with “riot-dispersal means” to prevent breaches of the border.
Friday’s deaths brought to 170 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since the weekly protests began on March 30. The campaign is pressing for rights to land that Palestinians lost to Israel in the 1948 war of its foundation, and for an end to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza.
Anger in Gaza has also been stoked by funding cuts by the Western-backed administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which dominates the West Bank and is the rival of Hamas, which runs Gaza. Their efforts at agreeing on a power-sharing unity deal with Egyptian mediation have not borne fruit.
Cairo had no immediate comment on Friday’s incidents.
Hamas official Izzat Reshiq said the group, and other Palestinian factions, concluded a round of talks with Egyptian security officials over a possible truce with Israel and that further talks were scheduled for later this month.
“Efforts will resume after the holiday of Eid Al-Adha,” Reshiq said on Twitter, referring to a Muslim festival that begins on Aug. 21 and ends on Aug. 24.
Israel sees the Gaza protests as a bid by Hamas, against which it has fought three wars in the last decade, to use civilians as cover for cross-border attacks. Hamas denies this.
Separately, Israeli police said they were attacked on Friday by a knife-wielding man after he emerged from a complex housing Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine, in East Jerusalem.
The man was shot dead, police said, describing him as a resident of an Israeli Arab town where pro-Palestinian sympathies are strong. CCTV video from the scene showed a man lunging at a police trooper with a knife, but not what followed.
Palestinians said that, after the incident, Israeli authorities barred Muslim worshippers from Al Aqsa mosque.
“This is a grave escalation that may lead to unpredictable consequences,” Abbas said in a statement carried by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa. | Riot | August 2018 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Indian police fire water cannons to disperse hundreds of protesters, angry over the gang–rape and hanging of two teenage girls in Uttar Pradesh, demonstrating outside the office of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. | Indian police have fired water cannons to disperse hundreds of protesters in Uttar Pradesh state where two teenage cousins were gang-raped and hanged.
The protesters, many of them women, were demonstrating outside the office of state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.
Police have detained five people, including two policemen, in connection with the attacks. Meanwhile, reports say another woman has been found dead after being gang-raped elsewhere in the state. The body of the woman, thought to be 22, was discovered on Saturday in the Baheri area, the Press Trust of India reported quoting police sources. A post mortem revealed she had been forced to drink acid before she was strangled. The two teenage girls were found hanged from a tree in Badaun district last week. The victims' families say it took police more than 12 hours to respond to reports they were missing.
A federal police investigation has been ordered amid growing anger over the killings.
Police in the city of Lucknow used force and water cannons to keep back hundreds of protesters demanding that Mr Yadav put an end to violence against women in the state.
Mr Yadav's government has come under criticism for its lax approach towards women's safety, "We're not going to sleep, we'll be here, they have to stop this [violence against women]," one protester told the NDTV news channel.
"We're going to stay here, we're not going to give up," one man said before the crowd was drenched by the police.
Three suspected attackers have been held, along with two policemen accused of dereliction of duty and criminal conspiracy.
Indian media have quoted the local police as saying that two of the attackers have "confessed to their crime during interrogation", but this could not be independently confirmed.
The girls, thought to have been 14 and 15, went missing last Tuesday night. They had apparently gone out to relieve themselves as they had no toilet at home.
Their bodies were discovered the following day. A post-mortem examination confirmed multiple sexual assaults and death due to hanging.
Scrutiny of sexual violence in India has grown since the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus.
The government tightened laws on sexual violence last year after widespread protests following the attack.
Fast-track courts were brought to the fore to deal with rape and the death penalty was also brought in for the most extreme cases.
Some women's groups argue that the low conviction rate for rape should be challenged with more effective policing rather than stiffer sentences.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | June 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
The United States announces that it will provide $60 million of food and medical aid, but not weapons, to rebel fighters. | ROME — The Obama administration will provide food and medicine to Syrian rebel fighters, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Thursday, announcing a cautious U.S. foray into front-line battlefield support that falls far short of the heavy weapons or high-tech gear the rebels seek.
“The stakes are really high, and we can’t risk letting this country — in the heart of the Middle East — be destroyed by vicious autocrats or hijacked by the extremists,” Kerry said following discussions among a group of Western and Arab nations that are funding, and in some cases arming, the fighters.
The United States will, for the first time, send supplies through the rebels’ central military headquarters, with U.S. advisers supervising the distribution of food rations and medical supplies, U.S. officials said. The shift is intended to give the U.S.-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition greater say over the aid, but it is also a test of the rebels’ ability to keep donated supplies out of the hands of extremists in their midst. Washington also will send an additional $60 million to help the umbrella Syrian Opposition Coalition provide basic services such as sanitation and education in areas the rebels now control, Kerry said. That is on top of about $50 million spent on indirect help for the opposition. The goal of the new money is to counter the increasingly effective network of services provided by militants.
Kerry called President Obama’s decision to expand U.S. support “a significant stepping-up of the policy.”
Britain and other nations working in concert with the United States are expected to go further to help the rebel Free Syrian Army by providing battlefield equipment such as armored vehicles, night-vision devices or body armor. The Obama administration is weighing similar assistance, but Kerry announced only the first, small steps.
The United States is one of about a dozen nations prepared to provide broader financial and practical support for the rebels fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Kerry and other diplomats framed the new help during meetings with Syrian political opposition leaders Thursday in Rome.
Standing alongside Kerry in a joint appearance before reporters, the leader of the Syrian Opposition Coalition had no words of thanks for an offer that still represents a hedge of the U.S. bet on the group it helped to form last year. Coalition chairman Mouaz al-Khatib angrily appealed for a humanitarian corridor to the besieged city of Homs and said the rebels are tired of Western complaints about extremists in their ranks. He argued that the real enemy is the Assad regime but said too many outsiders are worried only about “the length of a beard of a fighter.” “No terrorists in the world have such a savage nature as those in the regime,” Khatib said in Arabic. The Syrian opposition leader’s finger-jabbing anger was in marked contrast to Kerry’s clipped and measured tone. Kerry looked at Khatib without expression as the Syrian spoke. Kerry said Assad is “out of time and must be out of power.” But U.S. officials acknowledged that Assad has shown little sign that he is ready to bargain with the rebels.
The rebels have captured significant territory and large caches of military weapons, but the two-year war that has killed about 70,000 people remains mostly a stalemate.
Kerry said he is confident that, combined with other nations’ new offers, the U.S. assistance will make a difference.
“The totality of this effort is going to have an impact on the ability of the Syrian opposition to accomplish its goals,” Kerry said. He promised to take other rebel requests to Washington for further discussion.
The Obama administration and its leading European allies, including Britain and France, have sought to coordinate their assistance to the rebels, and Kerry will now head to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to try to ensure that all countries providing aid are working from the same game plan. The Saudis have taken the lead in sending weapons to opposition fighters. Like the rebels themselves, Saudi Arabia would prefer that the United States move toward a military intervention. Although U.S. officials indicated additional aid would be forthcoming, the administration is still opposed to sending weapons or using its aircraft to stop Assad’s air bombardments. Discussions are ongoing in Washington to determine how much further the administration is willing to go, including expansion of a minimal military training program. In a tweet following the Rome meeting, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain will “be announcing new assistance.” Britain and France have been awaiting an easing of a European Union arms embargo on Syria that will go into effect Friday. The new terms allow individual E.U. members to provide “non-lethal and technical assistance to protect Syrian civilians.” Each member country is left to decide what form its aid will take. British and French officials have indicated that their support of the rebel forces might also include training, coordinated with allies and conducted outside Syria. Another opposition figure, Adib Shishakly, who is in charge of coordinating humanitarian assistance for the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, cautiously welcomed the U.S. announcement.
“We expected more, but hopefully this is a positive start,” he said, speaking from the coalition’s headquarters in Cairo. However, he added, the opposition is “absolutely disappointed” that the United States is not offering military assistance to the Free Syrian Army at a time when the Syrian government is escalating its use of force to include ballistic missiles as well as airstrikes.
“They’re not doing anything about the Scuds,” Shishakly said, referring to the Syrian military’s increasing use of Russian-designed missiles. “And if they are not going to do anything about it, at least give us the tools to protect ourselves.” Rebels and analysts said the real significance of the aid is that a portion will go directly to the Free Syrian Army’s military councils, opening a formal channel between the U.S. government and the rebels for the first time.
The councils were formed at the prodding of U.S. officials last year in an effort to make the ad hoc rebel army more effective by giving it a more coherent structure. But the councils have had limited success in coordinating the hundreds of rebel groups that have emerged to join the fight, among them some of the increasingly powerful Islamist groups that have chosen not to join the councils. A spokesman for the Damascus Military Council who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Qatada said he was deeply disappointed that the assistance package did not include arms.
“We thank the American government for the aid,” he said in an interview over Skype. “However, we would like to point out that we do not need food at the moment. We would rather have weapons to defend ourselves and our children.”
If the assistance is intended to increase U.S. influence over the chaotic events unfolding on the battlefield, “it will need a lot more than this,” said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. “The trajectory of the conflict is much more dangerous than that, and these kind of Band-Aids are not going to have a major impact on the ground.”
DeYoung reported from Washington. Liz Sly and Ahmed Ramadan in Beirut and Anthony Faiola in London contributed to this report.
| Financial Aid | February 2013 | ['(BBC)', '(The Washington Post)'] |
Typhoon Nock-ten strikes the Philippines. | A typhoon packing gusts of wind up to 255km/h (158mph) has made landfall in the eastern Philippines.
Nock-Ten hit the coast near Catanduanes island at 18:30 local time (10:30GMT) but there are no reports yet of damage or casualties.
However, some 100,000 people have been moved from areas at risk in the Bicol region amid fears of widespread flooding and possible landslides.
Dozens of ports have closed, with warnings of two-metre (6.6ft) waves.
In October, Super Typhoon Haima hit the country, killing at least four people.
The landfall of Nock-Ten, also known as Nina and the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year, was reported on the Twitter account of Pagasa-Dost, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration.
It issued a local thunderstorm warning and has forecast the typhoon will travel west at 15km/h.
Its sustained winds are currently about 185km/h.
It will pass across the southern area of the main island of Luzon, possibly weakening as it travels close to the capital, Manila, before heading into the South China Sea.
In Manila, officials ordered big roadside advertising boards to be taken down, fearing that strong winds could uproot them and injure people.
There have been fears Filipinos would ignore evacuation warnings to stay at home with family at Christmas, the biggest holiday in the largely Catholic nation.
The strength of the typhoon is equivalent to a Category Three hurricane in the Atlantic, according to the JTWC data, or a Category Two storm based on the information from the Philippines' weather office.
In 2013, super typhoon Haiyan claimed more than 7,350 lives.
Evacuations in Philippines as typhoon strikes
Deadly super typhoon batters Philippines | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | December 2016 | ['(Nina)', '(BBC)'] |
An attack on a Yemeni military checkpoint by suspected alQaeda militants in Shabwah Governorate, Yemen, leaves 14 people dead. | Fourteen people have been killed in an attack by suspected al-Qaeda militants in southern Yemen, officials say.
The militants reportedly opened fire with machine-guns at an army checkpoint in Bayhan, in Shabwa province, at dawn.
The interior ministry says eight troops and six tribesmen died. Initial reports said a civilian was among those killed.
Meanwhile, the army said 40 soldiers and 500 militants had been killed since an offensive against al-Qaeda and its allies in the south began in April.
The army regained control of several major towns in Shabwa and Abyan provinces during a similar campaign in 2012, but the militants were able to retreat to remote rural areas and regroup.
Since the new campaign began on 29 April, following a series of deadly drone strikes on their strongholds, the militants have fled to desert and mountain areas and stepped up their attacks on security personnel.
"I want to stress that the military operations will also include the areas where some militants have fled and where sabotage is taking place, which is the other face of terrorism," army spokesman Col Saeed al-Faquih told a news conference on Thursday.
He also noted that preparations were taking place in neighbouring Maarib province for a major assault on militant strongholds there.
President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi said in April that Yemen was at war with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the local offshoot of the global jihadist network.
AQAP and its allies have hindered the government's attempt to restore stability to the country since pro-democracy protesters forced long-time President Ali Abdullah Saleh to hand over power in 2011. | Armed Conflict | June 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
A third day of clashes take place in Gabon's second largest city, Port–Gentil, over the disputed presidential election. | LIBREVILLE, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Security forces clashed with gangs of protesters in Gabon's oil hub Port Gentil overnight in a third day of unrest since a disputed presidential election brought the son of the late leader to power, a resident said.
Port Gentil has seen the brunt of violence since Ali Ben Bongo, son of long-time ruler Omar Bongo, was declared winner of last Sunday's poll, with widespread looting and attacks targeting the interests of ex-colonial power France.
"During the night it was groups of five to six people. Security forces would disperse them and they would melt away," Guyroger Regoula told Reuters by telephone of sporadic clashes.
Shops were stripped of food and other provisions during the violence after the election result was announced on Thursday, Port Gentil resident Joel Adande said.
"What are they going to loot? They have looted everything already," he told Reuters by telephone.
Ben Bongo has appealed for an end to the unrest.
The capital Libreville has been relatively quiet but authorities were caught off guard in Port Gentil, where the French consulate and a sports and social club owned by French oil giant Total
were torched.
The city remained under curfew on Sunday. French paratroopers were guarding the consulate and Total has evacuated its expatriate staff and families to Libreville.
France maintained strong ties with Omar Bongo and is perceived by some Gabonese opposition supporters to have helped his son rig the election, something both Ben Bongo and Paris have denied.
"We are a country based on the rule of law and there are institutions which are there (to appeal the result)," Ben Bongo told French radio RFI.
"It is imperative that calm returns across the territory."
Leading opposition figures have said they will mount a legal challenge to the victory of Ben Bongo, who won 41.7 percent of the vote, according to the official tally. His two closest rivals won just over 25 percent each.
Omar Bongo ruled the Central African oil exporter for 41 years until his death in June. (Reporting by Linel Kwatsi; writing by Mark John; editing by Janet Lawrence)
| Riot | September 2009 | ['(Reuters)', '(AFP)'] |
For the second consecutive day, hundreds of thousands of Togolese protest against President Faure Gnassingbé's 50-year family dynasty. Parliament is set to consider presidential term limits when it reconvenes in October. | LOME (Reuters) - Togo security forces fired tear gas at hundreds of anti-government protesters carrying out a late night sit-in at an intersection in central Lome as part of a bid to end the 50-year-old Gnassingbe family dynasty, witnesses said on Thursday.
The move to disperse the crowds comes after two days of mass country-wide protests involving tens of thousands of people that have amounted to the biggest challenge to Faure Gnassingbe’s rule since he succeeded his late father 12 years ago.
In the past, security forces have violently suppressed protests, killing at least two people during an opposition march in August and hundreds after the contested election in which Gnassingbe took power in 2005.
But up until late on Thursday, police officers armed with batons had watched passively at protesters wearing the red, pink and orange T-shirts of the opposition, who danced and blew whistles as they wound through the streets of the capital Lome.
It was not immediately clear how the opposition would respond to the security forces’ intervention with tear gas late on Thursday. The head of the main ANC opposition party, Jean-Pierre Fabre, had earlier pledged to remain seated on the tarmac of the Dekon crossroads until Gnassingbe left power.
“We want the end of this 50-year-old Gnassingbe regime. Enough is enough,” Kodjo Amana, a 42-year-old baker, shouted over a chanting crowd earlier in the day.
The protests in the West African country of 8 million people have proceeded despite widespread reports of network outages confirmed by non-governmental organization Internet Without Borders. Other African incumbents in Gabon and Cameroon have used network cuts to control criticism and suppress protests at sensitive times.
Residents said that text messages had also been blocked on Thursday. The communications minister could not be reached for comment, although another minister said earlier this week that the cuts had been carried out for security reasons.
“VERY FRAGILE”
The president’s father Gnassingbe Eyadema seized power in a coup in 1967, a few years after the territory known as “French Togoland” that was once in German hands became independent from colonial power France.
The current president this week sought to appease opponents by tabling a draft bill to reform the constitution and reintroduce a two-term limit that his father scrapped in 2002.
But opposition leaders are skeptical about the implementation of the reforms that the government has stalled on for more than a decade and Prime Minister Komi Selom Klassou confirmed on Thursday that the term limits would not apply retroactively.
That could mean that Gnassingbe, 51 and currently in his third term, could remains in power for two more mandates from the next election, until 2030.
Gnassingbe sent a Tweet from his official account on Thursday, saying that he had met with the U.N. Special Representative for West Africa and the Sahel, Mohammed Ibn Chambas, on the subject of reforms. A spokesman for the latter confirmed the meeting without elaborating on its content.
State TV said Thursday evening that parliament, which still needs to approve the bill, will meet for an emergency session on September 12.
However, if the protests resume, analysts say Gnassingbe may find himself isolated amid growing criticism of autocratic rule in West Africa.
“The president’s position is very fragile and we do not think his peers in ECOWAS or his friends in Europe will help him if things get ugly,” said the head of research at NKC African Economics, Francois Conradie.
Togo, a regional financial hub that aspires to be an African Singapore, is at odds with West African neighbors which mostly have laws restricting presidential mandates.
The government, along with Gambia’s, voted in 2015 against introducing them across the 15 members of the ECOWAS regional body which Gnassingbe currently chairs. Since then, Gambia’s longtime leader Yahya Jammeh has been voted out of power.
African rulers, notably in Rwanda, Burundi and Burkina Faso, have moved to drop term limits in recent years in order to remain in power. In some cases this has sparked strong opposition that has led to violent unrest; in others, leaders have been driven from power, as happened in Burkina Faso.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | September 2017 | ['(Reuters)', '(X News Press)'] |
The Met Office issues travel warnings for parts of Wales, Scotland and England as Storm Doris, described as a “weather bomb”, brings gales, heavy rain and snow to the United Kingdom. At least one person is killed. | A woman has been killed by a piece of debris blown into the street as a storm battered the UK with winds of up to 94mph.
Storm Doris – described by meteorologists as a "weather bomb" – uprooted trees, grounded planes, caused chaos on the roads and forced the closure of the Port of Liverpool.
Temperatures are set to plummet as the storm leaves an icy trail in its wake, but winds will drop as it moves out to the North Sea, said the Met Office.
The unnamed victim was killed when an object said to be the "size of a coffee table" was blown into the street in Wolverhampton city centre.
Passer-by Rebecca Davis, 40, a teacher from the city, saw medics trying to save the woman's life.
She said the victim, who looked to be aged "between 20 and 30", appeared to have been hit by something looking like a piece of roof which had fallen off a building nearby.
"I think the wind broke it and caused it to fall. I don't know if it was hit by something else or just the wind did it," she said.
She added that while the woman had been hit "right outside Starbucks", it was unclear if the debris had fallen from the coffee shop or from a nearby building.
"I don't think anyone else was hurt. It was a big piece about the size of a coffee table but I think it just hit her," she said.
Starbucks said in statement: "We are shocked and saddened by this terrible incident.
"We are supporting the police with their investigation and our store will remain closed until further notice."
The Met Office said a top wind speed of 94mph was recorded in Capel Curig, North Wales, on Thursday morning.
The storm is set to leave frost and wintry showers and a plunge in temperatures of 7C, reaching around 3C in the south and dropping to freezing in some cities overnight.
Warnings of strong winds and heavy rain in North Wales, the Midlands, the East and the North West have also now been extended to include the London area.
There were reports of trees felled by the winds across the country, with one trapping a man in a van on the A374 in Cornwall, and others collapsing on to houses in London and Wigan.
As Doris hit, Peel Ports in Liverpool announced the city's port had been closed due to "100mph gusts of wind".
The company said: "All operations are stood down for the safety of our employees, contractors and customers of the port."
Network Rail said the violent weather had caused "significant disruption throughout the country", with an enforced speed limit on some lines.
With fallen trees, objects caught in overhead wires, heavy rain, flooding and debris on the tracks causing delays across many services, a spokesman said employees are "doing all we can to keep the network running".
Flights were also affected, with a Heathrow spokesman warning of a "10 per cent reduction" in the airport's schedule.
A number of roads were closed including the M6 Thelwall Viaduct in both directions between junction 20 and 21 in the North West and the QE2 Bridge in Dartford, Kent.
In Scotland snowfall saw the M80 closed in both directions, as well as schools shut and some ferry services cancelled.
Up to 15cm (6 inches) of snow was expected to fall across parts of Scotland and north-east England, bringing treacherous, blizzard-like conditions.
And in Ireland almost 46,000 households woke up to no electricity after violent gusts battered large swathes of the country throughout the night.
| Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | February 2017 | ['(The Guardian)', '(The Independent)'] |
In the US, large fires break out in Arizona and California. In Arizona, 250 people are evacuated and 10 houses destroyed northeast of Phoenix. Two fires break out in California in Morongo Valley and San Bernardino Valley | The hardy desert denizens of Morongo Valley have survived monsoonal rains, flash floods, ice storms and blistering Mojave Desert heat -- and that’s just in the last few years.
Now they can add a windblown wildfire that torched 3,022 acres and destroyed six homes and a barn Wednesday and Thursday.
By Thursday evening, 800 firefighters had the Paradise blaze, which smoldered two miles south of Yucca Valley and just west of Joshua Tree National Park, 50% contained and hoped to have it completely under control by 6 p.m. today.
San Bernardino County Fire Division Chief Paul Summers said firefighters caught a break when the wildfire jumped the Twentynine Palms Highway and headed east toward the desert rather than north toward neighborhoods.
“We were very lucky,” Summers said. “We could have lost 700 structures easy.”
Although investigators now know the fire started at a home in Morongo Valley, the cause is still unclear, he said.
High Desert residents such as Cathy Forcoran, who have taken root alongside the yucca plants, tend to stand their ground.
On Wednesday, Forcoran used a garden hose to battle the flames near her home.
“She blistered her toes fighting that fire,” said her neighbor, Gerry Strauss. “Someone told her it wouldn’t do her any good,” he said, but Forcoran replied that the effort was doing her good, “even if it’s only psychologically doing me good.”
Forcoran’s house survived.
Residents say the refuge the valleys provide is worth the sometimes rough conditions.
“In a smaller city, you’re not as stressed as you can be in the big city with all the freeways and traffic and everything else that goes on down there,” said Sandy Pratt, a mosaic artist who has lived near Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms for three decades.
The bone-dry Mojave Desert valleys at the foot of Southern California’s highest mountains -- which rise from a few hundred feet to more than 11,000 in a span of a few miles -- are hit by fires, floods and snow with some regularity, said Ed Clark, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego.
Flash floods in 2003 washed away cars and blocked highways near the quiet community tucked between the snow-capped San Gorgonio and San Jacinto mountain peaks; high winds tore a roof of one desert home during a thunderstorm the same year.
Storm clouds trapped against the mountains “will cause the rain to pour down there,” Clark said, which leads to floods on the barren land.
“It’s a combination of conditions and bad luck, I guess,” Clark said.
Floodwaters slashed a trench behind the Morongo Fruit Market last winter. Owner Pauline Prager dumped sand and gravel there three times but could not stop the rushing water.
“I think that everything Mother Nature could throw at us has happened to us in the last two years,” said Prager, 55.
But she has lived there for 24 years and is staying put. The town’s 2,000 residents, who live in a mix of horse properties, mobile homes and single-family dwellings, look out for one another when natural calamities hit.
“For disasters like this, everyone pulls together and takes care of each other,” Prager said.
Like the woman who stored the frozen perishables from Prager’s store -- where the electricity was off Thursday afternoon -- in her home refrigerator.
Bill Peters, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said firefighters were now working “to cut a containment line on the backside of the fire,” a job that must be done with shovels up and down rocky mountain slopes, including through Joshua Tree National Park.
If the wind stays down, there is “very little” possibility that the flames in Big Morongo Canyon will reach nearby Yucca Valley, Peters said.
Another fire near San Jacinto in Riverside County blackened 2,080 acres by Thursday evening and was 20% contained.
Riverside County fire officials expect the fire to be 100% contained by 6 p.m. today. No structures have been damaged, and no one has been evacuated. One firefighter twisted his knee while fighting the blaze and was taken to a hospital.
In Morongo Valley, Lisa Trowbridge’s neighbors’ homes were gutted by the Paradise blaze, but she managed to get her family and their animals -- including five cats, four dogs, eight chickens, one horse and two turtles -- to safety at a friend’s ranch.
But after a sleepless night wondering whether she had lost everything, she’s taking the elements in stride.
“I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” Trowbridge said. “This is horse country, cowboy country. It’s quiet. Except for three months in the summer, it has better weather than even Palm Springs.”
Jeb Brighouse and his wife had escaped Echo Park several weekends a month at their desert hideaway, until they lost their place in Wednesday’s fire.
“Am I going to feel better being hysterical? No,” he said.
The Red Cross provided motel rooms for two families who lost their homes. “They’re awful stressed,” said John Benefield, a Red Cross official. “They’re amazed at just how fast it happened. You don’t realize how fast fire can move until something like this happens to you.”
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Burning
Wildfires in San Bernardino and Riverside counties have burned more than 25,000 acres since Wednesday -- most in the Mojave National Preserve -- and six homes in Morongo Valley.
1. Hackberry, Wildhorse, Ranch fires: 20,000 acres burned; no containment
2. Paradise fire: 3,022 acres burned; 6 homes destroyed; 50% contained
Soboba fire: 2,080 acres burned; 20% contained
Source: Riverside, San Bernardino county fire departments; Bureau of Land Management
Times staff writers Susannah Rosenblatt and Stephanie Ramos contributed to this report.
| Fire | June 2005 | ['(Los Angeles Times)', '(KESQ)', '(Reuters)'] |
Wu Xiaohui, head of Chinese insurance firm Anbang, is jailed for eighteen years for fraud and corruption. He is further sentenced to have 10.5 billion yuan confiscated. | The former head of China's embattled insurance and financial giant Anbang has been jailed for 18 years for corruption and fraud. Wu Xiaohui admitted on state television in March to fraudulently raising billions of dollars from investors.
He will also have 10.5bn yuan ($1.7bn; £1.2bn) confiscated from him, according to Chinese state media.
Mr Wu was first detained in June last year. Chinese regulators took control of Anbang in February 2018. Beijing, which has been cracking down on the financial industry in an attempt to guard against excessive borrowing and risk, had been concerned about Anbang's operations and had previously warned investors about the firm's wealth management products. In an unusual move, regulators took control of the firm for one year over concerns it would not be able to meet its long-term financial obligations. Regulators said at the time their actions were aimed at protecting the rights and interests of consumers and keeping the firm operating as usual.
Anbang is best known for its aggressive international acquisitions, including New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel.
Mr Wu, who founded Anbang in 2004, had long been considered one of the most politically connected men in China, having married the granddaughter of former leader Deng Xiaoping.
Anbang started out as a car insurance firm with state-owned backers, has been recognised as one of China's richest and most opaque conglomerates. In addition to selling insurance products, it owns a portfolio of international properties and global brands.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | May 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
50–year–old Chinese journalist Li Junqi is imprisoned for 16 years after accepting bribes for his part in a mass three–month cover–up of a coal mine disaster in Hebei in which 35 people, including a rescue worker, were killed prior to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. | A 50-year-old journalist has been sentenced to 16 years in jail for taking bribes to cover up a mine disaster in Hebei province in July 2008.
Li Junqi, former director of the Hebei bureau of Farmers' Daily, is believed to be the first of the 10 reporters involved in the scandal to receive criminal punishment.
Thirty-four miners and a rescuer died after a blast ripped through the Lijiawa mine in Yuxian county on July 14, 2008, three weeks before the start of the Beijing Olympics.
Related readings: CCTV reporter sentenced for taking bribe
Following a State Council probe into the accident, the 10 journalists confessed to taking bribes, resulting in the prosecution of 48 local officials.
The identities of the 10 journalists have not been made public, but reports claim Guan Jian, a Beijing journalist from China Internet Weekly, and Li were among them.
Li was jailed 10 years for taking bribes. He was slapped with a six-year term for corruption on Oct 23 last year by the Chicheng court in Hebei. The Intermediate People's Court of Zhangjiakou upheld the verdict on Dec 31, Li's lawyer Zhou Ze told China Daily yesterday.
According to the verdict, after the mining accident, Li went to Yuxian county to acquire information and asked the local government for a 200,000-yuan "subscription fee" for not reporting the accident.
Li received the money on Aug 23, 2008, and handed over the cash to the cashier of Farmers' Daily in the name of a propaganda fee on Aug 26, the verdict said, adding that the money was not recorded in the newspaper's account and Li had the freedom to use the money.
Investigations further revealed that from October 2006 to May 2008, Li received nearly 100,000 yuan from the newspaper illegally, the evidence of which was produced to convict him on charges of corruption. Li's wife Lu Jianping and his lawyer Zhou said they will file an appeal against the verdict in the Supreme People's Court soon.
Zhou maintained his client did not take bribes. "The Yuxian government paid him the money as subscription fees and my client had no reason to refuse. We cannot conclude that Li took bribes ... too many factors can go into a newspaper's final decision," he said.
Zhou said the reporter did not have the authority to decide whether or not to report an incident. "Li was the chief of the Hebei bureau and his major duty was to increase local subscriptions and attract advertisements."
Li's wife said if her husband wanted to take bribes he could have easily made more through advertisement money.
The incident is believed to be the latest in a series of journalistic scandals in China.
Last year, two journalists and 26 people posing as journalists were accused of accepting bribes to cover up a mine accident, in which a worker was killed, in Shanxi province.
Xia Xueluan, a professor of sociology at Peking University, suggested the establishment of an independent supervision administration for the media to prevent such scandals.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | January 2010 | ['(China Daily)', '(Press Trust of India)'] |
Francesco Molinari wins the British Open at Carnoustie for his first major title by two strokes over a group including past major winners Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose. Tiger Woods, Molinari's playing partner for the final round, finishes one shot further back in a tie for sixth. | CARNOUSTIE, Scotland -- Francesco Molinari has won the British Open for his first major title after emerging from a crowded pack including Tiger Woods in a wild final round at Carnoustie.
It caps a stunning stretch for the 15th-ranked Molinari, who has won on the PGA and European Tours in the previous two months.
Molinari shot a bogey-free, 2-under 69 to finish on 8-under 276. He became the first Italian to capture a major championship. He holed a 5-foot birdie putt at No. 18 to take the outright lead. Four players -- Xander Schauffele, Justin Rose, Rory McIlroy and Kevin Kisner --tied for second place at 6 under.
Woods briefly held the outright lead in a stunning turnaround for the 14-time major champion, the first time he had led a major tournament in seven years. Woods birdied two of his first six holes to get to 7-under-par and capitalized on collapses by Jordan Spieth and Schauffele, the previous co-leaders.
But a double bogey on 11 dashed Woods' hopes of capturing his first major victory since 2008. He sent his second shot into the gallery, with the ball rebounding out into the rough. He duffed his chip, then three-putted from off the green.
He fell to 5 under, a stroke behind four players heading into the tough back nine. He finished tied for third.
First published on July 22, 2018 / 2:17 PM
© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. | Sports Competition | July 2018 | ['(CBS News)'] |
In basketball, Spain defeats France 71–55 in the final to win the EuroBasket Women 2017. | Sancho Lyttle scored 19 points and Alba Torrens added 18 to help Spain win the EuroBasket tournament on Sunday with a 71-55 victory over France.
The Spaniards were already assured a spot in the FIBA women's basketball world cup next year as the host city. The top five teams from the EuroBasket advance to the world cup, but since Spain already had qualified the sixth-place team also earned a spot in the 2018 tournament.
Belgium finished third, beating Greece 78-45, to earn the country's first bronze medal ever in the tournament. Turkey topped Latvia 72-63 for the final two spots. It will be the first time that Latvia will ever compete in the world cup. Latvia reached the fifth-place game with a wild one-point win over Italy in the consolation semifinals.
The U.S. clinched a spot by winning the Olympics last year. The remaining nine spots in the world cup will be determined later this year. | Sports Competition | June 2017 | ['(USA Today)'] |
At least 17 people, including two Canadians, are reported dead and eight others injured in an attack on a Turkish themed restaurant in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. |
The place, identified as Aziz Istanbul restaurant in the city center, was “attacked by suspected jihadists,” AFP reported, citing a restaurant server.
Three of the perpetrators have been killed by security forces, Communications Minister Remi Dandjinou confirmed to state TV on Monday, as cited by Reuters. He did not elaborate on how many attackers were involved in the assault.
“They are confined to one part of the building they attacked. Security and elite forces are conducting an operation,” he said earlier.
EarlierDandjinou confirmedthat at least 17 people have been killed and eight others injured in attack in the capital, Ouagadougou, Burkina 24 reported him as saying.
AFP reported, citing an unnamed army officer, that the hostages were taken on both floors of a two-story building, with the restaurant located on the ground floor.
Fuzzy footage of nighttime streets with heavy gunfire being heard has surfaced on social media. Some pictures showed presumed survivors of the attack. A witness told Reuters that he saw customers running out of the restaurant, with security forces surrounding the area.
From #Ouagadougou moments ago pic.twitter.com/uyoHTM9K5u
RFI reported, citing witnesses, that three people drove to the café before going on a shooting rampage there.
Local MP Allassane Sakandé reported “a dozen wounded” and “several dead” as a result of the shooting, as cited by Radio Omega.
The director of Yalgado Ouedraogo Hospital in Ouagadougou, where the victims of the attack were taken, reported that at least three people had died and 11 others were injured in the assault.
The troops have reportedly stormed the café but the fate of the attackers was not immediately known.
#BurkinaFaso#Ouagadougou - Burkinabe forces launched assault on the attackers ~40 min. ago. According to MP, dozen injured & "a few" dead. https://t.co/IBMzT2vFdG
Meanwhile, Communications Minister Remi Dandjinousay said the authorities are not ruling out that the incident was a terrorist attack.
The central street where the Turkish restaurant is located has several luxury hotels favored by foreign visitors, including the nearby Hotel Bravia and the Splendid Hotel. The Splendid was the target of the January 15, 2016 terrorist attack, in which Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants cold-bloodedly shot or took hostage some 200 people. Some 176 hostages were released, over 50 people were injured and 30 died. The slain victims included citizens of 10 foreign countries, including Canada, Ukraine, France, Switzerland and the US.
| Armed Conflict | August 2017 | ['(RT)', '(Reuters)'] |
Metropolitan Police detective April Casburn, who tried to sell information to the News of the World, regarding the investigation into phone hacking scandal, is jailed for 15 months. | The first person to be prosecuted as part of the investigation into payments by journalists to officials has been jailed for 15 months.
Det Ch Insp April Casburn, 53, from Essex, was convicted last month of misconduct in public office.
She had offered to sell information to the News of the World newspaper after the inquiry into hacking by the tabloid reopened in 2010. The sentencing judge called it "a corrupt attempt to make money".
The Metropolitan Police said it was "a great disappointment that a detective chief inspector in the counter terrorism command should have abused her position in this way".
Casburn had said she contacted the paper out of public interest, but Mr Justice Fulford said her offence could not be described as whistle-blowing.
She spoke to journalist Tim Wood about the fresh investigation into phone hacking and claimed she did so because she was concerned about counter-terror resources being wasted on the phone-hacking inquiry, which her colleagues saw as "a bit of a jolly".
The detective denied asking for money, but Wood had made a note that she "wanted to sell inside information".
The newspaper did not print a story after the call and no money changed hands. The judge, in his sentencing remarks at the Old Bailey said Wood was "a reliable, honest and disinterested witness" who had "absolutely no reason to lie".
"If the News of the World had accepted her offer, it's clear, in my view, that Ms Casburn would have taken the money and, as a result, she posed a significant threat to the integrity of this important police investigation," he said. He told her it was "a corrupt attempt to make money out of sensitive and potentially very damaging information".
Mr Justice Fulford went on: "Activity of this kind is deeply damaging to the administration of criminal justice in this country. It corrodes the public's faith in the police force, it can lead to the acquittal or the failure by the authorities to prosecute individuals who have committed offences whether they are serious or otherwise."
Casburn, who was found guilty after a trial at Southwark Crown Court, is in the process of adopting a child, and the judge said had that not been the case she would have been sentenced to three years.
The judge said he was particularly concerned about the child, and admitted that her absence while she is in prison could be damaging.
However, he said that, had she not been arrested, the detective would have returned to work by now, and therefore the child would be cared for by others anyway.
The Sunday tabloid was closed down in 2011 amid outrage over its hacking into voicemails.
The offence happened in September 2010 when Casburn, from Hatfield Peverel, was managing the national terrorist financial investigation unit.
Ahead of sentencing, Casburn's defence team told the judge her only offence was "being very unhappy at work and making a mad telephone call" to the News of the World.
In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said: "We hope that the 15-month prison sentence handed down to this officer sends a strong message that the leaking of confidential information for personal gain is absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated."
It said she had "betrayed the service and let down her colleagues", adding that there was "no place for corrupt officers or staff" in its police force. Casburn, who will now face Met Police disciplinary proceedings, was accused of a separate charge under the Official Secrets Act but the prosecution offered no evidence.
Her arrest was one of 59 that have been made as part of the ongoing Operation Elveden investigation.
Operation Elveden is running alongside the Operation Weeting inquiry into phone hacking, and Operation Tuleta into allegations that computers were hacked to obtain private information. Meanwhile, the journalist who took Casburn's call has said he gave evidence in the trial after taking advice from a union representative "only to confirm" that he had written an e-mail to superiors outlining the conversation.
In an article published on the ExaroNews website, Wood said he would always protect the source of a story. He added that he felt "sympathy for Casburn, who I believe was sacrificed by big business".
Evidence in the trial was provided to police by the management standards committee set up by the News of the World's owner, the Met Police said.
"The [committee] was established to counter damaging claims of a cover-up... over phone hacking," Wood said. "But I believe that it has gone too far, betraying more confidential sources than any other body or person in the history of journalism." | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | February 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gives a public address alongside his impeached successor Dilma Rousseff in São Bernardo do Campo, saying he will comply with an arrest warrant and begin a 12–year term for corruption after two failed appeals to have the warrant withdrawn. He maintains his innocence. | Supporters of ex-Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva have stopped him surrendering to police after he agreed to end a stand-off over his prison sentence.
Scores of them blocked his car leaving the trade union building near Sao Paulo where he has been staying.
He says he will give himself up despite saying he is innocent of the corruption charges of which he was convicted.
Two last-minute appeals to have his arrest warrant suspended had failed. #Brazil’s Ex-Pres #Lula appears to have temporarily abandoned surrender to police after supporters blocked his exit. Becoming a shambles
Lula was the frontrunner for October's presidential election but his jailing will leave the race wide open.
The former metalworker and trade union activist is an iconic figure for the left in Latin America. He was the first left-wing leader to make it to the Brazilian presidency in nearly half a century.
The crowd had gathered for a Mass to commemorate the former leader's late wife, Marisa Leticia.
On Saturday, flanked by his impeached successor as president, Dilma Rousseff, the 72-year-old delivered an impassioned 55-minute speech. "I will comply with the order and all of you will become Lula," he told the crowd in Sao Bernardo do Campo. "I'm not above the law. If I didn't believe in the law, I wouldn't have started a political party. I would have started a revolution."
Promising to come out of his legal troubles "bigger and stronger", he said: "I was born with a short neck so I can keep my head high."
When he left the stage, he was carried on the shoulders of delighted supporters chanting "Free Lula!"
He was expected to leave the building through a garage but supporters told BBC News the workers inside were keeping him there, chanting "We won't let him leave".
Lula’s speech didn’t feel sombre, it was like one of his rallies - a man who’s made it clear he will keep up the fight even behind bars.
But the crowds weren’t big - this is a man who was once one of the world’s most popular politicians - there were several hundred people there. Not the man he once was.
Lula says his conviction was designed to stop him from running for president again.
In an order issued on Thursday, federal judge Sergio Moro said Lula had to present himself before 17:00 local time (20:00 GMT) on Friday at the federal police headquarters in the southern city of Curitiba.
The charges against Lula came from an anti-corruption investigation known as Operation Car Wash, which has embroiled top politicians from several parties.
He was convicted of receiving a renovated beachfront apartment worth some 3.7m reais ($1.1m, £790,000), as a bribe from engineering firm OAS.
The defence says Lula's ownership of the apartment has never been proven and that his conviction rests largely on the word of the former chairman of OAS, himself convicted of corruption.
"I'm the only person being prosecuted over an apartment that isn't mine," Lula said on Saturday. Lula served as president from 2003-2011. Despite a lead in opinion polls ahead of October's election, he remains a divisive figure.
Extraordinary photo of #Lula born aloft by supporters just now by Francisco Proner/ Farpa Fotocoletivo pic.twitter.com/q8e6BJriuK
While he was in office, Brazil experienced its longest period of economic growth in three decades, allowing his administration to spend lavishly on social programmes.
Tens of millions of people were lifted out of poverty thanks to the initiatives taken by his government and he left office after two consecutive terms (the maximum allowed in Brazil) with record popularity ratings.
Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin rejected Lula's appeal on Saturday, a day after his appeal to the Superior Court was declined.
The two courts did not re-examine Lula's conviction, only whether legal procedures were followed correctly and his constitutional rights were observed. #Lula How long does a lunch last, when you're about to be jailed for 12 years?
Ordering his surrender on Thursday, Judge Moro said the former president would have a separate cell with its own toilet in Curitiba.
He would not be handcuffed if he came quietly, the judge promised.
As a convict, Lula would normally be barred from standing for election in October but Brazil's top electoral court reserves the final decision if and when he submits his candidacy.
Lula was convicted last July and originally sentenced to nine and a half years in prison. He lost his first appeal against the sentence in January, when the appeals court not only upheld his conviction, but increased the sentence to 12 years.
Until recently, defendants in Brazil were allowed to remain free until their final appeal had been exhausted but a 2016 ruling from a lower court allowed for defendants to be sent to jail after a failed first appeal.
One Covid vaccine dose cuts hospital risk by 75%
But the number of Delta variant cases recorded in the UK has risen by 79% in a week, figures show. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | April 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
Seven heavily armed Taliban militants launch a coordinated attack near the main international airport of the Afghan capital, Kabul, and seize a five-story building under construction nearby. Afghan security forces retake the building, killing all seven militants and sustaining no military or civilian casualties. | Afghan security forces have tackled heavily-armed militants who seized a building near the main airport in the capital Kabul.
Officials said seven gunmen had been killed in the five-storey building under construction near the airport and the attack was now over.
The Taliban earlier said that they carried out the assault.
The BBC's David Loyn at the scene says Afghan forces dealt with the situation with no help from international forces.
The incident began shortly after dawn on Monday with witnesses reporting the sound of explosions and gunfire coming from the airport.
Exchanges of fire went on for some hours with the Taliban firing rocket-propelled grenades into the surrounding streets. All flights were cancelled in and out of Kabul international airport, which is home to a large Nato-led military base. Nearby roads were closed. Our correspondent said US Blackhawk helicopters circled above but on the ground the fighting was all carried out by Afghan police and army units, who have become far better at combating the insurgency.
He said the Afghan police rapid reaction force sealed off the area and began clearing the building floor by floor.
Kabul police chief General Ayoub Salangi later said that seven attackers had been killed - two when they detonated their explosives and five who were killed by security forces.
He said there were no civilian or military casualties.
As the drama unfolded, embassies in the diplomatic area of Kabul were quickly locked down.
Reports said the US embassy had sounded its "duck and cover" alarm and announced on loudspeakers that the alarm was not a drill.
Alarms were also heard ringing loudly from the British embassy.
The Taliban announced a "spring offensive" in April, saying it would target foreign military bases and diplomatic areas.
Last month, Afghan security forces fought Taliban insurgents for hours in the centre of Kabul after a major explosion shook the city.
Most international troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Afghan forces are due to take responsibility for the security of the whole country in the next few months, for the first time since 1992.
| Armed Conflict | June 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
Voters in Uzbekistan go to the polls for a presidential election, the first since the death of Islam Karimov who governed the country for 25 years. | Uzbekistan held a tightly controlled presidential election Sunday, the first vote since the death of authoritarian leader Islam Karimov who ruled the country for 27 years.
Karimov led Uzbekistan since before the 1991 Soviet collapse, first as its communist boss and then as its president. During his long tenure, he ruthlessly crushed all opposition and was denounced by international rights groups for abuses that included killings and torture.
The odds-on favorite in Sunday's election is acting President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who spent 13 years as Karimov's prime minister.
Uzbekistan's Election Commission said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that the turnout in the presidential vote was nearly 70 percent by 3 p.m. (1000 GMT, 5 a.m. EST). The voting wrapped up five hours later but results are not expected until early Monday.
Uzbekistan, Central Asia's most populous nation, is rich in natural resources and borders Afghanistan, making it of strategic interest to Russia, the U.S. and China.
Karimov never cultivated a successor and his death in September raised concerns that the predominantly Sunni Muslim nation of 32 million might see fierce infighting over its leadership. Mirziyoyev, however, shifted into the acting president's job quickly and without any visible tensions, highlighting an apparent consensus between regional clans.
The 59-year old Mirziyoyev faced three nominal rivals Sunday. Two of them challenged Karimov in past elections, each receiving about 3 percent of the vote. But neither candidate campaigned as a vocal critic of Mirziyoyev, and the fourth contender has been just as pliant.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitored the election, has described the campaign as "strictly regulated."
"There is no perceptible exchange of views among the candidates with regard to their programs," the OSCE said. "All candidates refrain from criticizing the government or each other, and claim to target distinct segments of the electorate."
Sunday's election is a mere formality to make Mirziyoyev legitimate, Sanjar Umarov, the leader of an Uzbek reform movement in exile, told The Associated Press.
"The actual choice was made on Sept. 8, when Mirziyoyev was appointed acting president," Umarov said in a phone interview from Memphis, Tennessee.
Umarov spent four years in prison for embezzlement, a charge his supporters say was politically motivated, before being released in 2009.
Umarov says he is cautiously optimistic about Mirziyoyev because the former prime minister is intimately familiar with the weaknesses of Karimov's system of power.
"I think he understands that he needs to foster a civil society. I think he understands that he needs to restore democratic institutes," he said. "He knows the system of Karimov's regime well. I doubt he will want to replicate it."
Shortly after Karimov died, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Uzbekistan and met with Mirziyoyev, a trip that reflected Moscow's desire to strengthen its influence in the country.
The U.S. installed a base in Uzbekistan to support military action in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Washington was forced to abandon the facility in 2005 as relations between Uzbekistan and the U.S. soured following a government crackdown on rioters in the Ferghana Valley city of Andijan that is believed to have left hundreds dead.
Almost all Western media long have been barred from reporting inside Uzbekistan, and the country's independent journalists and activists have faced sustained harassment. | Government Job change - Election | December 2016 | ['(AP via Daily Press)'] |
Author José Eduardo Agualusa wins the International Dublin Literary Award for his novel A General Theory of Oblivion. | This year’s International Dublin Literary Award has been won by Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa with his 14th novel A General Theory of Oblivion, translated by Daniel Hahn. The €100,000 prize is divided between author and translator, with Agualusa receiving €75,000 and Hahn €25,000.
It tells the story of a traumatised woman Luanda, who retreats from the world and history and remains in an apartment while outside Angola endures civil war and a sequence of horrors. Her isolation is shared with an albino dog Phantom, whose spirit continues to sustain her after he dies.
One of three African books on a shortlist of 10 novels, which also included Ireland’s Anne Enright and the 2006 Nobel Literature laureate Orhan Pamuk, the winning book is bold, beautiful and often poignant, with many stylistic echoes of Colombian Gabriel García Márquez. Yet Agualusa (56) is an original whose international reputation was secured with the success of the English-language edition of The Book of Chameleons, also translated by Hahn. It won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007.
It is an important win. The International Dublin Literary Award, established in 1995 and now funded entirely by Dublin City Council, which has proved a pioneering champion in alerting readers to international fiction in translation, has come under pressure from the revamped Man Booker International Prize for Fiction. In only its second year in its new format, the latter has emerged as a specialist competition for books in translation.
This year’s Dublin award seemed destined for the Vietnamese-born US writer Viet Thanh Nguyen. The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is already an international bestseller. Pamuk, as the only previous winner, having taken the then International IMPAC award in 2003, was regarded as an outsider with A Strangness in My Mind, translated by Ekin Oklap, a Dickensian love letter to Istanbul. More favoured was the previously shortlisted veteran Mia Couto from Mozambique, who this year featured with Confessions of a Lioness, translated by his regular collaborator, David Brookshaw. It is a strange and compelling work, very beautiful and subversive. Few commentators were prepared to discount either the appeal or threat of Enright’s The Green Road which had received a wide critical reception and is very popular.
A General Theory of Oblivion not only gives the prize a fine winner, it is an important one. It is true that it had also been somewhat ironically shortlisted for the rival prize last year as was another of this year’s Dublin International contenders, Robert Seethaler’s elegiac A Whole Life, a work of rare beauty which has been lovingly translated by Charlotte Collins.
An ongoing criticism of the Dublin prize is the three-year cycle which surrounds its submission due to the egalitarian nature of its selection process which is initially determined by library readers across the world. Many of the titles are already well known even at the time of the publication of the long list.
Agualusa’s triumph is a victory for empathy. The plight of Luanda, or Ludo, reflects that of mankind itself. Wronged early in life, she endures alone; catching birds on the balcony and ultimately burning her beloved books for warmth as she camps out in an empty flat, the furniture long gone in the fire. Her loneliness ends with the arrival of a young boy, a chance thief who befriends her.
That a work of art held off the driving narrative of Nguyen’s swashbuckling Catch-22 of the 21st century is fascinating. Even more so is the fact that of the original 149 titles submitted only 43 were in translation and yet 6 of the final 10 titles were in translation.
The quality of books in translation is not only impressing readers and prize juries; it is giving wary publishers much to consider. That a brief, magical and alluring work of art and intent could hold off witty and politically-barbed tour de force which returns to the squalid aftermath of the Vietnam War says a great deal about the perceptive intelligence guiding the award, and the collective insight which decided the outcome. Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times | Awards ceremony | June 2017 | ['(The Irish Times)'] |
China sentences an Uyghur journalist who spoke to foreign media after riots in Xinjiang last year to 15 years imprisonment. | A Uighur journalist who spoke to foreign media after riots in Xinjiang last year has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, his employer said.
A regional court in China's remote western region found Gheyret Niyaz guilty of endangering state security.
Correspondents say the sentence is unusually long for someone with a low international profile.
Nearly 200 people were killed last July in clashes in Xinjiang between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese.
The Uighurbiz.net website, where Mr Niyaz worked as an administrator, posted a note quoting his wife who was in the court on Friday.
"Gheyret Niyaz admitted in court that he accepted interviews from foreign media, but insisted that he had no malicious intentions and was only doing what a citizen, or reporter, should do," his wife, Reshalaiti, was reported as saying.
Mr Niyaz, who also worked as a reporter for the Xinjiang Economic Daily, was one of numerous journalists and bloggers to be arrested following the 2009 unrest.
According to the Uighur American Association, Mr Niyaz was generally supportive of the Chinese government.
But he had been critical of regional inequalities and of government action towards Uighur separatism, the association said.
The clashes that erupted in the city of Urumqi on 5 July 2009 were the region's worst ethnic violence in decades.
The fighting ended after huge numbers of troops were deployed in the region.
| Famous Person - Give a speech | July 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters Africa)'] |
The Parti Québécois is elected to a minority government, defeating the Liberal Party of Quebec, with Pauline Marois becoming the first female premier of Quebec. , | Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois will become Quebec’s first female premier after her sovereigntist party won a minority government and ended nearly a decade of Liberal rule in a tense election.
But as she delivered her victory speech late Tuesday night, Marois was suddenly whisked off stage because of a shooting outside PQ headquarters in downtown Montreal.
One person was killed and another was injured after a gunman opened fire behind the building. A man wearing what appeared to be a blue housecoat and a balaclava was arrested at the scene.
Marois returned to the podium to briefly resume her speech and ask everyone to slowly leave the room.
Liberal Leader and outgoing premier Jean Charest lost his seat in the riding of Sherbrooke to PQ candidate Serge Cardin, even as his party fared better at the polls than projected, assuming the role of official Opposition.
The minority PQ government may alleviate some fears of an impending referendum on Quebec’s independence, which Marois said she would only call under the “right conditions."
But Marois remained defiant in her victory speech, saying: “The future of Quebec is to become its own country.”
“To our friends and neighbours in Canada…As a nation, we want to make our own decisions that concern us,” she said.
Late Tuesday, the PQ had won or was leading in 56 ridings, short of the 63 seats needed to form a majority government in the 125-seat legislature.
The upstart Coalition Avenir Quebec party, led by Francois Legault, won at least 19 seats, landing in third place. Legault, a former PQ member, had promised a 10-year moratorium on sovereignty referendums.
The Liberals won or were leading in about 48 ridings. Charest’s stunning defeat was the first in his 28-year political career.
“Politics are difficult,” Charest said in his concession speech to a crowd of disappointed, but cheering supporters in Sherbrooke.
“I assume the entire responsibility for the results,” he said after congratulating Cardin and Marois.
Charest stressed the message of national unity, saying that “belonging to Canada” is one of the Quebec Liberal Party’s key convictions.
“The result of this election campaign speaks to the fact that the future of Quebec lies within Canada,” he said.
Charest said the Liberal Party will continue to thrive in the province, but did not discuss his political future.
Political observers said several factors contributed to Charest’s downfall.
His Liberal Party has tried to dodge corruption allegations, stemming from questionable practices in the province’s construction industry.
A recently launched public inquiry will look at allegations of corruption involving construction firms, municipal and provincial governments and organized crime. It is alleged that a number of election officials received kickbacks from shady construction projects.
Charest also drew the ire of Quebec’s post-secondary students this year when he announced a tuition fee increase, sparking a months-long student uprising that resulted in violent clashes with police on the streets on Montreal and Quebec City.
Many students favoured the PQ because Marois promised to nix the tuition hike. One of the most prominent faces of the student movement, Leo Bureau-Blouin, became a star PQ candidate and beat the Liberal incumbent in the Montreal-area riding of Laval-des-Rapides to become the youngest-ever member of the national assembly at age 20.
Now, for the first time since 2003, Quebec has a sovereigntist government that’s poised to revive tensions with Ottawa and other provinces.
Marois has said that she will contact Prime Minister Stephen Harper shortly after taking office to discuss the transfer of powers in areas like immigration, language and employment insurance from Ottawa to Quebec. If Harper refuses, Marois said that will only boost her case for an independent Quebec.
But as a minority government, the PQ will face tough challenges pushing its independence agenda. The party has won four majorities in previous elections, avoiding having to forge alliances in parliament.
Both Charest, a staunch federalist, and François Legault, the leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec, have tried to use the prospect of a sovereignty referendum as a way to lure votes away from Marois.
Many analysts said that, even with a majority PQ government, a referendum would be unlikely until late in the governing party’s term.
Bill 101 expansion, referendum talk spark concerns
It remains to be seen how Quebec’s federalists and anglophones will react to a PQ government. Some realtors in Ontario and Quebec have already noted an increase in calls from English-speaking Quebecers who are mulling a move to Ontario or other parts of Canada.
Marois’s promise to extend Bill 101, the law which enshrines French as the province’s official language, to small businesses and colleges, has many non-French speakers worried about their education and employment prospects.
When the first Parti Quebecois government was elected in 1976, under Rene Levesque’s leadership, the rest of Canada panicked at the prospect of Quebec’s secession. The province’s anglophones left in droves and the country’s stock and bond markets reacted negatively, lowering the value of the Canadian dollar.
The PQ’s referendums on Quebec sovereignty in 1980 and 1995 both failed, although the latter one was defeated by a very narrow margin.
The Quebec government has introduced a new initiative that encourages cabinet ministers to speak only French to their counterparts from other provinces and Ottawa. (Graham Hughes / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois takes the stage after winning the provincial election in Montreal, Que. Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012. (Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Supporters cheer the election of PQ Leader Pauline Marois Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012 in Montreal. (Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Quebec Liberal party leader Jean Charest speaks while his wife Michele Dionne looks on following the provincial election in Sherbrooke, Que., on Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012. (Ryan Remiorz / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Coalition Avenir Quebec leader Francois Legault speaks after provincial election polls closed in Repentigny, Que. on Tuesday, September 4, 2012. (Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Parti Quebecois supporters cheer as election results are announced in Montreal, Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012. (Graham Hughes / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
The Quebec government has introduced a new initiative that encourages cabinet ministers to speak only French to their counterparts from other provinces and Ottawa. (Graham Hughes / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois takes the stage after winning the provincial election in Montreal, Que. Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012. (Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
| Government Job change - Election | September 2012 | ['(CBC)', '(CTV News)'] |
United Nations–mediated peace talks commence in Nairobi, Kenya, between the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the National Congress for the Defence of the People. | NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) -- The United Nations is mediating talks between the Democratic Republic of Congo's government and its main rebel group in an effort to "stop the hemorrhage" in the central African nation, a U.N. envoy said Monday.
"Let us now get on with it," said former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is now the U.N. envoy to mediate the situation. "The DRC has bled for over 50 years. Let us stop the hemorrhage, let us bind the wounds, let us open a new chapter of durable peace and harmony."
Obasanjo spoke on the opening day of the U.N.-sponsored talks in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula and former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, representing the African Union, also attended the talks.
Recent fighting between rebels and government troops has been concentrated in the province of North Kivu in eastern Congo, prompting the displacement of 250,000 people since August.
The U.N. Security Council recently approved sending more than 3,000 troops to bolster the 17,000-strong peacekeeping force already in the region.
Obasanjo said the talks in Nairobi are aimed at resolving three things: a sustained cease-fire in eastern Congo, a safe corridor for humanitarian assistance in the region, and the implementation of a lasting peace in Congo.
"The current humanitarian crisis in the North Kivu province is a scar on the conscience of the world," he said. "We must act quickly to get the internally displaced persons and refugees back to their homes."
The U.N. envoy praised representatives from the Congolese government and the main rebel group, the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), for taking part in the talks.
"A beginning has to be made between government representatives and CNDP representatives," Obasanjo said.
Fighting broke out in eastern Congo at the end of August between government forces and CNDP rebels under the command of Laurent Nkunda.
It was sparked by lingering tensions over the 1994 slaughter of ethnic Tutsis by majority Hutus in neighboring Rwanda. Nkunda says his forces are fighting to defend Congolese Tutsis from Hutu militants who escaped to Congo.
Nkunda declared a unilateral cease-fire on October 29, but it failed to stop the fighting and reports of atrocities.
Wetangula also expressed his optimism that the talks in Nairobi are the result of "momentum ... that all of us hope and believe will bring to an end the catastrophic activities that we have seen unfold in the Congo."
"The pictures and clips we have been seeing on international TV screens remains a terrible indictment to all of us Africans, you Congolese in particular," the Kenyan foreign minister said.
"I want you to be awake to the fact that the children, the women, the boys and girls that we see on TV every day may be your sons and daughters, may be your brothers and sisters, may be your parents," he said. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | December 2008 | ['(CNN)'] |
The Ministry of Culture of Saudi Arabia announces that it will lift a ban on commercial cinemas that has lasted more than three decades. | Saudi Arabia has announced it will lift a ban on commercial cinemas that has lasted more than three decades.
The ministry of culture and information said it would begin issuing licences immediately and that the first cinemas were expected to open in March 2018.
The measure is part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 social and economic reform programme.
The conservative Muslim kingdom had cinemas in the 1970s, but clerics persuaded authorities to close them.
As recently as January, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al al-Sheikh reportedly warned of the "depravity" of cinemas, saying they would corrupt morals if allowed.
Saudi Arabia's royal family and religious establishment adhere to an austere form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, and Islamic codes of behaviour and dress are strictly enforced.
A statement issued by the culture ministry on Monday said the decision to license cinemas was "central to the government's programme to encourage an open and rich domestic culture for Saudis".
"This marks a watershed moment in the development of the cultural economy in the Kingdom," Culture Minister Awwad Alawwad said.
"Opening cinemas will act as a catalyst for economic growth and diversification; by developing the broader cultural sector we will create new employment and training opportunities, as well as enriching the kingdom's entertainment options."
The ministry said the move would open up a domestic market of more than 32 million people and that it anticipated there would be more than 300 cinemas with 2,000 screens by 2030.
Vision 2030, unveiled by the 32-year-old crown prince last year, aims to increase household spending on cultural and entertainment activities in the oil-dependent kingdom from 2.9% to 6% by 2030.
"It is a beautiful day in #SaudiArabia!" wrote the Saudi director Haifaa Al Mansour on Twitter following the announcement.
Saudi authorities also began sponsoring concerts this year.
US hip hop artist Nelly and Algerian singer Cheb Khaled will perform in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Thursday, though the event is open to men only. In September, King Salman announced that women would be permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia for the first time from June 2018 - another move opposed by clerics,
And at an economic conference attended by foreign investors the following month, Prince Mohammed declared that Saudi Arabia would once again be "a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people".
Seventy per cent of the Saudi population were under 30 and they wanted a "life in which our religion translates to tolerance, to our traditions of kindness ", he said.
He insisted Saudi Arabia "was not like this before 1979", when there was an Islamic revolution in Iran and militants occupied Mecca's Grand Mosque. Afterwards, public entertainment was banned and clerics were given more control over public life.
Prince Mohammed has also cracked down on dissent and launched an anti-corruption drive that has seen hundreds of people, among them senior princes and prominent businessmen, detained and offered pardons in exchange for financial settlements with the state. | Government Policy Changes | December 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
South Sudan's government says its military has recaptured the key town of Bor, days after it was seized by rebels. | South Sudan’s government says its military have recaptured the key town of Bor, days after it was seized by rebels.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir says his forces have recaptured the key town of Bor in what was pitched as a defiant comeback after a week-long battle in the region.
“Forces loyal to the government have taken Bor and (are) now clearing whatever forces that are remaining there,” Mr Kiir reportedly told journalists at his office in Juba. The rebels have not commented on the claim.
It came as UN chief Ban Ki-moon has urged the Security Council to add 5,500 UN troops to the peace-keeping mission in South Sudan, and warned that those responsible for abuse would be held to account.
The mass grave was found in Bentiu, officials said. At least two other mass graves are also reported to have been found in Juba. While UN officials counted 34 bodies, there are 75 people reported missing in total.
The bodies in Bentiu reportedly belonged to the Dinka, who were members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the Geneva-based human rights office.
Responding to the discovery, the government minister of information Michael Makuei Lueth said: “Of course Bentiu is under the control of the rebel leader Riek Machar, so we have nothing to do with that area.”
Word of the discovery came as South Sudan undertook military operations to wrest back control of the city of Bor from rebels loyal to the country’s former vice president. Late on Christmas Eve the president Salva Kiir said government troops had regained control of the capital. In a statement released through the Foreign Office on Christmas Eve, William Hague called on South Sudanese leaders “to restrain their supporters and resolve political differences peacefully”.
“The situation in South Sudan is deteriorating. I am extremely concerned by reports of increasing violence along ethnic lines. The targeting of civilians is unacceptable, as are threats against UN peacekeepers trying to protect them.”
He added: “The UK is calling for a Security Council Resolution this afternoon that will ensure the United Nations Mission in South Sudan can swiftly receive the reinforcements it needs. South Sudan was a country born amid hopes of increased peace and prosperity for its people. The gains made over the past two years should not be thrown away.”
Britain has also despatched a senior diplomat to South Sudan to assist efforts in restoring peace, officials said. Sir Simon Gass arrived in the capital of Juba and will work closely with Norwegian and US envoys in a bid to end the violence which is now thought to have resulted in more than 1,000 deaths and 100,000 people being displaced.
Seperately, UN chief Ban Ki-moon has urged the Security Council to add 5,500 UN troops to the peace-keeping mission in South Sudan, and warned that those responsible for abuse would be held to account.
His plea comes as new details emerge of alleged ethnic killings committed during more than a week of violence. Tens of thousands of people have fled fighting, as rebels, thought to support sacked former vice-president Riek Machar, have seized major towns.
I am extremely concerned by reports of increasing violence along ethnic lines. The targeting of civilians is unacceptable, as are threats against UN peacekeepers trying to protect them. Foreign Secretary William Hague
Some British, Canadian and Kenyan citizens are among 3,000 foreigners thought to be trapped in the area with reports that they are undergoing heavy bouts of gun fire.
Australians, Ugandans and Ethiopians are also among 17,000 people seeking protection at a UN base in Bor, a city that could see increased violence in coming days, said Toby Lanzer, the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator.
The UN Secretary-General has urged the Security Council to add 5,500 troops and police to the 7,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. He cited growing violence in many parts of the country, human rights abuses, “and killings fuelled by ethnic tensions”.
He proposed the troops be transferred from UN missions in Congo, Darfur, Abyei, Ivory Coast and Liberia, along with three attack helicopters, three utility helicopters and a C130 military transport plane.
After an emergency Security Council meeting, France’s UN Ambassador Gerard Araud, the current council president, said the council will vote on a US-drafted resolution authorising the transfers this evening. He said there was “a positive reaction” from all 15 council members.
The secretary-general called on member states urgently to provide transport to get the troops, police and equipment to South Sudan. He said the UN mission’s capacity to investigate human rights abuses is also being urgently strengthened.
Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, said: “The future of South Sudan is in jeopardy. The leaders of South Sudan face a stark choice. They can return to the political dialogue and spirit of co-operation that helped establish South Sudan or they can destroy those hard-fought gains and tear apart their newborn nation.
The violence began on December 15. South Sudan President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, has said an attempted military coup triggered the violence, and the blame was placed on ousted former vice president Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer. Other officials have since said a fight between Dinka and Nuer presidential guards triggered the fighting.
South Sudan experienced decades of war with Sudan, which it peacefully broke away from in 2011. The US over the last week has evacuated 380 Americans and 300 others from South Sudan, which has seen vicious, ethnically targeted violence spread through the nation. | Armed Conflict | December 2013 | ['(Channel 4 News)'] |
RoC Premier Yu Shyi–kun is prevented for six hours from delivering a key government report on the floor of the Legislative Yuan when opposition lawmakers, refusing to recognize President Chen Shui–bian's narrow re–election on March 20, tore up his report and unfurled banners and placards with the words "no truth, no president" and "bogus regime". | Opposition tears up report on policies, which Premier Yu delivers only after KMT lawmaker calls for truce to six-hour spat
TAIPEI - Taiwan's Parliament descended into chaos yesterday as opposition lawmakers tried to prevent Premier Yu Shyi-kun from delivering a key report.
It was the first parliamentary session since the formation of the new Cabinet on May 20 and opposition members were still upset about President Chen Shui-bian's narrow and controversial election victory.
People First Party lawmaker Chiu Yi tore up the Premier's written report on the administration's new policies and delivered a tirade. 'Mr Yu and his colleagues, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, are a bogus government, its Cabinet a bogus Cabinet and president a bogus president, because it took power by illegal means,' he said. 'Shame on you.'
Mr Chen and Vice-President Annette Lu were slightly injured when bullets grazed them as they were campaigning in an open-top jeep hours before the polls. No one had been arrested for the shooting and the DPP had repeatedly denied the opposition's claims that it was staged to swing sympathy votes towards Mr Chen. Outside the Legislative Yuan building, opposition supporters staged minor demonstrations to support the opposition's delaying tactics.
Mr Wang Lan, a staunchly anti-Chen protester, shouted: 'There is no way we can recognise Chen Shui-bian as president unless we have an independent task force to probe the truth about the mysterious shooting incident.' Inside Parliament, opposition lawmakers unfurled banners and placards with the words 'no truth, no president' and 'bogus regime'.
Mr Yu condemned the opposition action, saying 'this is a legal Parliament, a legal Cabinet, and a legal administrative report invited by the Parliament'.
His party colleague Lin Chung-mo challenged the opposition led by the Kuomintang (KMT).
'If you have guts, then why not cast a no-confidence vote to dissolve the Parliament,' he said.
The trading of insults carried on for more than six hours until KMT lawmaker Wang Jin-pyne called for a halt.
Only then was Mr Yu able to make his speech.
In his speech, he said that signing free trade agreements (FTAs) was a top priority for Mr Chen's government.
'It is necessary for us to adjust our strategic positioning in international trade, given that China has often snubbed our efforts to expand our diplomatic ties and that cross-strait trade ties are not normalised,' he said.
He said Taiwan must sign FTAs with the United States and other countries such as Japan, Singapore and New Zealand in order to break the political embargo by the mainland.
Mr Ko Chien-min, caucus head of the ruling DPP, said the opposition must take full responsibility for stalling the normal operation of Parliament and the Cabinet.
'The boycott obviously is a consequence of the election dispute,' said Mr Ko.
'The action will be repeated until the December legislative election, and all normal government operations will be stalled by such an irrational boycott.'
Analysts warned that the hotly disputed March 20 polls had caused a serious political rift which will hurt the country in the long run.
'We can't let the boycott happen again because it would only hurt Taiwan economically and politically,' said political analyst Yang Tai-shun.
He said that its leaders must do something to heal the political wounds.
His sentiments were echoed by the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei which issued a 2004 White Paper yesterday.
It said that if Mr Chen failed to open up direct trade, transport and postal links with China, Taiwan would never achieve its goal of becoming an Asia-Pacific business operations centre. | Government Job change - Election | June 2004 | ['(TheStraitsTimes)', '(Channelnewsasia)'] |
South African opera star Siphiwo Ntshebe, chosen by Nelson Mandela to sing "Hope" at the opening ceremony of the 2010 FIFA World Cup next month, dies suddenly aged 34 after contracting meningitis. | An opera singer chosen by Nelson Mandela to perform at the opening ceremony of the World Cup has died after a sudden illness.
Siphiwo Ntshebe, 34, a tenor dubbed the "black Pavarotti", died yesterday from meningitis. He had been admitted to hospital last week.
Ntshebe went from humble beginnings, singing in a township church as a five-year-old, to studying at London's Royal College of Music and performing throughout Europe.
As a black opera singer - with a repertoire including Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini - he was a trailblazer in South Africa, where there were few such opportunities during apartheid and millions remain in poverty today.
The World Cup organisers said Ntshebe had been picked by former president Mandela, now 91, to sing his new anthem, Hope, at the opening ceremony in Johannesburg on 11 June.
Mandela himself appears on the track, speaking the words: "The generosity of the human spirit can overcome all adversity. Through compassion and caring we can create hope. We can create hope."
Ntshebe's life seemed to embody the hopeful aspects of South Africa after the dawn of multiracial democracy. He grew up in a shack in New Brighton, an impoverished township in Port Elizabeth. At the age of five he sang in a church where his father was a preacher, and sat on his father's knee singing to guests at the family home, his official website says.
He performed in his father's operas and musicals, sang in school choirs and studied acting and drama. He got his big break at 16 and was offered a scholarship at Cape Town university, then in Australia. In 2004 he was awarded a scholarship on the postgraduate course at the Royal College of Music in London.
Ntshebe featured in concerts across Europe, singing for Prince Philip, Prince Charles and Prince Albert of Monaco. He was preparing for rehearsals for the World Cup opening ceremony when he contracted bacterial meningitis and was admitted to the Livingstone Hospital Port Elizabeth last week.
Danny Jordaan, head of the organising committee, said today: "We are saddened to hear of this young man's death. He was a prodigious talent who would have taken a message of hope from the Fifa World Cup to the whole world."
Keith Lister, chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment, which owns Ntshebe's label, said: "This is such a sad, tragic story. Within days of realising his dreams he was struck down like this. It is a great loss. For someone who has worked as hard as he has, who has trained, and then to have it taken away right at the moment of the acknowledgement of his talent and success..."
Ntshebe expressed anxiety about his health in his final post on Facebook. "Killing headache, body aches, vomiting but the doctor says it's just fever..." he wrote.
… as you’re joining us today from Korea, we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s high-impact journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million readers, from 180 countries, have recently taken the step to support us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.
With no shareholders or billionaire owner, we can set our own agenda and provide trustworthy journalism that’s free from commercial and political influence, offering a counterweight to the spread of misinformation. When it’s never mattered more, we can investigate and challenge without fear or favour.
Unlike many others, Guardian journalism is available for everyone to read, regardless of what they can afford to pay. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of global events, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action.
We aim to offer readers a comprehensive, international perspective on critical events shaping our world – from the Black Lives Matter movement, to the new American administration, Brexit, and the world's slow emergence from a global pandemic. We are committed to upholding our reputation for urgent, powerful reporting on the climate emergency, and made the decision to reject advertising from fossil fuel companies, divest from the oil and gas industries, and set a course to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.
If there were ever a time to join us, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers our journalism and sustains our future. Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. Thank you. | Famous Person - Death | May 2010 | ['(IOL)', '(BBC)', '(CBC)', '(The Daily Telegraph)', '(The Guardian)'] |
Members of the new Somali Parliament elect Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud President. | Somali MPs meeting in Mogadishu have elected Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as the country's new president, in the latest step to end decades of war.
The academic beat President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in a run-off poll by 190 to 79 votes, officials said.
No candidate secured the required two-thirds majority in the first round of voting, conducted by secret ballot.
It is the first time for years that a president has been chosen on Somali soil, a sign of improving security.
However, the al-Qaeda linked group al-Shabab still controls many southern and central parts of the country, and has staged frequent suicide attacks in the capital since it was driven out of Mogadishu last year by African Union troops and pro-government forces.
Despite qualifying for the second round, outgoing Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali and moderate Islamist Abdulkadir Osoble then pulled out after coming third and fourth respectively. Eighteen candidates were eliminated at the first hurdle.
Outgoing Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed conceded defeat during a live broadcast on national TV, saying he was "satisfied" with his time in power. "It is a great pleasure for me to witness a fair election in Mogadishu after 42 years [since Mohamed Siad Barre took over in 1969]," he said.
The new president was sworn into office immediately after the result. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, 56, is an academic as well as a civic activist who has worked for several national and international peace and development organisations.
He graduated from the Somali National University in 1981 and went on to study in India, where he obtained a master's degree from Bhopal University.
For two years he worked for the United Nations children's organisation Unicef as an education officer in south and central Somalia, until the departure of UN peacekeepers in Somalia in 1995.
Four years after that he co-founded the Somali Institute of Management and Administration Development in Mogadishu, which later evolved into Simad University.
In 2011, he founded the Peace and Development Party and is currently serving as its chairman. He speaks Somali and English and is from the Hawiye clan - one of Somalia's biggest.
The election process began five hours late at a police academy in Mogadishu, following tight security checks.
The election was also delayed by the swearing-in of the last batch of MPs and then a vote on whether a group of disputed MPs, including former warlords, could take part. The MPs voted in favour of this.
The new speaker of parliament, Mohamed Osman Jawari, had urged MPs to vote with their consciences.
"May God help us to elect a good leader in an atmosphere of tranquillity. We must give the youth of Somalia a bright future," he said.
The process is still in many ways owned by outside powers who have for years been involved militarily and politically in Somalia, the BBC's Mary Harper reports.
But Hassan Sheikh Mohamud could represent a different kind of future for the country because he is not associated with the violence and corruption of the past, our correspondent says.
Nevertheless he faces massive challenges on multiple fronts, she adds - firstly, he will have to deal with the powerful politicians who lost the elections; then he has to try to reunite a country torn apart by two decades of civil conflict, much of which is controlled by the al-Shabab militia. Since the overthrow of President Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia has seen clan-based warlords, Islamist militants and its neighbours all battling for control. | Government Job change - Election | September 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
The uncrewed Soyuz MS–14 mission to resupply the International Space Station commences. Its launch is a successful test of a Soyuz spacecraft atop a Soyuz–2 launch vehicle, which will replace the Soyuz–FG as the carrier rocket for Soyuz spacecraft starting next year. | In an unusual situation, Roscosmos launched the Soyuz MS-14 crew vehicle without any humans aboard. The move is testing critical upgrades to the Soyuz MS series spacecraft, specifically the vehicle’s abort system interface with the upgraded Soyuz 2.1a rocket which will take over crew launch duties next year.
While no humans were aboard, Soyuz MS-14 carried a humanoid robot, called Skybot, up to the International Space Station. While the liftoff – from Site No. 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, at 23:38:31 EDT on Wednesday – was nominal. The docking on Saturday was aborted ahead of final approach due to issues with the KURS rendezvous system on the ISS. Following a relocation of Soyuz MS-13, MS-14 docked on Monday night. No humans for Soyuz MS-14:
Soyuz MS-14 was purposely not carrying any humans to orbit, instead acting as a test vessel to perform in-flight verification and validation of new motion control and navigation systems, a revamped descent control system, and a new abort system software interface with the Soyuz 2.1a carrier rocket.
This non-human test flight is necessary to clear the way for Russian crew launch transition from the Soyuz-FG to the Soyuz 2.1a rocket beginning in Spring 2020.
The Soyuz 2.1a rocket was designed from the outset to be a crew launch vehicle; however, delays to its introduction led to the creation of the Soyuz-FG rocket to bridge the gap between the aging Soyuz-U and the Soyuz 2.1a.
With Soyuz 2.1a now in steady operation and ready to assume crew flight duties, Roscosmos is conducting this non-human mission to verify that the Soyuz MS spacecraft’s Launch Abort System will not trigger when the Soyuz 2.1a rocket rolls onto the proper azimuth (heading) after liftoff.
The Soyuz MS-14 mission patch, featuring Skybot’s robotic hand reaching out toward a Russian spacesuit gloved hand of its creator. (Credit: Roscosmos)
Prior crew vehicle launches from Russia utilized the Soyuz-U and Soyuz-FG rockets, which both used analog Flight Control Systems. Those systems were incapable of rolling the rocket onto course after launch.
Therefore, the Soyuz-U and Soyuz-FG rockets had to literally be turned on their launch pad to the correct launch azimuth so that all the rocket had to do after liftoff was simply pitch over onto the proper trajectory.
As such, the Soyuz MS crew spacecraft’s Launch Abort System was designed so that if it detected a roll in the rocket’s orientation it would trigger the abort system to pull the crew away from what would be a failing rocket.
But the Soyuz 2.1a uses digital Flight Control Systems and performs a roll to align itself to the correct launch azimuth after lifting off.
That creates a disconnect between the Soyuz 2.1a rocket and the Soyuz MS-series crew vehicle.
To account for this, Roscosmos has designed a software patch that will now be tested in-flight with Soyuz MS-14.
Essentially, this patch tells the Soyuz MS-14’s flight computers that a roll after liftoff is “Okay” and to not trigger an abort when the roll program begins.
The Launch Abort System for the Soyuz is a critical safety feature – as seen in October 2018 when the Soyuz MS-10 mission aborted at booster separation because of a critical failure of the Soyuz-FG rocket.
The abort saved the lives of the two crewmembers, who are currently on the International Space Station having relaunched on their mission in March 2019.
In addition to the abort system test, this mission is performing in-flight testing of a new navigation system and a revamped descent control system. This will rigorously test these new systems that will be standard on the upcoming Soyuz GVK uncrewed cargo spacecraft that is set to debut in 2022.
A detailed launch to docking rendezvous timeline is available on L2.
While the flight was proceeding without issue, the final leg of its arrival suffered an issue when the KURS system failed to lock on to the Soyuz, resulting in the spacecraft slewing ahead of final approach.
With the crew losing sight of the vehicle and having to find it by looking out of the window, controllers in Houston called up to make sure the US crew was awake, as the situation became slightly tense. However, there was no immediate danger to the ISS given the Soyuz was not approaching as final approach was not commanded.
An abort was commanded and the Soyuz began to depart the region surrounding the ISS, called the Keep Out Zone.
The issue was the result of a problem on the ISS – the KURS signal amplifier – as opposed to the Soyuz itself. This system will be replaced while another attempt to dock the Soyuz will take place next week.
However, this will be via a convoluted plan, where the Russian crew enter Soyuz MS-13, move it to another port and then make a second attempt to dock Soyuz MS-14 on the vacated port.
The first part – the relocation of Soyuz MS-13 – was successfully completed.
Soyuz MS-14 then evenutally followed the mitigation path by docking with the vacated spot on Monday.
A robotic crewmember for Soyuz and the Station:
While Soyuz MS-14 was not carrying humans to space, it does have a crewmember.
Skybot F-850, formerly known simply as FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research), is a Russian humanoid robot – complete with arms and legs – built to replicate the movements of a remote operator.
Skybot can also conduct some actions autonomously.
The robotic humanoid will – in part – provide G-force and temperature information inside Soyuz during the various phases of launch and rendezvous with the Station.
After the rendezvous with the Station, Skybot will be brought inside the ISS where a series of movement tests – both commanded by the Russian crew and autonomously performed – will be carried out by the Russian crew during the robot’s 2 week mission.
In addition to the motion tests, Skybot will also test its voice program and ability to communicate with the Station’s Russian crew. It will also assist the crew with certain task in order to assess the robot’s ability to function in microgravity.
In so doing, Skybot will become the second semi-autonomous robotic humanoid to carry out a mission aboard the Station.
The first was NASA’s Robonaut2.
Unfortunately, the two ISS robotic crewmembers will not meet each other as Robonaut2 is currently on Earth undergoing final upgrades before re-launching to the Station.
After two weeks on Station, Skybot will be placed back inside the Soyuz MS-14’s Descent Module. Soyuz will then undock from the ISS on 6 September for landing back in Kazakhstan.
Skybot seated in the Commander’s seat of Soyuz MS-14, ready for launch. (Credit: Roscosmos)
During Deorbit, Reentry, and Landing, Skybot will once again provide G-force and temperature regime information.
This is currently Skybot’s only planned mission to the Station, though Russian officials have not ruled out a much longer follow-up mission should this one prove successful.
Skybot and Robonaut2 – the ISS’s robotic crewmembers:
Skybot – in a sense – is the Russian cousin of NASA’s Robonaut2 robotic humanoid.
Robonaut2 launched to the International Space Station on 24 February 2011 on the Space Shuttle Discovery’s STS-133 mission.
After 7 years in space, Robonaut2 returned to Earth on 5 May 2018 on the CRS-14 SpaceX Dragon for maintenance, repairs, and upgrades.
At the CRS-14 pre-launch news conference, NASA stated that the plan was to relaunch Robonaut2 in “about a year.”
Now a little more than a year later, NASASpaceflight checked on the status of Robonaut2. In response, NASA said, “As of now, Robonaut2 is targeted for a return to the International Space Station no earlier than (NET) late 2019. Teams continue to prepare Robonaut2 for on-orbit tasks, complete fit checks and train future crew members heading to station.”
Based on the “late 2019” relaunch date, two options are available: The NG-12 Cygnus flight from Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, which is targeting a NET 21 October launch, or the SpaceX CRS-19 Dragon mission, currently targeting launch NET 4 December. | New achievements in aerospace | August 2019 | ['(NASASpaceFlight.com)', '(Space.com)'] |
The United States Department of State says Turkey has formally requested the extradition of Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gülen and is now considering the merits of the request. | The matter is likely to come up when US Vice President Joe Biden travels to Ankara for an official trip on Wednesday.
Tuesday 23 August 2016 22:45, UK
Turkey has formally requested the extradition of a US-based Turkish cleric it blames for an attempted coup in July.
The US State Department said it was now considering the merits of the request, which is not said to be related to the abortive putsch that claimed at least 270 lives.
"We can confirm now that Turkey has requested the extradition of Gulen," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a briefing.
Mr Gulen, who lives in the US state of Pennsylvania, has denied any connection to the coup plot and condemned it "in the strongest terms".
:: Who Is The Man Blamed For Turkey's Coup?
The matter is likely to come up when US Vice President Joe Biden travels to Ankara for an official trip on Wednesday.
But he will offer no assurances that the US will agree to Turkey's demand.
On the eve of his visit, Turkish and US justice officials met in the Turkish capital to discuss the extradition request.
Turkish Justice Ministry officials said in a statement they would share with the visiting US Justice Department and State Department officials "evidence and testimonies" relating to Mr Gulen's alleged involvement in the coup.
The Turkish ministry said officials have sent four files of evidence, amounting to a total of 6,382 pages.
Washington's ties with Ankara have been so frayed that the key NATO ally has been engaging in diplomatic flirtations with US foes Russia and Iran.
Earlier this month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan travelled to Moscow to discuss possible collaboration on ending Syria's civil war.
US leaders were outraged when Mr Erdogan accused Washington of backing the coup.
Mr Gulen is the leader of the Hizmet (Service) movement, which has a powerful presence in areas of Turkish society, including the military, police and media.
:: Turkey Steps Up Military Intervention In Syria
The 75-year-old Muslim cleric moved to the United States in 1999 and now lives in a gated home in a small town in the Pocono Mountains.
He has been charged with treason in his native country.
Turkey has been shaken this year by a string of attacks from Islamic State jihadists and Kurdish militants, as well as the botched 15 July coup.
Since the attempt to overthrow President Erdogan, more than 17,000 people have been formally arrested to face trial, including soldiers, police, judges and journalists.
Tens of thousands more people with alleged links to Mr Gulen have been suspended or dismissed from their jobs. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | August 2016 | ['(Sky News)'] |
Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro García Padilla says the Commonwealth will default on a $422 million bond payment due Monday. García Padilla says debt payments have been suspended in order to pay for essential services for the 3.5 million American citizens. Congress has been unable to pass a debt restructuring bill for Puerto Rico. | / AP SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced that Puerto Rico's government will not make nearly $370 million in bond payments due Monday after a failure to restructure or find a political solution to the U.S. territory's spiraling public debt crisis.
Garcia said Sunday that he had issued an executive order suspending payments on debt owed by the island's Government Development Bank, a default that will likely prompt lawsuits from creditors and could be a prelude to a deadline to a much larger payment due July 1.
The governor said Puerto Rico can't pay the bonds without cutting essential services.
Island officials spent the weekend trying to negotiate a settlement that would have avoided the default but apparently came up short. The development comes as Congress has so far been unable to pass a debt restructuring bill for Puerto Rico.
"Let me be very clear, this was a painful decision," Garcia said in a speech. "We would have preferred to have had a legal framework to restructure our debts in an orderly manner."
The Government Development Bank had $422 million in payments due Monday. Puerto Rico will pay $22 million interest and it reached a deal Friday to restructure about $30 million, leaving it short $370 million.
The administration also will be paying about $50 million in other debt payments due Monday owed by various other territorial agencies.
Nearly all the bonds are held by a variety of U.S. hedge funds and mutual funds.
Garcia said Puerto Rico's government could not make the payment without sacrificing basic necessities for the island's 3.5 million residents, including keeping schools and public hospitals open.
"We will continue working to try to reach a consensual solution with our creditors," he said. "That is one of our commitments. But what we will never do is put the lives and safety of our people in danger."
The governor had been warning since last year that the island's overall public debt of more than $70 billion is unpayable.
Puerto Rico has been suffering through more than a decade of economic decline since Congress phased out tax cuts that had made the island a center for pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturing. Garcia's predecessors and the island legislature borrowed heavily to cover over budget deficits, causing a debt spiral that has already prompted several smaller defaults.
Creditors have accused the government of exaggerating the crisis to avoid upcoming payments of more than $1 billion due July 1 that includes general obligation bonds, which are guaranteed by the constitution.
Economists have warned that a default of this magnitude could cause Puerto Rico to lose access to capital markets and make the situation worse as the government faces the much larger payment due July 1.
Garcia lashed out at Congress for failing to pass a bill that would create a control board to help manage the island's $70 billion debt and to oversee some debt restructuring. He said it has been held up by "internal partisan and ideological divisions" in the House of Representatives. | Government Policy Changes | May 2016 | ['(AP via CBS News)', '(Bloomberg)'] |
The US government charges Maria Butina, a 29-year-old Russian woman with conspiracy to act as a Russian government agent while infiltrating political groups. | Maria Butina, 29, met US politicians and candidates to establish ‘back channels’ and secretly reported to Kremlin, DoJ alleges
First published on Mon 16 Jul 2018 20.13 BST
A Russian woman has been charged with spying for Moscow in the US by infiltrating the National Rifle Association (NRA) in an attempt to influence the Republican party and American politics.
Maria Butina, who purported to be a pro-gun activist, met American politicians and candidates to establish “back channels” and secretly reported back to the Kremlin through a high-level Russian official, according to the US justice department.
Prosecutors said in a statement that Butina, 29, had been “developing relationships with US persons and infiltrating organisations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian federation”.
Butina was charged with conspiracy to act as a Russian agent within the US without notifying the attorney general. She was arrested on Sunday and appeared before a magistrate in Washington on Monday, officials said. In an affidavit, an FBI agent said investigators had searched Butina’s laptop computer and mobile phone.
The NRA did not respond to requests for comment.
The charges were unveiled hours after Donald Trump, on a stage with the Russian president Vladimir Putin, cast further doubt over the US intelligence establishment’s conclusion that Russia attacked the 2016 US election. “I don’t see any reason why it would,” Trump said at a joint press conference in Helsinki.
Butina has come under increasing scrutiny amid the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Footage emerged of her asking Trump a question in front of an audience at a conservative event in July 2015.
She is known as a protege of Alexander Torshin, a senior official at the Russian central bank, who is also a longtime associate of the NRA. Torshin, who met Donald Trump Jr at an NRA event in 2016, was placed under sanction by the US in April.
Charging documents unsealed on Monday say Butina was directed by a “high-level official in the Russian government”. The unnamed official’s biography matched that of Torshin, but he was not identified by name.
Two unidentified Americans, one of them described as a “political operative”, were said in the charging documents to have assisted Butina in her efforts to make political contacts in the US. Neither was charged with a crime.
Butina has a longstanding working relationship with Paul Erickson, an NRA member and conservative operative based in South Dakota. Erickson did not respond to a voicemail left on Monday afternoon.
Prosecutors said Butina emailed the first American associate in March 2015, suggesting a specific political party “would likely obtain control over the US government after the 2016 elections” and noting the powerful role in this party played by a certain gun rights organisation.
While neither organisation was identified by prosecutors, their descriptions matched those of the Republican party and the NRA.
The filings said the first American associate emailed an acquaintance on October 4 2016, about a month before the election, and said he had been “involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin” and leaders of the political party.
Butina attended national prayer breakfasts and other events in an attempt to make influential contacts, according to officials, and emailed the second US associate in March 2016, while trying to setup a series of dinners with Americans in Washington and New York.
According to prosecutors, she reported that a Kremlin official had given approval for the back channel she was building, and she told the American: “All we needed is ‘yes’ from Putin’s side. The rest is easier.”
Officials said the investigation into Butina was conducted by the FBI’s Washington office and was being prosecuted by the national security sections of the US attorney’s office in Washington and justice department headquarters. The office of Robert Mueller, the special counsel, played no immediately apparent role. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2018 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The death toll from Cyclone Hudhud rises to 24 with 400,000 people needing assistance in India's Andhra Pradesh and Orissa states. | Authorities in India's Andhra Pradesh and Orissa states are intensifying efforts to provide aid to some 400,000 people affected by a cyclone now known to have killed 24 people.
Cyclone Hudhud wrecked homes, uprooted trees and power lines, blocked roads and damaged crops in the two states. PM Narendra Modi is to fly over the affected areas, including the port city of Visakhapatnam, to assess the damage.
Heavy rains have been forecast in six states, prompting fears of flooding.
Rescue workers and soldiers have begun uprooting trees which had blocked roads, restoring power and telecommunication lines and clearing up debris in Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, the city worst hit by Sunday's severe cyclone. A statement by India's home ministry said the air force was using planes and helicopters to drop food packets in and around the city.
Visakhapatnam's airport has sustained severe damage in the cyclone and has been shut down. A part of the roof was blown off and the runway is under water. Senior Andhra Pradesh official Parkala Prabhakar told the Associated Press that 15 people had been killed in Visakhapatnam alone. The port has also been badly damaged.
There were long queues at the few petrol stations which reopened on Monday. But fuel remains in short supply as a large number of petrol stations were damaged in Sunday's storm.
The cyclone downed electrical poles, uprooted trees, overturned vehicles and left debris strewn in the streets. "Visakhapatnam is a place I like very much. But, it is painful to see the city this way today," Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu told reporters.
"We need at least 100 years to rebuild our beautiful city of Visakhapatnam," a rescue worker told Hindustan Times newspaper. Officials say that more than 6,500 homes were damaged in Andhra Pradesh state.
India's eastern coast and Bangladesh are routinely hit by cyclonic storms between April and November which cause deaths and widespread damage to property.
A super-cyclone in 1999 killed more than 10,000 people in Orissa.
Last October as many as 500,000 people in India were evacuated when a severe cyclone called Phailin swept through Orissa and Andhra Pradesh states. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | October 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence announces the detainment of Jamshid Sharmahd, the leader of the proPahlavi group Kingdom Assembly of Iran, for coordinating the 2008 attack on worshippers in Shiraz. | (Reuters) - Iran said on Saturday its intelligence services have detained a U.S.-based leader of a pro-monarchist group whom it accused of being behind a deadly 2008 bombing and of plotting other attacks, and that he is being held in Iran.
An intelligence ministry statement cited by state television did not say how, where or when the detention took place.
“Jamshid Sharmahd, the ringleader of the terrorist Tondar (Thunder) group, who directed armed and terrorist acts in Iran from America, was arrested following a complicated operation, and is now in (our agents’) powerful hands,” it said.
Television showed a video of a man identifying himself as Sharmahd and giving his date of birth. The man was later shown with a blindfold, saying: “They needed explosives and we provided it.”
Tondar did not confirm the detention. In reaction to what it said were reports of Sharmahd’s “abduction”, the group said on its website it did not confirm “stories being told by various networks”.
However it said in an earlier posting on social media that “Tondar ... will continue to fight even in the absence of a commander”.
A U.S. State Department spokeswoman said on Saturday that the U.S. government was “aware of reports related to the detention of Mr. Sharmahd. The Iranian regime has a long history of detaining Iranians and foreign nationals on spurious charges. We urge Iran to be fully transparent and abide by all international legal standards.”
Based in Los Angeles, the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran, or Tondar, says it seeks to restore the Iranian monarchy that was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution. It runs pro-Iranian opposition radio and television stations abroad.
According to the group’s website, Sharmahd is an Iranian-German electronics engineer who was born in 1955 and lived in Germany before moving to Los Angeles in 2003.
No comment was immediately available from the German foreign ministry.
The Iranian ministry statement said Sharmahd planned and directed an explosion at a religious center in the southern city of Shiraz in 2008 that killed 14 people and wounded 215.
It said Iranian intelligence had prevented several other plots in more recent years, including one, at an unspecified date, to blow up the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late founder of the Islamic Republic.
‘VIOLENCE-PRONE’ GROUP
Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi called Tondar the “most violence-prone” royalist opposition group.
“Despite our complaint to Interpol, Sharmahd would travel everywhere under his own name. This shows how empty anti-terror slogans by Americans and their Europeans allies are,” he told state TV.
In 2019, Iran detained Ruhollah Zam, a Paris-based journalist turned activist, after apparently luring him to neighbouring Iraq, according to Iranian media reports at the time. Zam was sentenced to death on security charges in June.
Sharmahd’s detention came at a time of particularly tense relations between longtime foes Washington and Tehran.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif urged the West in a Twitter post to “cease financing and harboring terrorists” who from “safe havens in U.S. and Europe ... promote hatred, agitate & organize murder & mayhem, and shamelessly claim responsibility for the murder of innocent Iranian civilians”.
The Iranian foreign ministry earlier said in a statement that Washington should be held accountable for backing “this terrorist group and other groups and criminals responsible for sabotage, armed and terrorist operations” from within the United States.
Tondar has claimed responsibility for some attacks, saying on its website it was behind the bombing of a seminary used by Revolutionary Guards in Shiraz in June 2019, and an explosion in a refinery in 2016.
In 2009, Iran executed three men convicted of involvement in the 2008 bombing.
Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Frances Kerry, Jan Harvey and Daniel Wallis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays.
Exclusive: Fed’s Neel Kashkari opposes rate hikes at least through 2023 as the central bank becomes more hawkish | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | August 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
A major Indian separatist leader, Arabinda Rajkhowa of the United Liberation Front of Asom, is released on bail. | GAUHATI (India) - THE Indian government allowed a major separatist leader to be released on bail on Thursday, hoping the gesture would lead to peace talks with rebels in the country's troubled north-east. Arabinda Rajkhowa has been in prison in Gauhati, the capital of Assam state, since he was picked up by the Bangladesh government and handed to Indian authorities in December last year. The 54-year-old is the leader of the main rebel group in Assam state, the United Liberation Front of Asom, which has been fighting since 1979 for an independent homeland to be carved out of India's remote northeast - a demand rejected by New Delhi. Tarun Gogoi, the Assam state's top elected official, said the government decided not to oppose the rebel leader's bail and hopes that the move will bring about peace talks with the group. The separatists accuse the Indian government of exploiting Assam's natural resources while doing little for the indigenous people, most of whom are ethnically closer to the people of Myanmar and China than to other Indians. Judge S. Bora granted bail to Rajkhowa, who is facing a charge of sedition, which is punishable by life imprisonment. 'Rajkhowa has got bail in all the cases filed by Indian security forces against him and he is now free to walk out of jail,' said Bijon Mahajan, his attorney. -- AP | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | December 2010 | ['(The Straits Times)', '(NDTV)'] |
An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 strikes near Tonopah, Nevada, with several aftershocks reported, though no injuries are reported. The earthquake is the largest in the state since 1954. |
Update, 9:31 a.m.
U.S. 95 in Esmeralda County is expected to remain closed until 5 p.m. while it's repaired and inspected after it was damaged by a 6magnitude 6.5 earthquake early Friday morning.
Traffic is being diverted around the closure on Highway 360 to Route 6.
Update, 9:06 a.m.
Lorina Dellinger knew exactly what was happening when she woke up to her house shaking early Friday morning.
As her home swayed back and forth, sending ceiling fans and chandeliers swinging, she ran downstairs to check on her kids.
The ground rapidly lurched for what felt like five minutes, she said. But in reality, Dellinger thinks the shaking lasted a total of 15 seconds.
What she was feeling was Nevada's largest earthquake in 66 years; a magnitude 6.5 temblor epicentered along US Route 95 about 36 miles from Tonopah. It struck at roughly 4:03 a.m.
Her kids were fine, she told the Reno Gazette Journal Monday morning, just a little shaken up. For the next hour or so, her family rode out a series of strong aftershocks — the largest of which measured a magnitude 5.1.
Once the ground began to settle, Dellinger, who's the Nye County Assistant Manager, began thinking about the rest of Tonopah faired through the shaking.
Reports began filing in.
The historic Mizpah and Belvada hotels made it through the shaking fine, and the town's building and grounds crew has been dispatched to check other buildings for damage.
In neighboring Esmeralda County, the quake fractured US 95 in several places so badly the highway had to be closed.
So far, everything in Tonopah appears OK and no injuries have been reported, Dellinger said.
But the crew is still doing checks, and Dellinger has not yet received word on the building she's most concerned about — Tonopah's old courthouse, which is slated for refurbishment but has deteriorated over the years.
Buildings like it — constructed of unreinforced masonry long before modern seismic code — are notoriously unstable when the ground begins to move.
"(Earthquakes) are always a concern because we want to make sure our historic buildings are preserved, and when it's something out of your hands hopefully it's not devastating," Dellinger said.
Update, 8:41 a.m.
Friday's magnitude 6.5 earthquake near Tonopah is the largest earthquake to hit Nevada since 1954, when a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit the Fairview Peak area, Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Lab wrote in an update.
The quake effectively ends a 66-year streak in Nevada without earthquakes in the mid-magnitude 6 range, Kent added.
Update, 8:13 a.m.
Seismologists with the Nevada Seismological Lab at the University of Nevada, Reno says aftershocks could continue after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck central Nevada near Tonopah early Friday morning.
Roughly a dozen aftershocks were registered in the hour after the mainshock struck at about 4 a.m. this morning, with six of them registering above a 4.5.
The largest of those was a magnitude 5.1, which hit about 23 minutes after the mainshock, according to a release from the Nevada Seismological Lab.
There's about a 4 percent chance that in the next week an even larger earthquake could hit, the release said.
The quake was recorded about three miles below the surface in a remote area 36 miles west of Tonopah at about 4:03 a.m. and was reported felt as far away as central California and southern Utah.
Light to Moderate shaking was reported to the United States Geological Service in Reno, Las Vegas, Fresno and Sacramento.
Friday's magnitude 6.5 is the largest earthquake to have hit that area since 1934, when another magnitude 6.5 struck 24 miles to the northwest. Just before that in 1932, a magnitude 6.8 struck 30 miles to the north.
The last major earthquake the area experienced was a magnitude 5.1 in 2013.
About two dozen earthquakes in the magnitude 5 range have occurred within 65 miles of this area over the past 50 years, according to Nevada Seismological Lab release.
The quake occurred in the Walker Lane Seismic region, a 60-mile wide zone of active faults that straddles the Nevada-California border. That fault system stretches from the Mojave Desert in Southern California, through the Sierra Nevada, north through western Nevada and the Reno area and back into California.
Fueled by the same tectonic activity that powers the infamous San Andreas fault, the Walker Lane is responsible for the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake in Southern California and is also suspected of causing a recent magnitude 4.5 earthquake near Carson City.
Update, 7:40 a.m.
There's so far been no significant damage from the earthquake or its aftershocks in Tonopah, according to Nye County Public Information Officer Arnold Knightly.
Update, 7:30 a.m.
Traffic is currently being diverted off of US 95 onto NV 360 at Mina, near the reported epicenter of the quake, according to the Esmeralda County Sheriff's Office.
In nearby Hawthorne, no damage from the earthquake has been reported, according to the Mineral County Sheriff's Office.
Update, 7:06 a.m.
Several sections of US 95 have been damaged by a sizable earthquake in central Nevada early this morning.
That quake, which has been upgraded to a magnitude 6.5 by the United States Geological Survey, struck along the highway between Tonopah and Hawthorne.
Photos of the damage posted to the Esmeralda County Sheriff's Office show a large fracture along at least two sections of the highway.
Another, looking down the road, appears to show where the road had shifted slightly sideways.
The sheriff's office said travelers on US 95 should use caution and expect delays.
Update, 4:40 a.m.
The Nevada Seismological Lab is reporting two more aftershocks near Tonopah both measuring magnitude 5.4.
Original story
The Nevada Seismological lab at the University of Nevada, Reno is reporting that a magnitude 6.4 earthquake has struck near Tonopah.
The quake struck just after 4 a.m. and was reportedly felt as far away as Reno and Sacramento.
It's also been followed several sizable aftershocks, including at least three temblors that measured magnitude 4.0, 4.4 and then 4.9.
The magnitude 6.4 quake has been marked as "reviewed" by the Nevada Seismological Laboratory, meaning it's magnitude has been finalized by a seismologist.
The quakes, including the 6.4, are striking in the desert between Tonopah and Hawthorne, near U.S. 95, according the a Nevada Seismological lab map of the earthquakes.
If you felt the shaking, you can submit a "felt report" to the USGS here.
——
Sam Gross is a breaking news reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal who covers wildfires, emergencies and more. Support his work by subscribing to RGJ.com. | Earthquakes | May 2020 | ['(Reno Gazette–Journal)'] |
Holy See Press Director Matteo Bruni announces that Pope Francis will make his first international apostolic visit in 15 months after accepting the invitation of the Republic of Iraq and the local Catholic Church to visit the Middle Eastern country of Iraq from 5–8 March 2021. | Pope Francis is set to break a 15-month hiatus from international travel with what is sure to be a historic visit to the Middle Eastern nation of Iraq.
The Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, announced the news on Monday, adding that the Pope had accepted the invitation of the Republic of Iraq and the local Catholic Church.
It will be an Apostolic Journey covering four days and four Iraqi provinces.
According to the Press Office statement, “He will visit Baghdad, the plain of Ur, linked to the memory of Abraham, the city of Erbil, as well as Mosul and Qaraqosh in the plain of Nineveh.”
The Pope’s itinerary will be released at a later date, and will “take into consideration the evolution of the worldwide health emergency.”
Pope Francis has long expressed his desire to visit Iraq.
Already on 10 June 2019 he told a meeting of Catholic aid agencies that he planned on traveling there in 2020.
“I think constantly of Iraq – where I want to go next year – in the hope that it can face the future through the peaceful and shared pursuit of the common good on the part of all elements of society, including the religious, and not fall back into hostilities sparked by the simmering conflicts of the regional powers.”
The Pope’s visit will come as the realization of a dream of his predecessor, Pope St. John Paul II. The Polish Pope had planned to travel to Iraq at the end of 1999. That trip never took place because Saddam Hussein decided to postpone it, after months of negotiations.
According to Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, the Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, Pope Francis will receive an enthusiastic welcome to Iraq.
He told SIR news agency a year ago that “everyone in Iraq, Christians and Muslims, esteem him[Pope Francis] for his simplicity and nearness. His words touch everyone’s hearts because they are those of a shepherd. He is a man who brings peace.”
Preparations for Pope Francis’ visit seemed to be nearing completion early this year, when he met the President of Iraq, Barham Salih, at an audience in the Vatican on 25 January.
The Holy See Press Office said at the time that the two spoke about “preserving the historical presence of Christians in the country” and “highlighting the need to guarantee their security and a place in the future of Iraq.”
Christians’ presence in Iraq, however, has been drastically diminished in the past two decades.
In 2003, before a US-led coalition invaded to depose Saddam Hussein, there were around 1 to 1.4 million Christians in the country.
A drawn-out war and the 2014-2017 occupation of the Plain of Nineveh by the so-called Islamic State reduced their number to between 300 and 400 thousand.
Iraq’s president and prime minister have often invited Christians who have fled the country to return and help rebuild the nation.
Yet, the dream of recovery has been impeded by an economic crisis, corruption, and the plight of 1.7 million internally displaced people.
UNICEF, the UN children’s aid agency, estimates that some 4 million Iraqis require humanitarian assistance, of whom half are children. Add in the Covid-19 pandemic and the situation remains dire in a country of over 38 million people.
In that context, Pope Francis’ visit to Iraq in the Spring will surely bring a breath of fresh hope to this long-suffering nation, as Cardinal Sako himself told Vatican News after Monday's announcement. | Diplomatic Visit | December 2020 | ['(Vatican News)'] |
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, announces she will resign in July when her appointment ends. | The UN's top climate diplomat, Christiana Figueres, has said she will leave her post in July.
Ms Figueres said she would not accept an extension of her appointment which finishes this summer. As executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, she played a key role in the talks that lead to the Paris Climate Agreement. Her contribution to the negotiation process was praised as "really extraordinary".
Ms Figueres became executive secretary in the wake of the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, widely perceived to have been a failure. Over the past six years she helped rebuilt the momentum for a global compact, which saw 195 nations sign the Paris Climate Agreement after weeks of intense negotiations in the French capital last December. In her letter to the UN confirming that she was standing down, the 59-year-old Ms Figueres highlighted the importance of that deal.
"The Paris Agreement is a historical achievement, built on years of increasing willingness to construct bridges of collaboration and solidarity. It has been an honour to support you along this path over the past six years," she wrote. Before taking the UN post in 2010, Ms Figueres had been part of Costa Rica's climate negotiating team since the mid 1990s.
Her contribution to the successful outcome of the talks in Paris was praised by climate economist Lord Stern.
"Christiana's contribution to international climate negotiations over the [past] six years has been really extraordinary," he said. "She is gifted with an outstanding ability to see where we need to go as a world and to bring people together.
"Christiana is one of the great leaders of our time. She no doubt has much more to contribute in the coming years. The challenge for everyone is to build on her achievements, and I am sure she will be part of that."
Ms Figueres has announced her decision to stand down in the same week as the President of the Paris conference, Laurent Fabius, announced he was stepping aside from that role. He is being replaced by French environment minister Segolene Royal. Hardliner Raisi set to be new Iran president
Cleric Ebrahim Raisi - Iran's top judge - has received most of the votes counted so far.
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | February 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
ISRO successfully launched India's Reusable Launch Vehicle demonstrator mission . | The Indian Space Research Organisation has successfully launched a Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstrator mission. The flight began at 07:00 Indian Standard Time on 23 May (01:30 UTC), resulting in a successful launch for the winged, reusable space plane that conducted a suborbital mission to gather in-flight data.
Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstrator:
The quest to develop reusable spaceflight has led the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to develop a series of Technology Demonstration missions in a phased approach toward the introduction of a new Two-Stage To Orbit, winged, reusable launch vehicle. As part of this development sequence, ISRO has developed a four flight test sequence that will incrementally test the various flight characteristics its under-development Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) will experience during flight as well as the scramjet propulsion engines the RLV is planned to use.
This four flight test sequence includes the Hypersonic Flight Experiment (HEX), the Landing Experiment (LEX), the Return Flight Experiment (REX), and the Scramjet Propulsion Experiment (SPEX). The mission that launched was HEX, the first test in the four-flight sequence.
The HEX mission used a scaled prototype, called the Reusable Launch Vehicle – Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), of the RLV design. In total, the RLV-TD is a 1.75 ton, 6.5 meter long vehicle that is able to achieve an altitude of approximately 70 kilometers. The RLV-TD was mounted atop a 1 meter in diameter, 9 ton solid booster (HS9) and launched from the first launchpad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, previously known as the Sriharikota High Altitude Range, in southeastern India. The HS9 booster launched the RLV-TD beyond most of Earth’s lower atmosphere.
After a 90sec burn, the booster delivered the RLV-TD to the proper altitude before separating from the prototype and destructively fall back to Earth in the Bay of Bengal.
Meanwhile, the RLV-TD continued on, falling back into Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic velocity.
During this hypersonic test, the RLV-TD pitched its nose up relative to the horizon and direction of travel – just as the Space Shuttles did during atmospheric entry.
This allowed engineers to gather valuable in-flight data surrounding the performance of the vehicle’s thermal protection system (600 heat-resistant tiles and a carbon-carbon nose), its aerodynamic characteristics during hypersonic flight, and inform the overall design of the eventual full-scale RLV. Since this was primarily a hypersonic flight technology demonstration mission, this particular RLV-TD did not carry the capability to return to land for landing.
Therefore, once it performed its primary mission glide through the atmosphere, it splashed down into the Bay of Bengal.
While several sources claimed that the HEX mission RLV-TD was to be recovered, an equal number of sources claim that it wasn’t to be recovered. The latter proved to be correct as officials noted that while recovery ships had been deployed, the recovery of the vehicle was not in the planning for this test.
The entire flight, from liftoff to splashdown was claimed to have lasted approximately 20 minutes.
Regardless of recoverability, HEX carried five distinct mission objectives, including: validating the aerodynamic design characteristics of the RLV during hypersonic flight, characterizing induced loads during hypersonic re-entry into the atmosphere, recovering the vehicle from the sea, assessing the performance of the carbon fibre used in construction of the nose of the vehicle, and demonstrating first stage separation sequencing.
*Main Background And Coverage Thread*
It should be noted that these mission objectives have not been publically updated since 2009, which initially pointed at the “recovery of the vehicle” objective. However, that has since moved to future tests.
The Road to the HEX mission:
As with all first flight scenarios, several proposed and targeted launch dates have come and gone for the HEX mission. The initially stated launch date was in 2009, but has slipped incrementally as various testing and support facilities came on line.
By the end of 2014, ISRO stated that the HEX mission would launch in one year’s time. For a while, that looked like it would hold true, with numerous media events and releases in early 2015 stating that the HEX mission was targeted for the “first half of 2015”.
In March-April 2015, ISRO highlighted the work over the previous year toward RLV-TD, which included studies of 3D heat flux and shear distribution of heat over the test vehicle, software validations, uplink trials of telemetry packages with satellites, and actuator design, fabrication, and acceptance testing.
Moreover, the HS9 solid rocket motor’s Secondary Injection Thrust Vector Control System was tested successfully. By April 2015, ISRO stated that the HS9 solid booster was at Satish Dhawan Space Centre and that flight of the HEX mission was on track to occur before July 1, 2015.
However, by mid-May 2015, launch had slipped to the second half of 2015, and vehicle integration was still 8-10 weeks away.
This delay was directly linked to ISRO’s decision to prioritize its commercial launches ahead of HEX.
The mission then slipped to early 2016 before settling in May 2016 after a leak was found before final ground testing on the RLV-TD.
The HEX vehicle arrived at the launch site in late-April and was integrated to its HS9 booster without publicized issue. A Mission Readiness Review was conducted on May 11 and cleared the RLV-TD and booster for launch. | Military Exercise | May 2016 | ['(RLV–TD)', '(NASA Spaceflight)'] |
An earthquake strikes the Democratic Republic of the Congo . Many people are feared dead after an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck Lake Tanganyika near the town of Kalemie. | Nairobi - A strong earthquake has shaken central and east Africa on Monday, causing buildings to sway in at least six nations near its epicentre on the border between Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. No damage or injuries were immediately reported from the temblor that registered 7.5 on the Richter scale, according to the French Observatory of Earth Sciences in Strasbourg and magnitude 6.8, according to the US geological survey.
The two facilities said the epicentre was near the eastern side of Lake Tanganyika, which forms the border between Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and struck at 12:19 GMT (15:19 local time) in most of the affected countries.
Residents of the capitals of at least six countries - Burundi, the DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda - reported feeling the tremors.
In the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and port city of Mombasa, tall buildings swayed as the earth shook for 15 seconds sending office workers fleeing into the streets for safety, witnesses said.
"I was sitting at my desk when I started feeling dizzy," said an AFP journalist who was in the news agency's office in the fifth floor of a 13-storey downtown building. "Everything was swaying."
"The tremor lasted about 15 seconds, then we decided to leave the building," he added.
Kenya's private Nation television reported that some cracks had been observed in some downtown buildings after the temblor but this could not immediately be confirmed.
In the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, residents also felt the quake which forced the evacuation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) which is trying suspects in that country's 1994 genocide, witnesses said.
In Rwanda itself, residents of the capital Kigali said they had felt the earth shaking as did witnesses in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, the Burundian capital of Bujumbura and several towns in the eastern DRC. | Earthquakes | December 2005 | ['(formerly Zaire)', '(TimesOnLine)', '(News24)', '(The Independent)', '(BBC)'] |
Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank agrees to buy British IT company ARM Holdings for more than $32 billion. | In the wake of the historic Brexit vote and the fall of the Pound, the UK is now witnessing its biggest-ever technology exit. Today, Arm Holdings confirmed that Japan’s Softbank Group has offered to pay £24.3 billion ($32 billion) in cash to acquire the company — known for its chip designs for mobile handsets (Apple is a customer) as well as for processors to power hardware in Internet of Things networks. It’s the IoT piece that interests Softbank the most, Softbank said.
Notably Softbank is also entering into a bridge loan deal for up to 1 trillion yen to finance the acquisition.
Both boards are recommending the deal, Softbank and Arm said in statements today, but the sale will still need to get regulatory approval. Softbank has made many asset disposals of late, such as selling off its stake in Supercell and part of its very valuable Alibaba stake, which should also help to finance this deal.
The FT reported over the weekend that it was in progress, although its numbers were off by about £1 billion.
Arm Holdings will remain an independent business in the UK post-acquisition, Softbank said, headquartered in Cambridge, UK.
“We have long admired ARM as a world renowned and highly respected technology company that is by some distance the market-leader in its field. ARM will be an excellent strategic fit within the SoftBank group as we invest to capture the very significant opportunities provided by the “Internet of Things,” said Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank, in a statement.
“This investment also marks our strong commitment to the UK and the competitive advantage provided by the deep pool of science and technology talent in Cambridge. As an integral part of the transaction, we intend to at least double the number of employees employed by ARM in the UK over the next five years… This is one of the most important acquisitions we have ever made, and I expect ARM to be a key pillar of SoftBank’s growth strategy going forward.”
Arm was equally endorsing of the deal.
“It is the view of the Board that this is a compelling offer for ARM Shareholders, which secures the delivery of future value today and in cash. The Board of ARM is reassured that ARM will remain a very significant UK business and will continue to play a key role in the development of new technology,” said Stuart Chambers, Chairman of ARM, in a statement.
“SoftBank has given assurances that it will invest considerably in the business, including doubling the UK headcount over the next five years and maintaining ARM’s unique culture and business model. ARM is an outstanding company with an exceptional track record of growth. The Board believes that by accessing all the resources that SoftBank has to offer, ARM will be able to further accelerate the use of ARM-based technology wherever computing happens.”
There are two parts of the deal that fit for Softbank. The company does indeed have an extensive mobile business, which has been ARM’s bread and butter for years (and even spurred rumors that Apple might buy the company back in 2010).
But back in 2013, Arm could see the writing on the wall for the eventual shift in mobile (and subsequent slowdown of handset sales, which has come to pass), and it itself made a big investment into IoT by acquiring Sensinode. This, it turns out, was a pretty prescient and smart move, considering that this part of the business is what motivated this deal.
The deal works out to 1,700 pence per ARM Share, a premium of 43.0 percent on the closing price of 1,189 pence per ARM Share on July 15, 2016. | Organization Merge | July 2016 | ['(Wall Street Journal)', '(TechCrunch)'] |
Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont and a 2004 U.S. presidential candidate, is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee. | Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean took the helm of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday, vowing, "Today will be the beginning of the re-emergence of the Democratic Party."
Dean, 56, won the chairmanship on a voice vote of the 447-member committee after six other candidates dropped out in recent weeks.
He immediately laid out his vision for rebuilding a party clobbered in recent elections, leaving it out of power in the White House, both chambers of Congress, and a majority of governorships.
"Republicans wandered around in the political wilderness for 40 years before they took back Congress. "But the reason that we lost control is because we forgot why we were entrusted with that control in the first place," Dean said in his acceptance speech. "The American people cannot afford to wait for 40 more years for us to put Washington back to work for them." "It won't take us that long -- not if we stand up for what we believe in, organize at the local level, and recognize that strength does not come from the consultants down. It comes from the grass roots up."
Republicans, Dean said, "know the America they want, and...are not afraid to use any means to get there.
"But there is something that this administration and the Republican Party are very afraid of -- it is that we may actually begin fighting for what we believe: fiscally responsible, socially progressive values for which Democrats have always stood and fought."
The former presidential contender, who appeared likely to win the party's nomination before his candidacy fizzled in early 2004, promised to work hard in areas in which the Democratic Party faces major uphill battles.
While avoiding the heated, emotional style of his infamous "scream" speech that contributed to his loss of the presidential nomination, Dean, in measured tones, lobbed heavy criticism at the GOP and President Bush's agenda.
Referring to Bush's 2006 budget, submitted this week, Dean said, "The Republicans introduced a $2.5 trillion budget that deliberately conceals the cost of their fiscal recklessness." The budget, Dean said, "brings Enron-style accounting to the nation's capital and it demonstrates once again what all Americans are now beginning to see: you cannot trust Republicans with your money."
He lashed out at Bush's Social Security plan, which would allow people to place some money earmarked for Social Security into private investment accounts.
"We believe that a lifetime of work earns you a retirement of dignity," he said. "We will not let that be put at risk by leaders who continually invent false crises to justify policies that don't work, in this case borrowing from our children, shredding our social safety net in the process."
Despite his litany of criticisms, Dean said, "We cannot win if all we are is against the current president and his administration."
"The Republicans will not tell Americans what the Democratic agenda is. We will do that," he aid.
Dean described his party is a "big tent" that represents the young, the elders, veterans, members of the armed services, and all working Americans "desperate for a government that looks out for them."
Dean also vowed to work to help the Democratic Party build a reputation as strong on national security, saying, "There is no reason for Democrats to be defensive on national defense."
Some Democrats are nervous that Dean, who has actively opposed the Iraq war from the start, will galvanize Republicans. But others see him as just what the party needs: an outspoken, courageous voice that does not bend to the winds of political change.
Dean has proven an ability to build widespread, grass roots support, particularly through the Internet.
Many Republican leaders have said they look forward to Dean leading the DNC. Many describe him as an angry, northern liberal -- a symbol of what many argue is "wrong" with the Democratic Party.
"I think if (Democrats) have a true death wish, he'd be the perfect guy to go with," former House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich told Fox News last month. | Government Job change - Election | February 2005 | ['(CNN)'] |
The Afghan National Army kills 28 Taliban insurgents as the militants attempt an ambush of a convoy in Zabul province. | KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan soldiers killed 28 Taliban in a clash on Sunday after the guerrillas ambushed a convoy carrying supplies for foreign troops in the southern province of Zabul, government officials said.
Violence has surged in Afghanistan since 2006 when the ousted Taliban relaunched their insurgency to topple the government and drive out foreign troops backing it.
Sunday’s encounter occurred in Shah Joy district, on the main highway linking Kabul with southern and western regions, said Defence Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimi.
“After several hours of fighting, 28 Taliban have been killed,” he said.
Zabul’s deputy governor, Gulab Shah Alikhail, said five men guarding the convoy were killed in the ambush and eight wounded.
Taliban spokesmen could not be reached for comment.
The Taliban, ousted from power in 2001, have stepped up their raids, backed by suicide attacks and roadside bombs, and extended the depth and extent of their guerrilla war in recent months.
On Saturday, 10 policemen were killed by a roadside bomb in neighboring Kandahar province, a senior police officer said, in one of the deadliest recent attacks on the police.
About 15,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan since 2006.
The violence comes despite the presence of increasing number of foreign troops now standing at more than 71,000 and more than 140,000 members of Afghan security forces.
| Armed Conflict | August 2008 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The man photographed sitting at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's desk during the storming of the United States Capitol is arrested in Little Rock, Arkansas. | Richard Barnett, the man who was photographed sitting at Speaker Nancy Pelosi's desk during Wednesday's riot at the Capitol, was arrested and faces multiple charges.
Kevin Daley, a reporter for The Washington Free Beacon, tweeted that the Justice Department announced Barnett's arrest in Little Rock, Arkansas, during a press call on Friday. Kurt Maddox, mayor of Barnett's home town of Gravette, Arkansas, also confirmed Barnett was in FBI custody. Barnett was photographed sitting in Pelosi's chair with his foot on her desk.
Barnett, 60, faces charges of entering and remaining on restricted grounds, violent entry and theft of public property, according to NBC News. He's one of at least 26 people sought by the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department, which offered a reward of up to $1,000 for information that leads to their arrest and indictment.
Ahead of his arrest, Barnett told Arkansas TV station KFSM he had traveled to Washington, D.C., to hear President Donald Trump speak, adding that the "crowds were unbelievable." By the time he reached the top of the Capitol steps, he said, the protesters had breached the doors and were trying to get inside.
He admitted to participating in the riot inside the building but said he was pushed into the building when the mob broke through the doors.
"I threw my feet up on the desk at that point. I realized some a**holes had cut me also and I bled on her envelope, so I picked up the envelope and put it in my pocket, and I put a quarter on the desk 'cause I'm not a thief," Barnett told KFSM.
Barnett also told the TV station that "hell no," he wasn't "scared" about the possibility that he might face federal charges for entering Pelosi's office. But he rejected the idea that had done "anything," saying he was "walking around looking for a bathroom."
Along with Barnett, West Virginia Delegate Derrick Evans was arrested and charged in connection with the rioting on Friday, according to NBC News. Evans has rejected calls for him to resign from his position, and his attorney offered a story similar to Barnett's.
"Given the sheer size of the group walking in, Evans had no choice but to enter," attorney John Bryan said. "Evans continued to film once inside. His footage showed that members of the public were already inside the Capitol by the time he entered. Evans' footage shows no riotous behavior taking place at that time. Protesters can be seen calmly walking around."
Evans' peers in the West Virginia Legislature have called for him to be removed from office. Republican Delegate Steve Westfall told radio station WMOV there could be a vote to remove him from his position.
"I believe the first order of business after [selecting leadership] is there will be a motion made to remove Derrick Evans as a member of the House," Westfall said. "And there'll be debate on it up and down, and there'll be a vote."
The delegate added, "If there is a vote, I will vote to remove him. I just think he let us all down. He made us look bad."
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | January 2021 | ['(Newsweek)'] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.