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A suicide bomber kills at least seven people outside a bank in Lashkargah. | A suicide bomber killed seven people and wounded 20 others outside a bank in the capital city of Afghanistan’s Helmand province on Saturday, the governor’s office said on Saturday.
The bomber detonated an explosives-packed car next to an Afghan army vehicle as soldiers arrived at a bank in Lashkar Gah to collect their pay, the Helmand governor’s spokesman, Omar Zwak, said.
Among the dead were four civilians and three soldiers. Sixteen civilians and four soldiers were wounded, he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the Taliban have seized large areas of Helmand and have often threatened Lashkar Gah.
Hundreds of international troops are stationed in Helmand as part of the NATO-led effort to train and support Afghan security forces, which have struggled to contain a growing insurgency.
At least one American special forces soldier was wounded in fighting there this week.
To the north of Lashkar Gah, a local official said that an American military air strike killed a number of civilians in a recent bombing in Sangin district.
The allegation has not been independently verified.
U.S. military spokesman Captain Bill Salvin said that U.S. jets had conducted strikes in Sangin in the past few weeks.
While U.S. forces had “no evidence that civilians were killed in these strikes”, Salvin said the command would investigate the claims.
“We take every precaution to prevent and mitigate civilian casualties and we take every allegation seriously.” | Armed Conflict | February 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
A shipwreck in Sierra Leone leaves "scores" dead. | A boat with about 150 people on board has capsized off the coast of Sierra Leone, with dozens feared dead.
Fishermen have joined a naval rescue mission and so far 46 people have been saved, with eight confirmed dead. The boat, believed to be a small vessel with an outboard motor meant for about 25 people, was hugely overcrowded. It was travelling on a short sea route between Plantain Island and the coastal town of Shenge, about 65km (40 miles) south of the capital, Freetown. The BBC's Lansana Fofana, in Freetown, says many of those who have been rescued are in a serious condition. He says the route is highly dangerous as there is never any protective gear on board and the boats are often overcrowded. | Shipwreck | September 2009 | ['(The New York Times)', '(BBC)', '(The Daily Telegraph)', '(The Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
The three men suspected of causing an explosion at a shop in Leicester in February are convicted of murder. The explosion destroyed the shop and the flat above it, killing five people. The three men were also convicted of conspiracy with one of the victims to commit insurance fraud. | Aram Kurd, Arkan Ali and Hawkar Hassan plotted to claim insurance payout in Polish supermarket blast
First published on Fri 28 Dec 2018 11.05 GMT
Three men have been convicted of murder after deliberately starting a fire at a Leicester shop that killed five people, including a woman and her two sons, in a plot to claim a 300,000 insurance payout.
Arkan Ali, 38, Hawkar Hassan, 33, and Aram Kurd, 34, used dozens of litres of petrol in an arson attack on a Polish supermarket, triggering a huge explosion which tore through the shop and destroyed the flat above it.
They left Viktorija Ijevleva, a 22-year-old shopworker, to die in the building because she was aware of the insurance policy, which had been taken out less than three weeks earlier, Leicester crown court heard during the five-week trial.
Ali, Hassan and Kurd were unanimously found guilty of five counts of murder on Friday after they had denied murder and alternative counts of manslaughter.
They were also convicted of conspiring with Ijevleva, who was Ali’s girlfriend, to make a gain by dishonestly pursuing an insurance claim in respect of the fire.
Ijevleva, Mary Ragoobeer, 46, her teenage sons Shane and Sean, and 18-year-old Leah Beth Reek, who was Shane’s girlfriend, were all killed in the blast on 25 February in Hinckley Road.
Such was the ferocity of the explosion that some residents living nearby thought a bomb had had been detonated, the court heard. In fact, about 26 litres of petrol had been used to start the fire in the supermarket’s basement, causing the explosion just after 7pm.
CCTV and traffic camera footage released by the police after the trial show people fleeing from a nearby takeaway moments later. Rubble was also blasted into the road as cars passed.
Other footage police recovered from a neighbouring business showed Ali three days before the blast, moments before the angle of the camera was moved.
A day before the fire, other images from the same CCTV unit showed a gloved hand again moving the camera angle at a time when all the defendants were nearby. Another CCTV camera recorded Kurd escaping from the scene at the rear of the shop.
Ali, Hassan and Kurd, who were remanded in custody, will be sentenced later this month.
David Herbert, prosecuting, told the jury at the start of the trial that the trio had intended to maximise the damage to the shop and would have been aware that people would have been in the two-storey flat above.
“The explosion and the proceeding fire demolished a building and killed five people in the building one person who was in the shop and four who were in the flat above enjoying a peaceful night in,” he said.
“Even on camera 50 metres away you can see the explosion and the enormity of what happened. It was an explosion, the prosecution say, caused by many, many litres of petrol.
“The explosion and the fire that followed was deliberately caused by these defendants who intended to profit from loss of stock, contents and future loss of business from the shop. It was not an accident, the prosecution say, that the petrol used caused such devastating damage.”
Describing the unlawful killing of Ijevleva, Herbert said: “The defendants thought she knew too much and decided to leave her to die in the explosion that they created. In other words, the devastation that they caused was carried out with the intention to kill.”
A statement was read out on the court steps by DC Steve Markley on behalf of Jose Ragoobeer, the husband of Mary and father of Shane and Sean Ragoobeer. He said Mary was devoted to her family and had two jobs to ensure her sons had everything they needed. “She always made sure that the boys had the latest gear, including football kits for the teams they supported.”
Reek’s family said she had been looking forward to training as a nurse. Her older sister, Molly, said: “We have been asked to try to explain the impact on our lives after losing Leah in such horrific circumstances.
“She was an amazing, inspirational young lady who had only turned 18 last July. She was just starting out on her life adventure. In her 18 too short but wonderful years, she made a lasting impression on everyone lucky enough to know her.
“We miss her terribly, every second of every day we carry the pain of losing Leah. She has left a Leah-shaped hole in our hearts that nothing will ever fill. She was too special for anyone that didn’t know her to fully understand the impact her death has had on so many.” | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | December 2018 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Northern Ireland police charge nine members of the New IRA arrested last week for terrorism, conspiracy, and possession of explosives, among others. A tenth member remains in custody. | DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ten people arrested last week in an investigation of the militant Irish nationalist New IRA group have been charged on a range of offences from directing terrorism to conspiracy to possess explosives, Northern Ireland police said on Monday.
The New IRA, one of a small number of active militant groups opposed to Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace deal, have been behind some of the sporadic attacks that have continued, including the murder of journalist Lyra McKee last year.
The 10 people, eight men and two women - were charged with a total of 39 offences as a result of a coordinated investigation with police in Scotland, Ireland and Britain that was also assisted by Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence agency.
The New IRA is far smaller than the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which disarmed after the peace accord mostly ended three decades of conflict between mainly Protestant supporters of continued British rule of the province and largely Catholic proponents of unification with the Irish Republic.
The group was formed in 2012 after three of the four main militant nationalist groups merged, the first time since the peace deal that most of the disparate nationalist groups still intent on violence came together under one leadership.
It has also been responsible for the separate killings of two prison officers since then.
Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Lisa Shumaker
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Exclusive: Fed’s Neel Kashkari opposes rate hikes at least through 2023 as the central bank becomes more hawkish | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | August 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Morrissey, ex–frontman of The Smiths, is hospitalized after collapsing on stage while performing "This Charming Man" during his world tour. | Former Smiths singer Morrissey has been taken to hospital after collapsing on stage with breathing difficulties.
Eyewitnesses said the 50-year-old fell to the floor during a performance of his former band's song This Charming Man at Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon. Two of his current band's members took him off stage and an ambulance took him to Great Western Hospital, where his condition was described as "stable". The singer has cancelled several dates this year because of illness. 'Reclusive character'
Jillian Moody, who was at the concert, said initially the crowd was not aware of how serious the singer's condition was. "It was interesting because a lot of people around us had bought tickets for Morrissey concerts earlier in the year," she said. "He has cancelled numerous concerts so they just thought that, you know, he had gone off but would be returning.
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. "I didn't think he looked particularly well but then again, he's sort of well known as a reclusive character so I sort of thought that was just the way he was when he was on stage. "He kept putting his hand up to his mouth as if he felt sick or... perhaps he was trying to hide something, but he didn't look particularly comfortable." 'Conscious patient'
A Great Western Ambulance Service spokeswoman said: "Just after 9pm we got a call to a 50-year-old who was reported to be suffering from respiratory problems and was unconscious. "We sent a paramedic in a double-crewed ambulance. "When they arrived they found a conscious patient who was not feeling well at all. "They made an initial assessment and took him to the Great Western Hospital for further assessment." A spokesman for Swindon's Great Western Hospital said: "Morrissey was brought in to the Accident and Emergency department this evening. "He has been seen by the medical team. At this stage his condition is stable." His tour is due to move onto its European leg next month, including gigs in the Netherlands, France, Belguim, Germany and Ireland before moving on to nine dates in the United States. | Famous Person - Sick | October 2009 | ['(BBC)', '(The Guardian)', '(Sky News)'] |
About 15 Egyptian soldiers and 2 civilians are killed by a combination of guns and car bombs. | Militants have reportedly killed 17 people in the north of Egypt's Sinai peninsula, near the Israel-Gaza border.
Security sources say 15 soldiers and two civilians died when gunmen attacked checkpoints around the town of Sheikh Zuweid on Thursday. Egyptian forces have been fighting a faction affiliated to the Islamic State group, known as Sinai Province. Dozens of soldiers and civilians have already been killed this year in northern Sinai.
In the latest incident, gunmen fired on soldiers with automatic rifles and rockets as part of a co-ordinated set of attacks, police officials say.
The army claimed to have killed at least 70 suspected militants in March.
Sinai Province was known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis until it pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in November. It said it was behind most of the major attacks in Sinai, including a series of strikes that left at least 30 people dead on 29 January.
Militants based in Sinai have killed hundreds of soldiers and police since the military overthrew Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. | Armed Conflict | April 2015 | ['(BBC)', '(NY Times)'] |
Kurmanbek Bakiyev has been sworn in as Kyrgyzstan's new president after winning nearly 90 percent of the vote last month in an election to find a successor to President Askar Akayev, who was ousted during protests in March. | BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan's new president, the first leader in ex-Soviet Central Asia to be elected in a vote judged fair by foreign observers, took office on Sunday, pledging to stamp out corruption in the impoverished state.
President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was sworn in on the capital Bishkek's main square after winning nearly 90 percent of the vote last month in an election to find a successor to President Askar Akayev, ousted during protests and a coup in March.
"We will eradicate the system of corruption in our country and drive the economy out of the shadows," Bakiyev said during a short speech to the crowd of around 10,000 people.
"We have demonstrated to the whole world that we are a nation capable of defending democracy."
Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous state on China's border, is the first of the five Central Asian former Soviet republics to install a new leader in an election.
Three of the other four states -- Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan -- are still ruled by their Communist-era rulers, while in the fourth, Tajikistan, President Imomali Rakhmonov came to power in 1992 at the beginning of a five-year civil war.
Bakiyev, 56, has been acting president since Akayev fled the country and now faces the challenge of forming a government in which many disparate former Akayev opponents expect places in return for supporting the protests that helped topple him.
REVOLUTION?
Bakiyev, who was once a prime minister under Akayev before joining the opposition, has led an interim government that has been criticised for cronyism and his anti-corruption drive has been accused of focussing solely on Akayev and his supporters.
But the election that he won on July 11 "generally respected" civil and political rights and took the country a step closer to meeting international democratic standards, according to monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Some of Bakiyev's supporters have sought to draw parallels between Akayev's demise -- prompted by protests against a flawed parliamentary vote -- and mass demonstrations, dubbed "bloodless revolutions", in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine last year that swept long-serving leaders from power.
The Kyrgyz protests were much smaller than those in Ukraine and Georgia and in some cases involved violence, but they reflected widespread dissatisfaction with alleged corruption in Akayev's government and his removal from office set nerves jangling in neighbouring states.
Kazakhstan, the richest and most economically advanced of the Central Asian states, may hold a presidential election in December and has cracked down on dissent in recent months, banning an opposition party and newspaper.
The authorities in Uzbekistan bloodily suppressed an uprising in the eastern town of Andizhan in May, killing 500 people according to witnesses. Uzbek officials say 187 people were killed in a police action against "terrorists". | Government Job change - Election | August 2005 | ['(Reuters)'] |
A United States Federal grand jury indicts Jared Lee Loughner for attempted murder of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and two of her aides with further charges pending. , | TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) - A federal grand jury in Arizona indicted Jared Lee Loughner on Wednesday on charges of attempting to assassinate Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the attempted murder of two of her staff members.
An artist's depiction shows accused gunman Jared Lee Loughner (L) and his attorney, public defender Judy Clarke (R), during a court appearance in Phoenix, Arizona January 10, 2011. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | January 2011 | ['(Reuters)', '(AP via Washington Post)'] |
EU Foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini holds the highest-level talks between the EU and Iran in decades to mark a new phase in relations between the two. Both sides are keen to focus on trade, energy and the environment as possible areas of cooperation. | The European Union and Iran have "turned a new page" in their diplomatic relations, the EU's foreign policy chief said on a visit to Tehran.
Federica Mogherini said they had agreed to work on closer ties in a number of areas, including the economy, energy, education, migration and transport.
The visit follows last year's historic nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.
She said the results of their talks would "make a real difference" to the lives of Iranians and Europeans.
Meanwhile, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been holding talks with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the presidential palace in Ankara.
They agreed to increase banking and economic co-operation and boost trade to $30bn (£21bn) within two years.
Mr Erdogan said they also agreed to "reduce our differences" over Syria and other issues, to "work together to overcome the problems of terrorism and sectarianism and the related humanitarian crises that are shaking our region".
Ms Mogherini said the issue of Syria and stability in the Middle East region had been discussed in her talks with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Also, the question of human rights in Iran, of which she said "it is not a secret we have some concerns in this respect".
Mr Zarif, for his part, welcomed the EU's support for Iran's bid to join the World Trade Organization, but called on the US to fulfil their commitments in relation to the nuclear deal and remove obstacles to the banking sector.
Major European banks and businesses continue to be wary of investing in Iran, where US sanctions are still in place linked to alleged terrorism and human rights questions. "Iran and the EU will put pressure on the United States to facilitate the co-operation of non-American banks with Iran," Mr Zarif said. "It's essential that the other side, especially the United States, fulfil its commitments not on paper but in practice and removes the obstacles especially in banking sector."
Engaging directly with Iran - a key player in Syria - is for Europe one of the main benefits of the nuclear deal. Iranian officials also said they wanted to strengthen this relationship - especially because the kind of dialogue is still too politically sensitive for Iran to have with the United States, reports the BBC's Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet, who is travelling with the EU delegation.
Six world powers led by the US agreed in July last year to lift sanctions that had locked down much of Iran's economy for years in exchange for limits on Tehran's nuclear programme.
The move allowed Iran to resume a higher level of oil exports when the deal was implemented in January, as well as opening up more trade opportunities.
Iran 'receiving Russian missile system'
Iran 'risks EU sanctions over missiles'
Why Iran's investing billions in Europe
How has Rouhani's Europe visit been seen in Iran?
| Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | April 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
In Moscow, an unidentified attacker assassinates leading Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, the former Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation and current member of regional parliament of Yaroslavl Oblast. | In a sign that the ceasefire agreed for eastern Ukraine could be starting to take meaningful effect columns of pro-Russian separatists could be seen moving heavy weapons back from the frontline on Friday near the city of Donetsk, a rebel-held stronghold.
We have also seen significant indications that both sides are now taking steps to comply with the Minsk package
The process was being closely observed by European monitors. Ukrainian troops were also on the move on Friday, again under the gaze of OSCE observers. Kyiv says that three government soldiers have been killed in the past 24 hours, so the truce is far from perfect. Nevertheless the UN Security Council is satisfied that progress is being made on the Minsk agreement. “Combat operations have been significantly reduced across the conflict zone,” said ambassador Ertugrul Apakan, the chief monitor of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “Although some firing has occurred around Donetsk aiport as well as close to the town of Mariupol. We have also seen significant indications that both sides are now taking steps to comply with the Minsk package.”
But the process is still fragile and Ukraine’s UN ambassador says he does not trust Russia’s weapon withdrawal process. Such is the mistrust that Kyiv fears that the separatists could be regrouping and preparing to attack the port city of Mariupol. That would open a corridor to the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine last year. An army spokesman said they had tracked a convoy of missile systems and other equipment heading towards the city.
A leading Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov has been shot dead in Moscow.
According to several Russian news agencies, the 56-year-old former deputy prime minister was gunned down while walking with a woman near the Kremlin.
He is said to have been shot four times by several people who got out of a car.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and during Boris Yeltsin’s time in charge at the Kremlin, Nemtsov made his name as a western orientated free market reformer.
More recently, he co-founded the anti-Putin movement Solidarity, with chess champion Garry Kasparov, in an effort to unite various opposition groups.
Four years ago, he was sentenced to 15 days in jail after taking part in a New Year’s Eve opposition rally.
Italian MPs have backed a non-binding resolution that urges the government to recognise Palestine as a state.
Italy’s Chamber of Deputies voted by 300 to 45 to pass the motion presented by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party.
But they failed to back a move supported by the left wing Left Ecology and Liberty party that would have “fully and formally recognised the Palestinian State.”
While most developing countries recognise Palestine as a state, most Western European nations do not, supporting the Israeli and US positions that an independent Palestinian state should emerge from negotiations with Israel.
Ireland, Britain and France have held similar parliamentary votes on the status of Palestine in recent months. Sweden went further, officially recognising Palestine. Earlier, pro-Palestinians activists clashed with Israeli troops in the West Bank town of Bilin. Hundreds of Palestinians protesters gathered to mark the 10th anniversary of weekly demonstration against the construction of the Israeli separation barrier. | Armed Conflict | February 2015 | ['(euronews)', '(BBC)'] |
ADC Flight 53, a Nigerian Boeing 737 airliner carrying more than 100 passengers, crashes near Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. The Sultan of Sokoto Mohammadu Maccido, the sultan's son, Muhammed Maccido, a senator, and Abdulrahman Shehu Shagari, son of former Nigerian President Shehu Shagari, are on the list of passengers on board. , , There are six confirmed survivors. , | A Nigerian airplane with more than 100 people on board crashed shortly after take-off from the capital Abuja, media and emergency sources said.
The plane, operated by ADC, a Nigerian airline, burst into flames and casualties are expected, a security source said. An airline source said there were 114 aboard, not including crew.
Channels, a Nigerian television station, said there are six confirmed survivors. The fate of the others was not immediately clear. Third major crash in just over a year
Airport officials prevented journalists from getting close to the crash site at the far end of a runway, out of sight of the terminal building. Emergency vehicles, military trucks and ambulances drove onto the runway. The airport departure lounge is still packed with travellers, many seeking information on their mobile phones. ADC is a popular domestic passenger airline.
This is the third major air crash in Nigeria in just over one year. Head of Nigerian Muslims among the dead
Sultan Macchido, the spiritual head of Nigeria's Muslims, was killed in the crash, authorities said.
Other dignitaries also killed included the Sultan's son, who is a senator, the deputy governor of Sokoto state and at least one other senator, the governor of Sokoto state said. - Reuters | Air crash | October 2006 | ['(CBS)', '(Reuters)', '(Xinhua)', '(SABC)', '(CNN)'] |
Israeli forces fire on proPalestinian protesters attempting to breach the SyrianIsraeli border in the Golan Heights on Naksa Day, marking the anniversary of the 1967 SixDay War; Syrian sources claim that close to 20 people are killed and over 325 injured, while Israeli officials confirm at least 12 injures. , | Israel was accused of shooting dead as many as 20 protesters on Sunday after Palestinian refugees and their Syrian sympathisers massed in the occupied Golan Heights.
Hundreds of protesters came under fire as they advanced towards the fenced ceasefire line separating undisputed Syrian territory from the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967. The march, led by refugees intent on reclaiming their homes lost to Israel in an earlier war in 1948, was the second of its kind in just over three weeks. Four protesters were killed last month after they breached the border fence. The protesters, who waved Palestinian flags and occasionally threw stones, did not get as close on Sunday, although some did cut their way into a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the fence. As they approached, to cheers from Syrian citizens watching from rooftops in the Golan Heights, Israeli troops broadcast warning messages through loudhailers, saying: "Anyone who comes close to the fence will be responsible for their own blood. Anyone who tries to cross the border will be killed."
Israeli officials said at least 12 protesters were wounded when soldiers shot at their legs, but would not confirm reports from Syrian doctors and on state television in Damascus that 20 had been killed. Protesters said they were hoping to emulate Hassan Hijazi, who managed to reach his former home in the Israeli coastal city of Jaffa after the last protest before turning himself into the police. "We want on this occasion to remind America and the whole world that we have a right to return to our country," said Mohammed Hasan, a 16-year-old refugee wounded in both feet. Syrian television said Syrian and Palestinian protesters at the border decided to stage an open-ended sit-in. Thousands of people were travelling to the Quneitra border area to take part on Sunday night. | Armed Conflict | June 2011 | ['(AlJazeera)', '(The Telegraph)', '(Ynetnews)', '(The Jerusalem Post)', '(AP via Forbes)'] |
Seven Americans, including coal billionaire Chris Cline, are found dead in a helicopter crash in the Bahamas. | Christopher Cline, the billionaire coal tycoon best known for reviving Illinois’ mining industry and making a fortune doing it, was among seven people killed in a helicopter crash in the Bahamas, his lawyer’s office confirmed Friday. He was 60 years old.
Cline and his 22-year-old daughter, Kameron, were on the aircraft when it went down Thursday, said Joe Carey, a spokesman for attorney Brian Glasser. The helicopter was carrying seven Americans to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when it crashed, killing everyone aboard, Bahamian police said.
The Royal Bahamas Police Force said that the helicopter went missing shortly after leaving Big Grand Cay and that authorities and local residents later found the crash site two miles off Grand Cay. Police identified those killed as four women and three men but did not provide names.
Cline was the founder of St. Louis, Mo., coal miner Foresight Energy, a joint venture with Robert Murray’s Murray Energy Corp., and was a major Republican donor.
Cline, who died a day shy of his 61st birthday, was born into coal. His grandfather dug up the rock with a pickax, and he himself started working the mines at 22. Ten years later, he founded Cline Group to extract coal from beneath the hollows and rolling hills of Appalachia. He created Foresight to expand into Illinois in 2006. At its peak, the company was valued at more than $2.6 billion.
“Chris Cline built an empire and on every occasion was always there to give,” West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a fellow coal miner, said on Twitter.
Bahamian police did not provide a cause of the crash but said an investigation with civil aviation authorities was underway.
Bahamas Police Supt. Shanta Knowles said Friday that the search began off the islands of Big Grand Cay when police received a report from Florida that a group including Cline had failed to arrive as expected Thursday in Fort Lauderdale.
The bodies have been taken to the capital in Nassau to be officially identified, Knowles said. The helicopter was still in the water, and based on preliminary information, she did not believe there had been a distress call before it went down.
Foresight and Cline Group didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment left late Thursday. Glasser said Cline’s team was in touch with Foresight Chief Executive Robert Moore. “Chris had total confidence in Rob Moore, and that remains,” he said.
Foresight’s stock has traded at a fraction of what it did when Cline took the company public in 2014, weighed down by collapsing coal prices, increased competition and waning demand. The company said in May that it was suspending dividends while also cutting earnings and shipment forecasts for the year. Its shares plunged the most in intraday trading in almost three years on the announcement.
Cline was no stranger to politics. In 2017 it was revealed he gave $1 million to President Trump’s inaugural committee. Two years earlier, he revealed himself as the donor behind a $1-million contribution to a super PAC supporting Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign. Federal records show he also spread thousands of dollars to conservative groups as well as committees representing prominent Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Raised in a West Virginia town of 200 residents, Cline became one of the richest coal barons in America. According to a 2010 Bloomberg Markets profile, which dubbed him the “New King Coal,” he owned a 164-foot yacht called Mine Games and a 34,400-square-foot oceanfront mansion in Florida. The same profile noted that he would cruise Illinois in an Italian-made AgustaWestland helicopter with his Australian shepherd.
“He was a young man,” Glasser said. “He was audacious. He was a great man, and he will be missed.”
Tragedy haunted Cline — his first wife died of breast cancer in 1987, and his best friend, Sidney Green, died in 2002 when the roof collapsed in Cline’s mine near Wharton, W.Va.
Cline said in 2010 that he was already thinking about when his sons Christopher and Alex, then 16 and 15, would be old enough to join his business. He said they would need college educations and to be toughened up for life underground. To help his children, including two daughters, appreciate their privileged lives, Cline said at the time that he sometimes made them fly commercial, introduced them to miners and showed them videos of when he started out.
He said at the time that he hoped the films instilled a sense of what it took to rise from a life in a West Virginia backwater and become a billionaire.
The Associated Press and Bloomberg were used in compiling this report.
Your guide to our new economic reality.
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| Air crash | July 2019 | ['(Los Angeles Times)'] |
Mark Durkan, former Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, resigns as leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party . | As Mark Durkan steps down after nine years as the leader of the SDLP, Noel McAdam looks at his legacy
As late as last week Mark Durkan was facing calls to reconsider his decision to quit as SDLP chief. An impassioned MLA made the appeal during a party meeting at the Hillsborough talks — but the leader is not for turning.
Gauged by the potential and promise he appeared to represent initially, Durkan has been a disappointment.
The seeming, inexorable electoral decline of the party — though last summer’s European poll showed the rot may have finally stopped — was inextricably linked to the British and Irish governments’ emphasis on bringing Sinn Fein in from the cold. Even as it stole the SDLP’s clothes, there were no rewards from the electorate.
In addition the SDLP was never an easy party to lead. Many of its core members are still adjusting to the rise, and rise, of republicans and the post-Good Friday Agreement political landscape. Party organisation is patchy to say the least.
Durkan, who seems to have less ego than many politicians, remains personally frustrated and yet has reasons to be cheerful. The former Deputy First Minister was also Finance Minister, and played a major role in securing the Good Friday Agreement and, against the odds, bedding down devolution.
In terms of the process which has delivered relative political stability, no single individual has made a more durable contribution — nor will be more greatly missed. And subject to a deal on policing and justice, process politics is coming to an end in any event. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | February 2010 | ['(SDLP)', '(The Belfast Telegraph)', '(The Irish Times)'] |
Iran's Revolutionary Guards test fire several short–range missiles – the Fateh–110 and Tondar–69. | September 27, 2009 21:17 Iranian media say the Islamic Republic has tested short-range missiles and plans to test a long-range weapon believed to be capable of reaching Israel. State television says the elite Revolutionary Guard also tested a multiple missile launcher Sunday at the start of their regular war games. The long-range missile test is scheduled for Monday.
The military exercises are happening as tension is rising between Iran and Western nations over Tehran's controversial nuclear program.
Iran revealed this past week that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant, despite the United Nations' demands that it stop processing material used in nuclear bombs. A senior U.S. official says the Obama administration plans to tell Iran this week that it must open up the facility, turn over documents and provide access to key players in Tehran's nuclear program. Iran's nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, has told Iranian state television inspectors will be allowed to visit the site near the Shi'ite holy city of Qom. Iranian officials will discuss their nuclear program in Geneva Thursday with diplomats from the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.
The U.S. and its allies have accused Iran of developing a nuclear weapon, a claim Tehran denies. | Military Exercise | September 2009 | ['(Press TV)', '(Chosun Ilbo)', '(The Independent)', '(Xinhua)'] |
Former Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, is buried on his ranch in southern Israel following a state funeral at the Knesset attended by foreign dignitaries and Israelis. | A senior Egyptian diplomat was among the guests who honored former prime minister Ariel Sharon Monday morning at a state memorial ceremony held at the Knesset in Jerusalem.
The Egyptian embassy’s No. 2 diplomat was among the dozens of dignitaries who attended the event, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official told The Times of Israel. The Knesset ceremony featured eulogies by President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who extolled Sharon as one of Israel’s greatest military leaders.
No name for the official was available, and a spokesperson at the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv declined to comment. Egyptian diplomats in Israel generally keep a low profile due to strained formal relations between the countries. Behind-the-scenes, by contrast, security coordination between the two countries is currently fairly close.
In his speech at the ceremony, Netanyahu hailed Sharon’s military prowess and doctrines, some of which he employed in wars against Egypt. “His maneuvering and command abilities were demonstrated primarily during the Yom Kippur War when he led the IDF forces across the Suez Canal and surrounded the Egyptian Third Army,” the prime minister said. “This maneuver, under his command, reversed the direction of the battle and led to the successful conclusion of the war, which began under very difficult circumstances for the State of Israel.”
During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Sharon led Israeli troops across the Suez Canal, breaking the back of the Egyptian offensive. As his troops encircled Egypt’s Third Army, Sharon, a reserves officer at the time, instructed them to plant Israeli flags on the high ground, so that the Egyptians would look back across the water and see that they were trapped. | Famous Person - Death | January 2014 | ['(BBC)', '(The Times of Israel)'] |
An Eldoret operation commences to close down Kenya's largest camp for people forced to flee their homes during the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis ethnic violence. | An operation to close down Kenya's largest camp for people forced to flee their homes during post-election ethnic violence in 2008 is due to start.
The camp, in the western town of Eldoret which saw bitter fighting, has been home to more than 2,000 people left homeless by the violence. The government is reportedly offering each family 35,000 shillings (£290; $460) and transport home. But some camp residents say their homes are still too dangerous to return to. 'Nowhere to go'
The BBC's Wanyama wa Chebusiri in Eldoret says the police have organised a special squad - perhaps in case they have to carry out evictions. And residents held a meeting to decide their next move. But apart from that, there was no sign that officials would carry out their threat to begin shutting the camp on Monday. A BBC team visiting the site reported normal life continuing uninterrupted. When officials finally start moving people out, they are likely to face difficulties as many residents do not want to go. One camp resident told the BBC she did not believe the amount of money the government was offering would be enough to reconstruct her life. "I have two children - I have to pay for school fees, and at this stage I have nowhere to go," she said. "I'm tired of being chased from where I come from. What the government can do - they better kill me so I can rest." The government has ordered the rest of Kenya's camps for internally displaced people to close within two weeks. Some 1,500 people died and and at least 300,000 were left homeless after a disputed presidential election result in December 2007 led to weeks of ethnic violence. | Government Policy Changes | September 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
One person is injured following an apparent letter bomb attack in the British Embassy in the Croatian capital Zagreb. | A device exploded in a post room at about 0630 BST, the UK Foreign Office said, leaving a Croatian worker with slight injuries to the lower leg.
Croatian President Stipe Mesic condemned the incident in his country's capital as a "terrorist attack" and vowed to track down those responsible.
Croatian authorities said it was lucky the incident was not on a bigger scale.
No group has yet said they carried out the attack, which police are investigating.
I cannot help but think this act is directed against Croatia's efforts to join the EU
Ivo Sanader,Croatian prime minister
It comes after several embassies received threatening letters this year.
A Foreign Office spokesman said he was unaware of any threats to the embassy, but said security at the building had been stepped up.
Ambassador Sir John Ramsden attended the embassy in the capital as the investigation got under way.
He confirmed the blast happened in the post room and thanked the Croatian Ministry of the Interior for its help. "I would also like to thank Prime Minister Sanader and all other Croatian officials that have immediately contacted us with messages of support," he added.
War crimes suspect
Interior minister Ivica Kirin said British citizens in Croatia had no reason to fear for their safety.
The EU postponed entry talks with Croatia in March over the country's failure to co-operate fully with the United Nations war crimes tribunal.
As current EU president, Britain will oversee a reassessment of Croatia's membership bid in the next few weeks.
The application was put on hold in March because Zagreb failed to arrest war crimes suspect General Ante Gotovina, revered as a hero by many Croats.
Croatia's Prime Minister Ivo Sanader told Reuters news agency he believed the incident could be directed against Croatia's efforts to join the EU.
"There are certainly people who want to slow down Croatia's integration into the EU," he is quoted as saying.
"By this I do not mean Eurosceptics, which is a legitimate political position. Whatever the motives, we will not tolerate such acts." | Armed Conflict | September 2005 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Carolina Hurricanes win ice hockey's Stanley Cup in game seven of a best of seven series for the first time defeating the Edmonton Oilers 3–1. , | The Hurricanes downed the Edmonton Oilers 3-1 Monday night in Game 7 to win the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history.
GAME REPORT: Hurricanes 3, Oilers 1
"It's been a long road," said Carolina defenseman Glen Wesley, who played 17 previous NHL seasons without winning a Cup.
"It's been a longer road coming from Greensboro, where we had (6,000 or 7,000) people in the stands. But the hard-core fans supported us, driving from Raleigh to see the games. But there were some bumpy roads." Owner Peter Karmanos transferred the Hartford Whalers to North Carolina in 1997, and there were questions around the hockey world about whether the game would sell in North Carolina, particularly with the team forced to play in Greensboro until the arena was completed in Raleigh in 1999.
Carolina goalie Cam Ward, 22, posted a 2.14 goals-against average and a .920 save percentage to become the fourth rookie netminder to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, joining Ken Dryden (Montreal Canadiens, 1971), Patrick Roy (Montreal, 1986) and Ron Hextall (Philadelphia Flyers, 1987). Hextall earned his trophy in a losing effort.
"I got to raise the Cup because of that kid (Ward)," Carolina captain Rod Brind'Amour said. "He never looked like there was a panic situation. He was just calm. You don't realize how much confidence that gives a team." Defensemen Aaron Ward scored a little more than a minute into the game, and that seemed to ignite the loud Carolina fans, many of whom had been out tailgating before the game. Carolina fans tailgate like they are going to a college football game.
Though the Hurricanes lost Games 5 and 6, the fans seemed not to lose faith.
"We saw how loud and loyal our fans can be," Cam Ward said. "We deserve this, but our fans truly deserve it." Aaron Ward said that before the team moved from Greensboro to its current arena in Raleigh, he could have worn his jersey down the street, and everyone would have thought he was a fan. But Ward is well-known today, and the Hurricanes are an event in Raleigh. | Sports Competition | June 2006 | ['(USA Today)', '(CBC)'] |
Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I signs the independence decree ('tomos') officially separating the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Russian Orthodox Church as autocephalous Church. | Bartholomew I signs the Tomos of Autocephaly, marking the formal independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at the Patriarchal Church of St. George in Istanbul.
Bartholomew I signs the Tomos of Autocephaly, marking the formal independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at the Patriarchal Church of St. George in Istanbul.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church officially gained independence on Saturday, with the signing of a decree that marked its separation from the Russian church that it has been tied to for centuries. Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I signed the decree of independence, or tomos, in Istanbul, formalizing a split that has angered Moscow amid a broader political conflict between Ukraine and Russia. "The pious Ukrainian people have awaited this blessed day for seven entire centuries," Bartholomew I said in his address at the Patriarchal Church of St. George. The Russian Orthodox Church has repeatedly denounced the creation of an independent Ukrainian church and severed ties with Istanbul, the historical seat of the Orthodox faith, after Bartholomew I approved the Ukrainian church's request for autocephaly, or independence, last October. Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I (left) and Metropolitan Epiphanius, the head of the new, independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, attend the ceremony of signing the decree of independence for the Ukrainian church.
Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I (left) and Metropolitan Epiphanius, the head of the new, independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, attend the ceremony of signing the decree of independence for the Ukrainian church.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko attended Saturday's signing, which many in his country see as one more step toward independence from Moscow, as NPR's Peter Kenyon reports. Poroshenko, who is up for re-election at the end of March, has made the creation of the independent church a part of his campaign platform. Joining Poroshenko was 39-year-old Metropolitan Epiphanius, who was elected last month as head of the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Epiphanius I of the Orthodox Church of #Ukraine arrives in Istanbul to receive the Tomos or letter of autonomy from the Patriarch of Constantinople. This break from Moscow will enrage #Russia and flare up tensions in orthodox world. pic.twitter.com/mlGGfpqwok
Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Christians have belonged to a unified church for centuries. Moscow argues it has had legal authority over Ukrainian churches since 1686, according to the BBC.
"In many circles in Ukraine, the idea of the creation of an independent Orthodox Church independent from Moscow is the culmination of Ukraine's political independence," Edward Siecienski, an associate professor of Byzantine theology at Stockton University in New Jersey, told NPR last month. "You can't have one without the other."
The Moscow Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church controls the majority of churches in the country — 12,000 to the new church's 5,000, the BBC reports. Ukrainian clerics will now be forced to choose between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Kiev Patriarchate, amid continued conflict between the two countries in eastern Ukraine. Russian church leaders and spokespeople have called the split "anti-canonical," according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. Russia has compared the independence of the Ukrainian church to the split between Eastern and Western Christianity a thousand years ago, NPR's Lucian Kim reports.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has seen part of his role as safeguarding the Orthodox faith, with frequent visits to churches and monasteries broadcast on state television, Kim reports. The proximity between the Kremlin, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian army has driven a wedge between the Russian church and Ukrainian believers.
Tensions escalated in the religious and political schisms after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, following the ouster of a pro-Moscow president in Kiev. The war in eastern Ukraine that erupted between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists after the annexation has left more than 10,000 people dead.
In November, Russia intensified the conflict when it seized three Ukrainian vessels and 24 sailors and security officers near Crimea. Russia accused Ukraine of illegally entering its waters, but Ukraine said its two navy ships and tugboat were following international maritime rules.
Ukraine's split may have caused the Russian Orthodox Church to lose 30 to 40 percent of its 150 million members, as The New York Times reported last month. | Organization Established | January 2019 | ['(NPR)'] |
CNN hosts a seven-hour town hall on climate change featuring ten Democratic presidential candidates. An official debate sponsored by the Democratic Party had previously been shot down by the DNC. | CNN will host a seven-hour marathon of interviews with 10 presidential candidates about climate change on Wednesday beginning at 5 pm Eastern as part of its climate crisis town hall. A live stream of the town hall will air on CNN.com. You can also stream it via CNN apps on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Chromecast, and Android TV. The forum will also be broadcast on SiriusXM Channels 116, 454, 795, and the Westwood One Radio Network.
Here is the format:
The audience will be composed of selected Democrats, independents, and stakeholders. No public tickets will be issued.
That a major television network would devote so much time to a single issue is a sign of how important climate change has become for Democrats and how successful activists have been in elevating the issue. Climate change has rocketed up the list of concerns for primary voters, with some polls showing climate change as the number one issue and other indicating that strong majorities want robust climate action from the White House. Activists groups like the Sunrise Movement have refused to let the Democratic National Committee ignore the issue, holding sit-ins outside their headquarters to demand a climate debate.
The DNC responded that it will not hold a climate change debate for 2020 presidential contenders, nor will it allow candidates to attend a third-party debate. But CNN and MSNBC have found a loophole in the rules that still permits candidates to attend televised forums and town halls. CNN did not respond to requests for comment. MSNBC’s climate forum is scheduled for September 19 and 20. In the past few months, candidates have been steadily releasing their own visions for how to limit warming this century. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who made climate change the centerpiece of his presidential campaign and put out the most comprehensive policy agenda, is now out of the race, giving other candidates some room to distinguish themselves on the issue. Several candidates, including Booker, Buttigieg, and Harris, are issuing new climate plans this week.
For the most part, the Democratic presidential contenders agree that climate change demands a serious policy response and that the US needs to become carbon neutral by roughly the middle of the century. And indeed many have voiced support for the Green New Deal and most have pledged to refuse donations from the fossil fuel industry. The main differences among the candidates lie in how much political capital they intend to expend on fighting climate change and what they would do with executive authority.
The town hall will give them an opportunity to present their plans in greater detail, and with more nuance. In the prior two rounds of presidential debates spanning more than eight hours, climate change received just 35 minutes of airtime. Much of the discussion was shallow and uninformative, partly a consequence of having to split attention across 20 candidates. A forum format with one-on-one discussions with the candidates could better get at these distinctions, forcing candidates to make the affirmative case for their own policies rather than sniping at those from other candidates. On the other hand, a candidate in the hot seat won’t receive any direct challenges from their opponents.
It would behoove the networks to focus their discussion on getting at these subtle differences among the candidates, like what executive orders they would sign, how high climate change ranks as a priority, and what measures would a candidate pursue to ensure a just transition to clean energy. (Vox’s David Roberts and I have come up with some questions that could serve as starting points.)
CNN’s climate change forum has immense potential to illuminate real differences among the candidates and inform the public about the often-weedy details of climate policy. However, it remains to be seen if there is an audience with a seven-hour attention span for a single issue. And there’s always the risk that it could devolve into rote recitals of platitudes. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | September 2019 | ['(Vox)'] |
Christopher Jefferies, an early suspect in the investigation into the murder of Joanna Yeates, accepts "substantial" libel damages from eight British newspapers after they published details of his private life. The Sun and Daily Mirror are also fined for contempt of court in their reporting of the investigation. | Two newspapers have been fined over their reporting of the inquiry into landscape architect Jo Yeates' killing.
The High Court fined the Daily Mirror £50,000 and the Sun £18,000 for being in contempt of court by "vilifying" early suspect Christopher Jefferies.
The attorney general said they had engaged in a "feeding frenzy". The Mirror has said it will appeal.
Mr Jefferies, who was innocent, also accepted an apology and "substantial" libel damages from eight newspapers.
His lawyer, Louis Charalambous, described his client as "satisfied" with the outcome.
"Christopher Jefferies is the latest victim of the regular witch-hunts and character assassinations conducted by the worst elements of the British tabloid media," he said.
Mr Jefferies is also pursuing a civil case against the police for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment, his legal team revealed.
It is thought to be the first time that media organisations have been found guilty of contempt with a story about a suspect who was not, ultimately, tried.
Attorney General Dominic Grieve welcomed the contempt judgement, which saw both newspapers liable for substantial costs.
"These two newspapers completely lost the plot, they engaged in a feeding frenzy over the new year period," he said.
He said it acted as "a reminder to the press that the Contempt of Court Act applies from the time of arrest".
The act aims to prevent potential jurors from becoming influenced by press and broadcast reports.
Miss Yeates vanished after returning to her basement flat in Bristol's Clifton area on 17 December.
Her body was found on a grass verge about three miles away on Christmas Day.
Mr Jefferies was arrested on suspicion of murder on 30 December but later released without charge.
Miss Yeates' neighbour, Dutch national Vincent Tabak, 33, has since admitted her manslaughter and awaits a murder trial.
However, some press coverage in the aftermath of Mr Jefferies' arrest was found to have cast doubt over his character.
Among the suggestions - all untrue - were that he was prone to invade the privacy of his tenants and had acted inappropriately with pupils when teaching.
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, told the contempt hearing that two articles in the Mirror had "vilified" Mr Jefferies, painting him as an "eccentric loner".
They had asserted he had been involved in unacceptable sexual behaviour and was linked both to paedophile offences and a 1974 murder, he said.
"These articles would have provided Mr Jefferies with a serious argument that a fair trial would have been impossible," the judge added.
Likewise, the Sun had conveyed the impression Mr Jefferies was "a stalker, with an obsession with death".
The court said the publications could have affected the ability to gather evidence and establish identity.
Earlier, the Sun, Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Record, Daily Express, Daily Star and the Scotsman agreed a settlement with Mr Jefferies over his libel claims.
A separate hearing was told that the newspapers now accepted Mr Jefferies had nothing to do with Miss Yeates' death and had helped police as much as he could.
There was no basis to suggest, as some reports had done, that he had ever acted inappropriately with any pupil while a teacher, they conceded.
Mr Jefferies had taught English at Clifton College in Bristol for 34 years and was of good character, the court heard.
| Organization Fine | July 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Islamist terror group Boko Haram abduct two prominent traditional rulers from Borno State in Nigeria. | Lagos: Suspected Boko Haram gunmen have kidnapped two prominent traditional rulers in Nigeria, a security source said Friday.
Ismaila Mamza, the emir of Uba, and Idriss Timta, the emir of Gwoza, were abducted at about 9 AM in the sect’s stronghold, the north-eastern state of Borno, Xinhua reported.
Zhur, from where they were abducted, is located in the southern part of Borno.
The traditional rulers were said to be on their way to neighbouring Gombe to attend the burial of the late emir of Gombe.
A resident of Uba, Ezekiel Buba, told Xinhua in Maiduguri, the state capital, that the community has been informed about the kidnapping of their ruler.
However, a security source said military troops have succeeded in locating the emir of Uba, adding that “efforts were ongoing to secure his release”. | Armed Conflict | May 2014 | ['(IANS via Biharprabha)'] |
On the fourth anniversary of his "Mission Accomplished" speech, President George W. Bush, citing the provisions setting a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, vetoes an Iraq War funding measure that also improves resting, training and equipping standards for combat troops before their deployment, and sets binding benchmarks for the Iraqi government. | Washington - President Bush vetoed legislation this afternoon to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq in a showdown with Congress over whether the unpopular and costly war should end or escalate. In only the second veto of his presidency, Bush rejected legislation that would require the first U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later. "This is a prescription for chaos and confusion, and we must not impose it on our troops," Bush said in a nationally broadcast statement from the White House. He said the bill would "mandate a rigid and artificial deadline" for troop pullouts, and "it makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing." He vetoed the bill immediately upon his return to the White House from a visit to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., the headquarters of U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, including Iraq. Democrats made a last-minute plea for Bush to sign the bill, knowing their request would be ignored. "The president has put our troops in the middle of a civil war," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Reality on the ground proves what we all know: A change of course is needed." Lacking the votes to override the president, Democratic leaders quietly considered what might be included or kept out of their next version of the $124 billion spending bill. It was a day of high political drama, falling on the fourth anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech and his declaration that major combat operations in Iraq had ended. Democrats held an unusual signing ceremony of their own before sending the bill to the White House. "This legislation respects the wishes of the American people to end the Iraq war," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. Bush signed the veto with a pen given to him by Robert Derga, the father of Marine Corps Reserve Cpl. Dustin Derga, who was killed in Iraq on May 8, 2005. The elder Derga spoke with Bush two weeks ago at a meeting the president had with military families at the White House and asked Bush to promise to use the pen in his veto. Minutes after Bush vetoed the bill, an anti-war demonstrator stood outside the White House with a bullhorn: "How many more must die? How many more must die?" One option Congress is considering for follow-up legislation would demand the Iraqi government meet certain benchmarks or face the withdrawal of U.S. troops. To avoid another veto, such a bill would have to allow Bush to waive the restriction. Bush plans meet with congressional leaders from both parties on Wednesday, including Reid, D-Nev., and Pelosi, D-Calif. Past meetings have not led to any compromises, although members said that this time they were hopeful Bush would signal a willingness to negotiate. Until then, Democratic leaders were careful not to get ahead of the script. "I don't want to get into a negotiation with myself," Reid said when asked about conversations with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. McConnell and other Republicans have said they would agree to provisions that lay out standards for the Iraqi government to meet in creating a more stable and democratic society. "A number of Republicans think that some kind of benchmarks properly crafted would be helpful," McConnell said. Comment:
If you're not registered with our site, you will be asked to do so. It's quick (it takes about 30 seconds) and we only require your email and first and last name. You are responsible for the content you post. Comments that include profanity, personal attacks or any other inappropriate material are prohibited. By using our site you agree to our ground rules and our terms of use. | Famous Person - Give a speech | May 2007 | ['(CNN)', '(AP via Denver Post)'] |
Clara Ponsatí i Obiols, fugitive ex-Minister of Education of Catalonia, hands herself over to Police Scotland. She appears before court and is released on bail. | A pro-independence Catalan politician who is being sought by the Spanish government has been released on bail by a Scottish court. Prof Clara Ponsati was formally arrested after arriving voluntarily at an Edinburgh police station.
She later appeared from custody at an initial extradition hearing at the city's sheriff court.
Bail was not opposed, and she will now embark on a legal fight against being returned to face trial in Spain.
Prof Ponsati, who says the charges against her are politically-motivated, was asked to surrender her passport.
The authorities in Madrid issued a European Arrest Warrant after accusing her of rebellion - defined under Spanish law as being involved in a violent uprising - and misappropriation of public funds.
The allegations relate to her involvement in organising last year's Catalan independence referendum, which was ruled illegal by the Spanish courts. Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who faces similar charges, was taken into custody in Germany at the weekend.
The hearing before Sheriff Nigel Ross lasted less than 10 minutes, with a number of Prof Ponsati's supporters present in the packed court room and many more gathered outside. Among them were several prominent SNP politicians, including former Holyrood presiding officer Tricia Marwick.
Ms Marwick told BBC Scotland that it would be "impossible for Clara, and indeed for any of the other political prisoners" to have a fair trial in Spain as there was "absolutely no separation between the justiciary and the government".
Speaking outside court, Prof Ponsati's lawyer Aamer Anwar said his client was opposing the extradition warrant from the Spanish Supreme Court and would "robustly deny the charges" against her. He added: "The 52-page warrant included the crimes of rebellion - punishable by up to 25 years in prison - as well as the crime of misappropriation of public funds, punishable with up to eight years' imprisonment.
"Clara wishes for me to state that these charges are politically motivated and a grotesque distortion of the truth. She cannot believe that she is being held responsible for the violence that took place on the day of the referendum."
Mr Anwar said Prof Ponsati believes that the Catalan people "tried to express a democratic right to decide their own destiny" during the referendum.
And he said the only people that should be held responsible for the "brutal violence" was the Spanish police and state security forces who "attacked the Catalan people on behalf of the Spanish government".
He added: "She submits that Spain has not followed due process, cannot guarantee the independence of the judiciary and has repeatedly abused the human rights of the Catalan people."
Prof Ponsati turned herself in to officers at St Leonard's police station on Wednesday morning, before being taken to court. She has thanked First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish government and other Scottish politicians for their "solidarity", with Mr Anwar saying Prof Ponsati believes "Scotland has been a true friend to Catalonia in her darkest hours". An online crowdfunding appeal to pay Prof Ponsati's legal costs had raised about £170,000 by 16:00 on Wednesday. Her initial target was £40,000, but this was later increased to £200,000.
Prof Ponsati had been working as the director of the School of Economics and Finance at the University of St Andrews since January 2016, before being appointed as the Catalan government's education minister in July of last year.
She returned to work at St Andrews earlier this month, having been in Belgium since fleeing Spain with Catalonia's ex-leader Carles Puigdemont and three other former cabinet members following an unsuccessful bid to declare independence from Spain in October.
A Spanish judge issued arrest warrants on Friday for Prof Ponsati and the other fugitive politicians, including Mr Puigdemont, who was detained by police in Germany.
In almost all cases, there is a requirement that the allegations would amount to a criminal offence were it to have occurred in the UK.
Prof Ponsati's legal team could argue that rebellion is not a specific criminal offence in Scotland - although there is a crime of treason, which covers disloyalty to the Crown.
The extradition request could also be defeated if Prof Ponsati successfully argues that it is politically-motivated.
But extradition lawyer Karen Todner told BBC Scotland it is rare for European requests to be refused for this reason, because "as part of the European Union we are supposed to believe that all requests are fair and proper". Regardless, the legal process is likely to take several months and could be challenged all the way to the High Court. Scotland's independence movement has close links to its Catalan counterpart, and the SNP is overwhelmingly supportive of Prof Ponsati's cause.
But First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who is also the SNP leader, has not explicitly backed Catalan independence and has stressed that her Scottish government cannot intervene in the legal process. Ms Sturgeon has repeatedly said she supports the right of the Catalan people to determine their own future, and has criticised the Spanish government's decision to arrest and imprison pro-independence Catalan politicians. She added: "The fact that our justice system is legally obliged to follow due process in the determination of extradition requests does not change those views."
The SNP's leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, has requested a meeting with the Spanish ambassador in London to express the party's concern over the treatment of Prof Ponsati and other Catalan politicians. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | March 2018 | ['(The Guardian)', '(BBC)'] |
The death toll from monsoon flooding in South Asia reaches 300. | ABC Home | Radio | TV | News | Local | Environment | More Subjects… | Shop
South Asia is reeling from surging floodwaters, with victims scrambling to flee swamped homes while India's north-eastern Assam state government has now appealed to aid agencies for help.
The request came as an Assam state official said "up to four million people have been displaced in 22 of Assam's 24 districts" by the annual monsoon rains.
Officials said the death toll in Assam from a month of flooding had climbed to 69 after three drowned overnight, helping to push the death toll across India to at least 107 and the number of dead throughout the region to 175.
"The situation is devastating and only those who have personally visited the areas can imagine the plight of the people," Assam Health Minister Bhumidhar Barman said.
He called the flooding the "worst in living memory".
The rains that have been lashing India, Bangladesh and Nepal since mid-June have caused rivers to burst their banks, landslides and buildings to cave in.
"We've asked aid agencies to come and help the flood-hit people. People desperately need tarpaulins, tents, clothes, food and medicine," Mr Barman said.
Officials say at least two million Bangladeshis have been marooned in the low-lying nation, site of the basins of the region's biggest rivers -- the Brahmaputra, Ganges and Jamuna.
Many have no access to fresh water and say food supplies are dwindling.
Weather officials have warned the flooding could soon spread to low-lying areas near the capital, Dhaka, the official news agency BSS reported.
Bangladesh suffers heavy flooding every year during the monsoon but officials say the severity of this year's flooding has been unusual.
Bangladeshi rescuers in boats evacuated people from some of the worst-hit areas and ferried rice and water purifying tablets but help has not yet reached many flood-surrounded villages.
The mountainous kingdom of Nepal has reported 46 fatalities while floods have also hit the neighbouring Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.
-- AFP
© 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
This service may include material from Agence France-Presse (AFP), AAP(International), APTN, Reuters, CNN andthe BBC World Service which is copyright and cannot be reproduced.
AEST = Australian Eastern Standard Time which is 10 hours ahead of UTC (Greenwich Mean Time) | Floods | July 2004 | ['(ABC Australia)'] |
A committee of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies votes 3827 to recommend the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, who faces charges of breaking budget laws to support her re-election in 2014. | BRASILIA (Reuters) - A committee of Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted 38-27 on Monday to recommend the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, who faces charges of breaking budget laws to support her re-election in 2014.
Impeachment vote deals new blow to Brazil's Rousseff
01:09
A vote in the full lower house is expected to take place on Sunday. If two-thirds vote in favor, the impeachment will be sent to the Senate.
If the upper house decides by a simple majority to put Rousseff on trial, she will immediately be suspended for up to six months while the Senate decides her fate, and Vice President Michel Temer will take office as acting president.
It would be the first impeachment of a Brazilian president since 1992 when Fernando Collor de Mello faced massive protests for his ouster on corruption charges and resigned moments before his conviction by the Senate.
A former leftist guerrilla, Rousseff has denied any wrongdoing and rallied the rank and file of her Workers’ Party to oppose what she has called a coup against a democratically elected president.
Speaking to thousands of supporters in Rio de Janeiro, Rousseff’s predecessor and Workers’ Party founder Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Brazilian business elites were pressuring lawmakers to remove the president. Lula, who is under investigation in a graft probe, said he had convinced Rousseff to return to policies that favored Brazil’s poor.
Caught in a political storm fueled by Brazil’s worst recession in decades and the country’s biggest corruption scandal, Rousseff has lost key coalition allies in Congress, including her main partner, vice president Temer’s PMDB party.
The rift between Rousseff and her vice president reached breaking point on Monday after an audio message of Temer calling for a government of national unity was released apparently by mistake, further muddying Brazil’s political water.
Temer’s 14-minute audio message sent to members of his own PMDB party via the WhatsApp messaging app showed he was preparing to take over if Rousseff is forced from office.
Related Coverage
The audio was posted on the website of the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper and confirmed to Reuters by Temer’s aides as authentic. Aides said it was accidentally released and they quickly sent another message asking legislators to disregard it.
In his message, Temer said he did not want to get ahead of events, but he had to show the country he was ready to lead it if needed.
“We need a government of national salvation and national unity,” Temer said in the audio. “We need to unite all the political parties, and all the parties should be ready to collaborate to drag Brazil out of this crisis.”
Rousseff’s chief of staff Jaques Wagner called the vice president a “conspirator” and said he should resign if Rousseff survives impeachment.
“Having joined the conspiracy, he should resign when it is defeated, because the climate will become unbearable,” Wagner told reporters.
Wagner said the government will continue working to muster enough votes to block impeachment in the lower house, encouraged by the fact that in committee the opposition had not won the two thirds it will need in the plenary.
The committee vote, however, is expected to sway undecided lawmakers to vote for Rousseff’s removal, said Claudio Couto, a politics professor at the Fundacao Getulio Vargas think tank.
“It has a snowball effect. With each approval, the chances of impeachment clearing the next chamber increases,” Couto said. “The wider the margin, the more momentum impeachment will gather.”
The Brasilia-based consultancy Arko Advice said committee votes for impeachment were higher than expected and it raised to 65 percent the odds of Rousseff being unseated by Congress.
The latest moves in Brazil’s political crisis have the country on edge as it faces not only a government meltdown but its worst recession in decades. The political chaos in the capital, Brasilia, is playing out less than 100 days before the nation plays host to the first Olympic Games to be held in South America - an event that will cast the world’s eyes on Brazil.
The battle over Rousseff’s impeachment has polarized the nation of 200 million people and brought the government of Latin America’s largest economy to a virtual standstill.
The proposed impeachment is also taking place as Brazil faces its largest corruption investigation, targeting a sprawling kickback scheme at state-run oil company Petrobras.
Prosecutors say billions in bribes were paid over several years and have implicated not only members of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party but members of the opposition leading the charge to impeach her.
Eduardo Cunha, the speaker of Brazil’s lower house, a Rousseff enemy who is guiding the impeachment proceedings, faces charges of accepting millions in bribes in connection to the Petrobras case, while the head of Brazil’s Senate is also caught up in the investigation.
To battle to prevent impeachment approval in the full lower house vote, Rousseff’s government is trying to win over lawmakers by offering government jobs that became vacant when the PMDB quit her governing coalition two weeks ago.
The Brazilian real BRBY strengthened nearly 3 percent before Monday's vote to an eight-month peak on expectations that the committee would decide to impeach Rousseff. Investors are betting that her removal will issue in more business-friendly policies to pull Brazil's economy out of a tailspin. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | April 2016 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Bomb blasts kill 155 people and injure at least 500 in central Baghdad, the country's deadliest attack for two years. | Two explosions ripped apart government buildings in Baghdad yesterday for the second time in two months, killing at least 132, wounding 520 and demonstrating again that insurgents are able to mount large-scale attacks in the heart of the Iraqi capital.
The blasts, one from a car bomb and the other possibly a truck bomb, targeted the Justice Ministry and a provincial government office.
Slaughter ... an Iraqi weeps as rescuers search for survivors in the devastated Justice Ministry building.Credit:AP
About 600 people were wounded in the near-simultaneous attacks at about 10.30 am (Baghdad time), which left streets littered with charred bodies and torn-off limbs.
The blasts, which the Iraqi Government said had al-Qaeda’s ‘‘signature’’, destroyed dozens of cars and shattered pipes, spewing dirty water into the bloodied streets.
Authorities closed roads leading to the bomb sites as fire engines and ambulances struggled through thick traffic to reach the blazing buildings.
Dozens of people remained trapped in the wreckage of the two buildings, with emergency crews unable to reach them through tonnes of destroyed masonry and shattered glass. Both buildings are close to the foreign and finance ministries, which were blown up in August, killing 122 people and wounding up to 600. The high death tolls in the August blasts were blamed at least in part on the removal of blast-proof walls from outside the ministries.
Security had been tightened sharply across Baghdad following the earlier blasts, which eroded confidence in the Iraqi Government’s security gains ahead of national elections in January.
After the August explosions, trucks carrying loads larger than one tonne were banned from city streets before 4pm.
A Government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said in a statement the latest attacks could be targeting the coming parliamentary elections, and added that they have ‘‘the fingerprints of al-Qaeda and its allies’’.
Displaced families queueing for compensation after the sectarian war were among the victims of the attack on the provincial government building. Justice Ministry employees, including many judges and lawyers, appeared to comprise most victims at the second site.
The Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, had been campaigning heavily on the gains of Iraq’s police and military, especially since the withdrawal of US troops from the city’s streets on June 30.
He blamed Syrian Government figures for harbouring former leaders of Iraq’s ousted Ba’ath party after the August attacks, but has not revealed evidence linking them to the blasts.
US and British officials said at the time that the attacks bore many hallmarks of an al-Qaeda in Iraq strike.
The Sunni insurgent network that aligns with the world view of Osama bin Laden has been trying various means to undermine the legitimacy of the Iraqi Government and was widely expected to increase violence before the elections. | Armed Conflict | October 2009 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters India)', '(The Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
After six days of debate, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom votes to approve, with 323 votes for and 309 against, the policies set out in the Queen's Speech. In order to avoid a 'regret' amendment, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond says that England's National Health Service is to provide free abortions to women from Northern Ireland with funds from the Government Equalities Office. | Ministers announced women from Northern Ireland CAN now have free NHS abortions in England - a massive victory for a Labour MP
The Tories have been forced into a dramatic last-minute climbdown just hours before a crunch vote threatened to derail the Queen's Speech.
Ministers announced women from Northern Ireland CAN now have free NHS abortions in England - a massive victory for Labour MP Stella Creasy.
The concession allowed the Queen's Speech to pass tonight 323-309, cementing Theresa May's place in Downing Street - for now.
It came after more than 100 MPs, including up to 40 Tories,backed her call for Theresa May to fund NHS abortions for desperate women who cross the Irish Sea because it is illegal back home.
Most have to pay in private clinics because the government "respects" Northern Irish policy in other parts of the UK. One girl aged 15 paid £900.
Only last night Jeremy Hunt had tried to dismiss criticism by saying there would be a "consultation".
But today Chancellor Philip Hammond announced NHS-funded abortions WILL be government policy, with extra funding for providers from the Government Equalities Office.
Labour MP Stella Creasy, who pioneered the bid, said she was "delighted". She added: "Let us send a message to women everywhere that in this Parliament their voices will be heard and their rights upheld."
Martha Spurrier, Director of Liberty, said: “This incredible victory shows what Parliament can do. By working across parties, MPs can force the Government to do the right thing."
Labour MP Ms Creasy put Theresa May in a nightmare situation when her bid was selected as a formal 'regret' amendment to the Queen's Speech today.
Defeat would have been humiliating for the Prime Minister.
A Queen's Speech has only been amended using a 'regret' motion twice since the 1850s, according to the independent House of Commons Library.
And accepting the amendment risked angering the anti-abortion DUP days after Mrs May paid £1billion for their backing. But with pressure on the Prime Minister from her own side and a fragile working majority of just 13, she was forced to accept Ms Creasy's demands.
Mrs May missed a crunch meeting with G20 world leaders in Berlin to fly home and make the vote in time.
But in the end Ms Creasy withdrew her formal amendment, meaning the decision will not go down legally as a government defeat.
The decision will not change the highly controversial abortion law in Northern Ireland.
Pushing for the move, Tory former Culture Secretary Maria Miller said it was "wrong" to deny Northern Irish women the right to NHS-funded abortions in England.
And Tory Commons leader Andrea Leadsom revealed urgent talks were under way at the Department of Health.
She told MPs this morning, before the announcement: "It is my personal view that every woman should have the right to decide what happens to her own body, that is very clear.
"It is a question of devolution and the fact that health is devolved to Northern Ireland and therefore it’s the question of who should pay for it.
"The Department for Equalities and the Department of Health are discussing and looking very closely at this issue today."
The Supreme Court narrowly upheld the government's policy this month - saying while Jeremy Hunt could change it, he was "entitled" not to.
The Health Secretary was accused of "inventing" a consultation last night to deflect from the row.
It was thought Jeremy Hunt may have been talking about a consultation on the law in Northern Ireland.
But the DUP made clear the decision is one for England - not Stormont.
DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr told the House of Commons: "This is not a matter for Belfast; it is a matter for NHS England."
The votes came ahead of a final vote to pass the Queen's Speech - cementing the government's place for now - at 5.45pm.
In the first vote of the night, Labour failed 323-297 to pass its own version of the Queen's Speech into law.
Jeremy Corbyn's amendment had promised to end austerity, pursue a "jobs-first Brexit " and clamp down on tax avoiders.
A separate amendment by Labour's Chuka Umunna fought a so-called Hard Brexit - but despite some Tory support, was also destined to fail because Labour MPs were whipped not to vote on it.
Six Labour frontbenchers rebelled and at least one quit.
Tory Business Secretary Greg Clark rounded off a week of debate saying the parliament would see a "battle for ideas and values".
He slammed Labour's "determination to create in Britain a Socialist state" that he said would cause lower wages, higher prices and lower pensions.
"This is not a prosperity for the many or the few, but for no one," he said.
But Labour's Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey said of the Tories: "As they precariously hang on to government by their tips of their fingernails, they are quite simply standing in the way of a fairer, richer Britain."
Since Mirror is a Reach news title, you have been logged in with the Reach account you use to access our other sites. | Government Policy Changes | June 2017 | ['(The Daily Mirror)'] |
Protest leaders plead innocence in court, denying charges of terrorism in Bangkok. | Leaders of the Thailand anti-government protests that brought part of Bangkok to a standstill earlier this year have appeared in court and pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges. The 17 so-called red-shirts are also accused of inciting violence and threatening officials.
At least 90 people were killed during 10 weeks of protests and clashes.
It comes as emergency rule was lifted in three provinces. It remains in force in seven areas including Bangkok.
The 17 men, who were chained at the ankles, denied all charges against them in a preliminary hearing at Bangkok Criminal Court.
The next hearing was set for 27 September. They could face the death penalty if found guilty of terrorism.
The state of emergency, which was first imposed in April, officially bans gatherings of more than five people and grants the security forces sweeping powers to censor media and detain suspects without charge for up to 30 days. Gradually the government has been lifting the special provisions in provinces where, in its view, the security situation has stabilised. That now includes three provinces in the north and north-east, where the anti-government protest movement has its roots. Some Western governments and several human rights groups have expressed concern about the continued use of the law. The government said its latest decision was taken to help business and tourism. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | August 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
A viaduct collapses in the Tezonco–Olivos elevated interstation of Line 12 of the Mexico City Metro. At least 23 people are killed and at least 70 others injured a train subsequently fell onto the road below. | A metro overpass has collapsed in Mexico City as a train was travelling over it, killing at least 23 people, including children, the mayor said.
Two train carriages were seen hanging from the structure, above a busy road. At least 79 people were injured, and seven are in a serious condition.
One person trapped in a car underneath the wreckage was pulled out alive.
This is the deadliest incident in decades in the city's metro system, one of the busiest in the world.
Local media broadcast CCTV footage showing the overpass collapsing, sending up clouds of debris. The crash happened at around 22:00 local time on Monday (03:00 GMT) near the Olivos station on the metro's Line 12, in the south-east of the city.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said an external company would investigate the cause of the incident. Earlier, she said it appeared a girder had given way on the overpass. The line, inaugurated less than a decade ago, will remain closed while a structural survey is carried out.
Speaking at a news conference alongside the mayor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered his condolences to the relatives of the victims and said that "nothing would be hidden" from the Mexican people.
Residents had reported cracks in the structure after a deadly 2017 earthquake, according to local media. Mexico's El Universal newspaper says transport authorities made repairs following the reports.
A crane was sent to the scene to stabilise the carriages amid concerns they could fall onto the road, which forced officials to temporarily halt rescue efforts at night.
In chaotic scenes, anxious friends and relatives of those believed to be on the train gathered in the area. Efraín Juárez told AFP news agency that his son was in the wreckage. "My daughter-in-law called us. She was with him and she told us the structure fell down over them."
Gisela Rioja Castro, 43, was looking for her 42-year-old husband, who always takes that train after work and had not been answering his phone. She said the authorities had no information about him. "Nobody knows anything," she told the Associated Press.
A passenger, 26-year-old Mariana, told El Universal that she and other people trapped among the carriage's twisted metal managed to escape through a window.
"We only heard a loud thunder, and everything fell apart," she said of the moment of the incident. "There were many people standing and sitting in the carriage, and when the carriage fell, we went flying and hit our heads on its roof."
One eyewitness told Mexico's Televisa TV network: "Suddenly I saw that the structure was shaking."
"When the dust cleared we ran... to see if we could help. There were no screams. I don't know if they were in shock," the witness said.
Mexico City's metro system is one of the most used in the world, carrying tens of millions of passengers a week. In North America, only New York's subway carries more people every day. Yet the incident did not occur on one of the older lines, which have been through at least two major earthquakes in the past 35 years. Rather it happened on Line 12, completed as recently as October 2012.
There will be difficult questions for the mayor's office to come about the construction of the line, including for several former mayors. They include Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who was in office when Line 12 was unveiled and who championed the metro's expansion. He called the accident a "terrible tragedy".
However, those questions must wait until later. The moment now is solely about the rescue operation as Mexicans pray the number of victims does not rise any further.
Last year, one person was killed and more than 40 injured in a collision between two metro trains in Mexico City.
In 1975, two underground trains collided, killing 31 people. | Train collisions | May 2021 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Vatican signs a provisional agreement with China on the process used to appoint bishops, a breakthrough after years of contentious negotiations on the management of Catholic leadership in the communist country. | The Vatican said on Saturday that it had reached a “provisional agreement” with China on the process used to appoint bishops, a breakthrough after years of contentious negotiations on the management of Catholic leadership in the communist country.
The deal paves the way for bishops to be recognized by the Vatican and the Chinese government, a step toward ending the current system — one that has divided followers — in which some bishops are backed by only one side or the other.
The accord marks a potentially transformative step in relations between the world’s most populous country and one of the most powerful religious institutions. Some outside experts say the agreement could end seven decades of strain between the sides, opening the door for the possible resumption of diplomatic ties, which were severed in 1951.
Beijing and the Holy See have long been at odds on leadership of Catholics in China, where the government has appointed bishops and authorized which churches can operate. Their deal comes even as President Xi Jinping has tightened his grip on power, cracking down on freedoms and saying that any practice of religion must be “Chinese in orientation.”
For Pope Francis, the outreach to China has been perhaps his most ambitious diplomatic venture, an effort to broaden the appeal of a faith that has lost ground in much of the Western world and is dealing now with a global wave of sexual abuse cases. Catholicism is one of the five religions officially tolerated by Chinese leaders, but it has been steadily eclipsed in popularity by Protestant and evangelical denominations.
Francis will probably draw pointed criticism from many Catholic opponents of the deal, who say the church is eroding its credibility by compromising with an officially atheist country that has long targeted Catholics and others with surveillance and persecution.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said the agreement reached on Saturday in Beijing “is of great importance, especially for the life of the Church in China.”
“What is required now is unity, is trust and a new impetus; to have good Pastors, recognized by the Successor of Peter — by the Pope — and by the legitimate civil Authorities,” Parolin said in a statement.
China seeks to put state stamp on faith
After announcing the agreement, the Vatican said it was lifting the excommunications of seven Chinese bishops ordained without papal approval. That concession, a central part of the agreement, means that all bishops in China are now recognized by the Vatican — and operating under the pope’s authority.
“Of course, this is not an accord that solves all problems of the church in China, but certainly it’s a historic step,” said Elisa Giunipero, director of the Confucius Institute at Milan’s Sacred Heart Catholic University.
The church in China has long been split between Catholics who swear allegiance to the Vatican and others who practice the faith in state-sanctioned churches supervised by the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.
Some church leaders have the backing of the Vatican but not of the Chinese government, meaning they operate furtively in unofficial churches. The agreement reached Saturday was not published, and neither the Vatican nor China said how the issue of those leaders would be addressed.
Estimates put the number of Catholics in China between 10 and 12 million. About half are affiliated with government-managed churches. Citing “Vatican sources,” Reuters said the deal gives the pope veto power in the naming of candidates for bishop.
“Pope Francis hopes that, with these decisions, a new process may begin that will allow the wounds of the past to be overcome, leading to the full communion of all Chinese Catholics,” the Vatican said in a statement.
The issue of bishop appointments has for decades been the main point of contention between the Vatican and China, which have negotiated since the 1980s to end the impasse. But those efforts have faced significant opposition, particularly from Catholics in Hong Kong, who say that Chinese Catholics have a right to practice their religion without the meddling of the Chinese government.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former bishop of Hong Kong, said earlier this year that “if the government is managing the church, it is not the Catholic Church anymore.”
Under Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican recognized some bishops appointed by the Chinese government. But the diplomatic efforts increased under Francis, continuing even as the church dealt with sexual abuse scandals.
Francis has talked about his wish to travel to China, and he spoke in a 2016 interview about the “greatness of the Chinese people.” At the beginning of the year, in a conciliatory move, the Vatican urged two bishops unsanctioned by the Chinese government to step aside in favor of figures with government backing.
“We don’t have to look at the agreement as a point of arrival, but as a starting point,” the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a confidant of Francis, wrote in an op-ed in La Civiltà Cattolica, a Rome-based periodical. “The improvement of Chinese Catholic religious quality of life won’t be automatic. Challenges still remain, but of course the process is a positive factor for Chinese Catholics.”
The Vatican said its agreement with China “is the fruit of a gradual and reciprocal rapprochement” and includes a possibility for “periodic reviews of its application.”
The Chinese foreign ministry released a statement saying that “China and the Vatican will continue to maintain communications and push forward the process of improving relations between the two sides,” according to the Associated Press.
The accord is also a sensitive issue for Taiwan, which is viewed by China as a breakaway province. The Vatican is the only European state to maintain full diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Taiwan’s foreign ministry said in a statement that it had been assured by the Vatican that the deal with China would not affect diplomatic relations.
| Sign Agreement | September 2018 | ['(The Washington Post)'] |
The United Nations Climate Change Conference opens in Copenhagen. | The largest and most important UN climate change conference in history opened Monday,with diplomats from 192 nations warned that this could be the best,last chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming.
The conference,the climax of two years of contentious negotiations,convened in an upbeat mood after a series of promises by rich and emerging economies to curb their greenhouse gases,but with major issues yet to be resolved.
Conference president Connie Hedegaard said the key to an agreement is finding a way to raise and channel public and private financing to poor countries for years to come to help them fight the effects of climate change.
Hedegaard – Denmark’s former climate minister – said if governments miss their chance at the Copenhagen summit,a better opportunity may never come.
“This is our chance. If we miss it,it could take years before we got a new and better one. If ever,” she said in prepared remarks.
Denmark’s prime minister said 110 heads of state and government will attend the final days of the two-week conference. President Barack Obama’s decision to attend the end of the conference,not the middle,was taken as a signal that an agreement was getting closer.
At stake is a deal that aims to wean the world away from fossil fuels and other pollutants to greener sources of energy,and to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from rich to poor countries every year over decades to help them adapt to climate change.
Scientists say without such an agreement,the Earth will face the consequences of ever-rising temperatures,leading to the extinction of plant and animal species,the flooding of coastal cities about half of humanity lives with 100 miles (160 kilometres) of a coastline – more extreme weather events,drought and the spread of diseases.
Negotiations have dragged on for two years,only recently showing signs of breakthroughs with new commitments from The United States,China and India to control greenhouse gas emissions.
The first week of the conference will be focused on refining a complex text of a draft treaty. But major decisions will await the arrival next week of environment ministers and the heads of state in the final days of the conference,which is due to end Dec. 18.
Among those decisions is a proposed fund of $10 billion each year for the next three years for poor countries prepare climate change strategies. After that,hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed every year to set the world on a new energy path and adapt to new climates. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | December 2009 | ['(CNN)', '(Indian Express)', '(Bernama)', '(Times LIVE)'] |
A bomb explodes on a bus in Bat Yam, Israel, but an alert passenger averts a mass casualty incident after noticing the device and the bus driver orders the vehicle evacuated. | A bomb exploded on a bus in Bat Yam on Sunday afternoon, but nobody was injured because an alert passenger had spotted the device and the bus driver had ordered the vehicle evacuated.
A police sapper was trying to defuse the bomb when it exploded. He was taken to the hospital for an examination, but was found not to be injured and was quickly released, a police spokesman told The Times of Israel.
Police said that early indications pointed to an apparent terror attack. They urged the public to be on the alert for additional bombing attempts.
Police were searching for the individual who planted the bomb and possible accomplices.
The explosion badly damaged the Dan No. 240 bus, which was stopped at the time on the corners of Mivtza Sinai and Katznelson streets in the coastal city, which borders Tel Aviv on the south. All the windows were either blown out or shattered, and seats were mangled. | Armed Conflict | December 2013 | ['(The Times of Israel)'] |
The death toll in the U.S. attributed to Hurricane Sandy rises to at least 90, nearly half in New York City, as millions of people in the Northeastern United States continue to deal with power outages, gasoline shortages and sparse public transportation. | Nov. 1, 2012— -- New Jersey and New York, struggling to recover from the wreckage of Sandy, were staggered today by a gas shortage and an overwhelmed transit system as more victims of the deadly storm were found.
Four bodies were located on Staten Island, New York City's smallest borough and the one most exposed to the water. Two of the bodies were boys, aged 2 and 4, who were washed away from the roof of their family's car where their mother had put them to avoid the flood waters.
So far at least 19 people died from the storm on Staten Island. The deaths push the regional toll for Sandy's rampage to more than 80, according to the AP.
The region struggled to get back on its feet today and throughout New Jersey, the hardest hit state, motorists roamed for hours looking for a gas station that had power and still had gasoline. And when a station was located, the line to the pump could last two hours.
Joseph McGinn, a spokesman for Sunoco, cited power outages, closed roads and supply disruptions as obstacles to keeping their stations supplied.
"We are working diligently to get all of our affected retail locations in New Jersey and New York back to full service as quickly as possible," McGinn said.
Those with gas who had to commute into New York City encountered a major traffic jam at the Lincoln Tunnel, one of only two entrances to the city from New Jersey that hadn't been closed down because of damage from Sandy.
Tens of thousands of motorists tried to beat Mayor Bloomberg's edict that after 6 a.m. cars must have three people in them or be turned away, creating a pre-dawn line for the tunnel that was backed up for more than a mile.
Even travel within the city was gridlocked as the mayor's three-passenger rule extended to bridges into Manhattan, making a trip from Brooklyn or Queens into the heart of the city last several hours.
The first limited bus and train services came to life, but many of the buses were quickly filled to capacity, creating enormous lines to get on them and forcing drivers to skip stops and roll past hordes of waiting passengers.
In Brooklyn, lines for buses at the new Barclays sports area wound twice around the block-long sports palace before getting near a bus. A typical wait this morning for a bus at the stop was an hour.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recognized the seriousness of the transportation gridlock.
"I am declaring a transportation state of emergency and authorizing the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] to waive fares on rails, subways through the end of the week, Thursday and Friday," the governor said.
New York City buses serve 2.3 million people on an average day, and two days after the storm they were trying to handle many of the 5.5 million daily subway riders, too.
Hurricane Sandy: Full Coverage "We are going to need some patience and some tolerance," Cuomo said.
Nevertheless, Cuomo assured New Yorkers, "The worst is behind us."
At the worst of the storm's aftermath, 8.5 million people were left in the dark, but that number has been pared to 6 million, with outages as far west as Wisconsin and as far south as the Carolinas.
The Pentagon launched an airlift using 17 military cargo planes to bring a fleet of utility vechicles to the region to speed repairs. Utility crews have been traveling to the area by road to help out.
Cuomo also announced that FEMA will start the delivery of 1 million gallons of water and 1 million pounds of food to seniors running out of food in high-rise buildings without power.
New York's LaGuardia Airport reopened today, the last of the region's major airports to resume air service.
But schools remain shut throughout the region.
Severe problems persisted with widespread flooding crippling Hoboken, N.J. Utility crews and tree crews worked to remove hundreds of trees that had toppled throughout New Jersey and were entangled with power lines and had pulled down utility poles.
On Wednesday night the Coast Guard confirmed to ABC News that an oil facility in Sewaran, N.J., owned by Motiva, spilled oil into New York harbor. Motiva said that two diesel storage tanks were damaged during the storm.
Motiva released a statement to ABC News, saying, an "unknown amount" of diesel has been released and they are working with local agencies "to conduct a thorough inspection and damage assessment of its petroleum terminals that were situated in the path of Hurricane Sandy."
- Before and After Residents in Seaside Heights, Ortley, Ortley Beach, and Lavalette reported hissing noises coming from gas lines.
Many residents are living in fear protecting what little they have left from the possibility of an explosion. In Brick Township, fire companies were standing by as officials awaited utility workers who would burn off and turn off the gas. While some officials downplayed the risk from fire, others gave a different estimate of the gas risk.
Hurricane Sandy: Full Coverage "We have one main gas line that goes over to the island. We are trying to cut the main line to cut it for the [barrier] islands, said Rich Peterson of the county's Office of Emergency Management.
Overall says Peterson, more than 500 have been rescued from the barrier islands as of Wednesday.
"Our biggest concern is we want to get everyone out of the barrier islands. People are still there. We've gotten 500 people from two barrier islands. We have crews out there, zodiac boats, National Guard Blackhawk helicopters," he said.
President Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie toured the devastated Jersey shore Wednesday and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano will travel to Connecticut and New York today to meet with state and local officials and view ongoing response and recovery efforts to superstorm Sandy. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | November 2012 | ['(Wall Street Journal)', '(ABC News)', '(US News)'] |
French police arrest four people in connection with last Friday's bombing in Lyon's historic city center that injured 13 people. Antiterrorist prosecutors are leading the investigation. District mayor Denis Broliquier said the bomb was a relatively weak explosive that was too small to kill. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. | French police have arrested four people after a suspected parcel bomb exploded in Lyon last week, injuring 13 people.
The device, packed with screws and ball bearings, detonated outside a bakery on Friday afternoon. One of those arrested, a 24-year-old man, is the suspected bomber, prosecutors say. Another man and a woman were also reportedly detained.
Police had been hunting for a man seen cycling near the scene of the blast wearing a balaclava and rucksack.
Anti-terrorist prosecutors are leading the investigation, co-ordinating with Lyon police and France's internal security service, the DGSI.
French media report that one suspect is an IT student of Algerian nationality. A source told news agency Reuters that police arrested him in Lyon after tailing him in the street. It reportedly decided not to arrest him in his apartment in case there were explosives in the building. The second suspect, according to local press, is a minor who attends a school in the city.
Two other people, a man and a woman, have also been arrested. They are reportedly the parents of one of the suspects.
Last week, police released a picture from CCTV footage of a person they believe carried out the bombing. The explosion struck near the corner of two crowded pedestrian streets in Lyon's historic city centre.
Investigators have recovered screws, ball bearings, along with a printed circuit, batteries and a remote-controlled trigger device.
Denis Broliquier, the city's district mayor, told press that "the charge was too small to kill," and a government source told AFP news agency it had been a "relatively weak explosive charge".
Those hurt, including a girl aged eight, appear to have suffered superficial injuries.
French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner confirmed one of the arrests in a Tweet on Monday, saying joint action by several agencies had been "decisive".
No-one has claimed responsibility for the attack. The last time a parcel bomb had exploded in France was in 2007 when a device killed one person and injured another in front of a law office in Paris. Police never found the bomber.
Jihadist gun and bomb attacks have killed more than 250 people in France since 2015 and the country remains on high alert, with military patrols a regular feature of security in cities including Lyon.
French police appeal after parcel bomb attack
France country profile | Armed Conflict | May 2019 | ['(BBC)'] |
South Korea begins a huge anti–submarine exercise in the Yellow Sea, near the disputed maritime border, in what it sees as a show of strength against North Korea and "to be fully prepared for combat"; North Korea disapproves of the exercise. | SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea will stage military drills from Thursday near a tense maritime border with communist North Korea, the site of the sinking of one of the South’s warships in March.
Pyongyang threatened “physical retaliation” if the exercise went head, but analysts said the response echoed similar bellicose remarks by the reclusive state in recent months, and that the chances of a military escalation were slim.
Seungjoo Baek, of the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses think-tank, rejected the North’s threats of retaliation as rhetoric, but cautioned that Pyongyang could respond in the future by test firing a missile.
“If North Korea takes military action against South Korea, South Korea will strongly retaliate against North Korea’s military,” he said, adding the South would easily defeat the North in the event of any war.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu repeated a call for all sides to “work hard at devoting themselves to maintaining peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.”
Tensions heightened on the peninsula in March following the torpedoing of the Cheonan corvette, which killed 46 sailors. The South, with the backing of Washington, blamed the North for the sinking, but Pyongyang denied any involvement.
Unlike its joint military exercises with the United States off the east coast last month, the South’s drills will take place off the west coast in the vicinity the Cheonan sinking.
South Korea said its five-day exercise would involve land, air and naval forces, including 20 submarines and antisubmarine aircraft. Firing drills will also take place on five islands near the Northern Limit Line, a site of several deadly clashes since the 1950-53 Korean War.
“These exercises will serve as an opportunity to complete our combat readiness, so that we can prevent enemy provocation,” the South’s military said in a statement on Wednesday.
North Korea’s state news agency KCNA said the army had adopted a “decisive resolution to counter the reckless naval firing projected by the group of traitors with strong physical retaliation.”
In a show of force meant to deter any future attack, the South Korean and U.S. militaries held combined drills last month, drawing an angry response from Pyongyang. Retaliatory threats by the North, however, came to nothing.
The drills also angered China, the North’s only powerful ally, which said they threatened its security and regional stability.
Last month, in deference to China, the United Nations condemned the Cheonan sinking, but stopped short of blaming North Korea by name.
Hyung-A Kim, a Korean expert at the Australian National University, said the exercises off the peninsula and concurrent air drills by China’s military contributed to the makings of an East Asian-style Cold War.
She said the United States and China, the North’s closest ally, must transcend the Cheonan incident and work towards reaching a compromise which would enable the resumption of multilateral nuclear talks.
Six-way talks involving North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China have been in limbo since 2007 and a 2005 disarmament deal appeared to lose relevance when Pyongyang tested a long-range missile and a nuclear device.
South Koreans have become used to shrill rhetoric from both sides, including threats of war, since conservative President Lee Myung-bak adopted a hard line policy against the North demanding it abandon its nuclear programme in return for aid.
“I believe that it is necessary to show a strong stand against North Korea. The military drills, in that sense, are important. We need to build up our national strength,” said Cheon Ki-youn, 73, a bus driver in Seoul.
Additional reporting by Yeo-jung Chang, and Ben Blanchard in Beijing
| Military Exercise | August 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The Jakarta Post)', '(Reuters)', '(The Sydney Morning Herald)', '(The Times of India)'] |
English team officials at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India seek reassurance about water safety at the Dr SPM Aquatics Centre after up to fifteen members of the English and Australian swim teams come down with a stomach virus. | English officials have asked for reassurances about the water quality in the Commonwealth Games aquatics centre after reports that up to 15 swimmers on the England and Australian teams have a stomach virus potentially caused by water in Delhi's pools.
About 20% of England's swimmers C up to 10 competitors C have an upset stomach, according to team doctors. Australia has reported at least six sick swimmers, including Andrew Lauterstein, who pulled out of the 50m butterfly on Wednesday.
The Commonwealth Games Federation president, Mike Fennell, said officials would investigate the matter urgently and conduct tests on both the main pool and the warmup pool at the Dr SP Makherjee aquatic complex.
Fennell would not say if the swimming events, which have three more days to run, might be cancelled or moved if tests showed the pools were unsafe.
"I would not like to speculate about this immediately," Fennell said. "If there is something unsafe, you cannot swim in that water. It is a matter we have to deal with a great deal of urgency."
The Australian swimming team spokesman Lachlan Searle said "about a half-dozen" swimmers had been affected by stomach problems. He said Lauterstein could not take part in training on Thursday morning and that Hayden Stoeckel, who won a silver medal in the men's 50m backstroke on Tuesday, also could not train. "Our doctors are looking into it," he said.
England's team spokesman Caroline Searle said between seven and 10% of England's 541-strong delegation had been affected by a "mild 24-hour stomach condition".
"That's lower than we anticipated," she said. "Separately we have asked for reassurances as to the water quality at the aquatics venue. We're not complacent and continue to reinforce the need to be vigilant in areas like hand hygiene."
Concerning the swimmers, Searle said: "We will look at that, but it's really a matter for the organising committee."
Dave Richards, a spokesman for the England swimming team, said reports of the sickness had been wildly exaggerated and that the team's seven to 10% with stomach complaints also held true for the 45 members of the swim team.
"No swimmer has missed a competition at all," he said.
The Commonwealth Games bring together more than 6,000 athletes and officials from 71 countries and territories. But construction delays, corruption allegations, concerns about security and heavy monsoons put preparations for the games way behind schedule, with complaints about unfinished and filthy accommodation in the athletes' village embarrassing the hosts.
Three Ugandan team officials were injured in a car accident at the entry to the athletes' village and spent 24 hours in hospital under observation before being released on Wednesday. Uganda won its first gold medal of the games in the men's 5,000m later that day on an athletics track that was still being repaired just hours before the first events started.
On the positive side, the organising committee chief, Suresh Kalmadi, said 125,000 tickets had been sold for future events. Next week's rugby sevens tournament is sold out, as is the remainder of the swimming, 80% of the tennis and 90% of the boxing semi-finals and finals. | Disease Outbreaks | October 2010 | ['(The Guardian)', '(Al Jazeera)', '( Sky News)'] |
The Royal Navy appoints its first female war ship commander; Lieutenant Commander Sarah West, 39, will take command of HMS Portland in April 2012. | A woman is to command a frontline warship for the first time in the 500-year history of the Royal Navy.
Lieutenant Commander Sarah West, 39, is to take control of Plymouth-based HMS Portland in April 2012.
The Type 23 frigate has a crew of 185 and carries missiles and anti-submarine torpedoes.
Lt Cdr West, who grew up in Lincolnshire and entered the Royal Navy in 1995, has previously commanded four minesweepers.
A Royal Navy spokesman said: "The Royal Navy is committed to ensuring equality of opportunity for all its personnel to enjoy challenging, fulfilling and rewarding careers."
Lt Cdr West is said to have earned her new role because of her "leadership, confidence, moral courage, sound judgment and excellent people skills".
The Royal Navy first allowed women to go to sea in 1990.
On exercise with HMS Portland
Warship stops pirate boat in Gulf
Anti-piracy ship returns to base
The Royal Navy
T
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | August 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Islamic Front rebels seize Abu al-Duhur military airport while taking control of Syria's northwestern Idlib province. , , | Amman: Syrian troops have pulled out of a major air base in north-western Syria, state television said on Wednesday, after a two-year siege by Islamist-led insurgents, increasing pressure on government-held coastal areas north of the capital.
A group monitoring the war said the Syrian military had been completely driven out of the north-western province of Idlib after the fall of the base.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Credit:AP
Rebel sources said al-Qaeda's Nusra Front had played a leading role in the capture of the airport. Nusra is part of a coalition of Islamist groups called the Army of Conquest which has seized most of the surrounding Idlib province.
In a newsflash, Syrian state television said the army garrison that had defended the Abu al-Duhur military airport had evacuated the post.
The airport, which was one of the last remaining military strongholds in Idlib province, has been under siege for almost two years by rebels. Another major base east of Aleppo, Kweiris, is currently besieged by ultra hardline Islamic State militants.
Nusra Front has made gains in north-western Syria alongside other insurgent groups since May, seizing the city of Idlib, the town of Jisr al-Shughour and bringing them closer to government-held coastal areas north of the capital.
Rami Abdulrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said members of a local pro-government militia remained in two Shiite villages in Idlib province but the army itself had withdrawn from the province.
Syria accuses Turkey of financing and aiding rebels seeking to topple the government.
Damascus says foreign jihadi fighters allowed into Syrian territory by Turkey have played a pivotal role in rebel gains in that area. | Armed Conflict | September 2015 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters via Sydney Morning Herald)', '(Al Jazeera English Online)'] |
Saudi Arabia executes three soldiers for "high treason" and "cooperating with the enemy" in Najran Province. | DUBAI, April 10 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed three soldiers who were sentenced for "high treason" and "cooperating with the enemy", a statement from the kingdom's defence ministry said.
It said that the three had been sentenced to death by a specialist court after a fair trial.
The ministry did not name the alleged "enemy" but the executions were carried out in the southern province bordering Yemen where Saudi Arabia has been at war for more than six years against the Iran-aligned Houthi movement.
Saudi Arabia has come under increasing global scrutiny over its human rights record since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year at the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate and the detention of women’s rights activists.
Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have called on Riyadh to stop the use of the death penalty, citing allegations of torture and unfair trials.
Saudi Arabia denies the accusations.
It has executed 27 people in 2020, the lowest in years, down from a record high of 185 the year before, according to the Human Rights Commission, a government body.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | April 2021 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Supreme Court of Russia releases Platon Lebedev, a business partner of Russian magnate and former head of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky, after he spent more than 10 years in jail. | Russia's Supreme Court has ordered the release of Platon Lebedev, the former business partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, with whom he was jailed in 2005.
Platon and Khodorkovsky were convicted of tax evasion and theft after funding opposition parties and falling out with President Vladimir Putin.
Mr Putin pardoned Khodorkovsky last month, but Lebedev, who was due for release in May, did not seek a pardon and stayed in jail.
The Russian Supreme Court ruled that his sentence should be reduced and that he would be able to walk free on Friday.
"Release Lebedev," Supreme Court Judge Pyotr Serkov declared in the ruling, after reducing his sentence so that it amounted to time served.
Both men's convictions remain in place, despite repeated appeals.
It did not change a court order under which Lebedev and Khodorkovsky must pay 17bn roubles ($500m; £300m) in tax arrears.
That debt is an obstacle to Khodorkovsky's return to Russia after leaving for Germany in December.
The releases are believed by many to be part of a drive to improve Russia's international image ahead of the Sochi Winter Olympics next month.
Other prominent inmates freed in the past few weeks included two women from the Pussy Riot protest group, jailed over the performance of a "punk prayer" critical of Putin in a Russian Orthodox church.
Mr Platon used to head NFO Menatep, while Mr Khodorkovsky ran oil giant Yukos and was once Russia's richest man.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were regarded by human rights groups as political prisoners but the Kremlin denies using the courts for political purposes.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | January 2014 | ['(BBC News)'] |
Thousands protest across the country, with at least 23 deaths reported. | Syrian security Friday forcefully dispersed thousands of protesters who took to the streets in several cities to defy a crackdown against anti-government demonstrations.
More than 2,000 students were protesting in the university city in Aleppo. Security forces and government militia, known as Shabiha, tried to disperse them by force, the Local Coordination Committees of Syria online group said, DPA reported.
Security stormed some students' rooms and arrested some of the demonstrators.
Broadcaster Al Jazeera reported that security fired shots in the air to disperse protesters in the southern city of Daraa.
Thousands were demonstrating in the cities of Deir al-Zour, Lattakia and Ras Al-Ain, demanding the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, activists wrote online.
In the town of Bensh, in Idlib province, around 10,000 protesters gathered in al-Hurriya (Freedom) square in after the Friday prayers.
Earlier in Idlib, the army began operations "to restore security" in the north-western town of Jisr al-Shaghur, near the Turkish border.
"Our correspondent in Jisr al-Shaghur said now that, in response to people's calls, units from the army began its duties in the town to arrest armed members," a television station reported.
The broadcaster added that armed groups set fire to fields around the town.
The massive military operation against government opponents involves some 30,000 troops, Turkish TV channel CNN Turk reported.
The operation comes after authorities said 120 security personnel were killed by "armed groups" earlier in the week.
Damascus said that "terrorists and thugs" attacked security forces and tried to take over the area. But opposition members maintain the deaths were of defectors who were executed by their fellow soldiers.
In the wake of the government's vow to retaliate for the deaths of the 120 security officers, more than 2,400 Syrians fled across the border into Turkey in recent days amid fears of reprisal.
Mohamed Zaatar is one of those being treated in a hospital in Antakya. He said he was shot last Sunday by a military helicopter in Jisr al-Shaghur.
"My relatives took me to a far away clinic because we could not go to the town's hospital, where security were acting as doctors and killing those injured," Zaatar told the German Press Agency dpa.
He said troops who entered the city before he was injured said they were told by their superiors that they were being transferred to fight in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. But they were instead taken to Jisr al-Shahgur.
Some of them defected and escaped into Turkey with him, Zaatar added. Yet, they refused to talk to media, fearing for their families who remained in Syria.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Syrian violent crackdown against protesters as an "atrocity."
Erdogan's comments represent his harshest critique so far of the Syrian regime's crackdown on anti-government protesters.
More than 1,300 people have been killed in Syria since the protests against President Bashar al-Assad began in March, according to human rights groups. | Protest_Online Condemnation | June 2011 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(Trend News Agency Azerbaijan)'] |
A police officer discharges a 50,000volt Taser gun into the groin of a GuillainBarré syndrome sufferer in Somerset, England, prompting a possible legal battle; he denies he was acting in an aggressive manner. | Police were investigating today after an officer accidentally discharged a 50,000 volt Taser weapon into a man's groin.
Peter Cox, 49, was seeking legal advice over the incident which started when he was stopped on suspicion of driving a BMW without insurance.
He spotted a patrol car following him and pulled over at his friend's house in Bridgwater, Somerset, where he was doing landscaping work on July 13.
The officer pointed the Taser at him for a few seconds before lowering the weapon.
At this point, it discharged, narrowly missing the father-of-one's genitals and hitting his groin and ankle.
Unemployed Mr Cox, who suffers from Guillain Barri syndrome, fell to the ground in agony and he was treated by paramedics on the front lawn.
He denied being aggressive and said the insurance company confirmed the car had valid insurance immediately after he was stopped.
An Avon and Somerset Police spokesman said the weapon was discharged by accident and that an investigation was under way.
"The Taser is a hand-held device which discharges an electrical current to temporarily incapacitate a person," the spokesman said.
"Its effects are short-lived but are designed to give officers control of the offender and the situation.
"Often the threat of using a Taser is an effective deterrent to calm an aggressive suspect and as a result frequently it's not necessary to actually discharge it.
"On Tuesday morning officers stopped a man in Bridgwater suspected to be driving a vehicle without insurance. The man appeared to become aggressive and the officer removed his Taser in accordance with protocol. On lowering the Taser it was accidentally discharged.
"The man was given first aid at the scene but is not believed to be injured.
"Police are now looking into this incident." | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The Independent)', '(Daily Mail)'] |
Climate activists continue Extinction Rebellion protests at the transport ministry in central London after the Metropolitan Police Service yesterday banned Extinction Rebellion protests in London, United Kingdom. Following the ban, police cleared a protester camp occupying Trafalgar Square. Almost 1,500 arrests have been made since last week. | Extinction Rebellion activists say they have left London's Trafalgar Square after police issued a ban on the group's climate change protests.
In a statement issued on Monday evening, the Metropolitan Police said demonstrators protesting in the capital after 21:00 BST could be arrested.
Extinction Rebellion said it would "let Trafalgar Square go" but added that the "International Rebellion continues". The protests, which began last Monday, have seen more than 1,400 arrests.
A number of demonstrations have been staged across the capital by the group, which is calling on the government to do more to tackle climate change. The protests were due to last two weeks.
On Monday evening, police began clearing protesters from Trafalgar Square, some of whom had glued themselves to the ground as they refused to leave.
Earlier in the day, hundreds of protesters had targeted the City of London, blocking the crossroads outside the Bank of England.
The Met said there had been 1,445 arrests by 14:00 on Monday, with 76 people charged with offences including criminal damage and obstruction of a highway.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said the ban had been imposed due to breaches of the Public Order Act and "ongoing serious disruption to the community".
Protests in the City had caused "further disruption to people and businesses", he said, with police making more than 90 arrests.
He added: "The policing operation continues, and we will continue to take action against anyone engaged in unlawful protests at locations targeted by Extinction Rebellion."
Previously, protesters had been warned by police to protest only in Trafalgar Square or risk arrest.
However, on Monday evening police began removing protesters from the site.
Four people who had locked themselves together inside a so-called peace tent were cut out of their locks with machinery by police.
Pam Williams, 71, glued herself to the spot where her tent stood as police arrived to take it.
She said protesters in Trafalgar Square were only given 30 minutes' notice before the 21:00 BST deadline.
"I feel possibly that they've been approached by people we've upset today, maybe the finance sector or the banking sector," she said. "I'm refusing to leave and I've glued myself to the ground.
"My husband has taken away the tent, the police haven't got it. I shall stay here until I'm arrested."
Green Party MEP Ellie Chowns said she had been arrested after "standing in solidarity" with protesters in Trafalgar Square.
She said in a video posted on Twitter that there was "no justification" for the ban on the protests. "The rules have been changed," she said. "No longer is any space in London allowable for peaceful democratic protest. This is intolerable."
Rabbi Jeffrey Newman, of the Finchley Reform Synagogue in north London, was arrested for leading a group of Jewish protesters to join activists blocking the five roads at Bank on Monday.
In a statement issued by the group, he said: "The highest principle is the saving of life, pikuach nefesh. "There isn't anything more that we're doing here in Extinction Rebellion than being aware that millions, or hundreds of millions of people, already are at threat because of the changing climate."
Last week, the Home Office confirmed to BBC News that it was reviewing police powers around protests in response to recent demonstrations.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | October 2019 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters)'] |
In Malaysia, police arrest 21 members of religious group Sky Kingdom. | They were arrested for possessing documents contrary to Islam, according to an official in Terengganu state. The Sky Kingdom is an inter-faith sect which claims to promote harmony between all of Malaysia's religious groups.
Known as much for building a giant teapot structure as for its teachings, the group has often been criticised for luring adherents away from Islam.
Members have been jailed in the past for attempting to renounce Islam, and the group's bizarre constructions have been deemed to be against local regulations.
'Teapot cult'
The 21 suspects who were arrested in pre-dawn raids on Sunday included a police officer, a member of a popular local rock group and the fourth wife of the sect's leader Ayah Pin.
Leader Ayah Pin believes he can save the world
They have all now been freed on bail pending a court appearance on 23 September, said Lim Char Boo, head of the Criminal Investigations Department in Terengganu.
The Sky Kingdom is led by the eccentric Ayah Pin, who claims he is the saviour of the world. The group's controversial structures - which given it the nickname "teapot cult" - are said to combine architectural elements from Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism.
The teapot is thought to signify the purity of water, while the umbrella signifies God, who shelters everyone in the world.
Ayah Pin, whose real name is Ariffin Mohamed, has attracted believers from many different religious groups with his message of love and tolerance.
He claims to allow his followers to be members of any faith, including Islam, but critics accuse him of luring Muslims away from the faith.
The raids on the Sky Kingdom commune reflect Malaysia's sensitivity towards such issues.
"The activities and teachings of Ayah Pin must be stopped. That is our goal," Muhammad Ramli Nuh, deputy chairman of Terengganu's Islamic development committee told the French news agency AFP.
The opposition fundamentalist Islamic Party, which ruled Terengganu state until last year, attempted to shut down the Sky Kingdom in 2000, but Ayah Pin's followers obtained a court order against the move. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2005 | ['(Malaysian Star)', '(BBC)'] |
At least 14 people are killed after Saudi-led coalition airstrikes hit a food factory in Yemen's capital Sana'a. The airstrikes come just days after the suspension of inconclusive peace talks in Kuwait. | Bombing of potato factory in the capital Sana’a comes just days after the collapse of UN-brokered peace talks
Last modified on Fri 23 Dec 2016 15.15 GMT
More than a dozen people have been killed in Yemen after the Saudi-led coalition resumed airstrikes on the capital Sana’a, following the collapse of UN-brokered peace talks. In the first such attacks since 11 April when an often-violated ceasefire was put in place coalition jets bombed a potato factory in the capital’s Nahda district on Tuesday, killing at least 14 people working there, mostly women.
The airstrikes came days after the suspension of inconclusive peace talks in Kuwait . The factory targeted was situated near an army maintenance camp. Firefighters scrambled to control the resulting blaze but were unable to rescue people inside the building. More than half of those killed are believed to be women. Abdullah al-Aqel, the factory director, said the death toll stood at 16, with more than 10 people injured. The conflict in Yemen is between Houthi rebels allied with the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who led the country from 1990 to 2012, and forces loyal to the ousted president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Hadi is based in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Houthi fighters control Sana’a and have spread out across the country but the two sides are engaged in heavy street fighting in a number of other major cities.
Saudis and their Sunni Arab allies view Houthi fighters who belong to the Zaydi sect of Shia Islam as Iranian proxies and have accused Tehran of militarily backing them, a charge Iran vehemently denies. Since last March, Saudi Arabia has launched airstrikes to reinstate Hadi and counter Houthi advances. More than 6,000 people have died, including thousands of civilians and children, according to the UN. The UN child protection agency Unicef has said more than 1,100 children were confirmed to have died since the conflict began last year. All flights into Sana’a were suspended for 72 hours after the airstrike. | Armed Conflict | August 2016 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The government of Morocco arrests 23 alleged terrorists, including Mustapha Moatassim, the Secretary General of Alternative Civilization, a political party recognized by the state. | RABAT - Moroccan police have arrested a police officer and two suspected Islamist extremists within hours of taking 23 members of a "major terrorist network" into custody, security officials said Tuesday. Police said in a statement that their own officer, who worked at Casablanca port, was arrested for "failure to respect professional secrecy (and) arousing the suspicions of other accomplices yet to be arrested." The other men arrested on Monday included a politician, Mustapha Moatassim, the secretary general of a small, legal Islamist party, Al Badil Al Hadari (Alternative Civilisation). On Monday, police announced they had dismantled "a major terrorist network with Jihadist (holy war) roots, which was preparing to carry out acts of violence on the national territory," and put 23 people in custody. They included the network's suspected leader Abdelkader Belliraj and police said they had probed "the ramifications and connections of the network with others active in Morocco and abroad." The three other arrests followed. Moatissim's political party was legalised in June 2005, a decade after it was founded as an association. He then distanced it from radical movements in the north African kingdom. "We believe in democratic political rules and we don't contest the legitimacy of the regime," he said at the time.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | February 2008 | ['(Middle East Online)'] |
Belgium defeats England 2–0 to finish at third place—its best ever result at a World Cup. | Belgium beat England 2-0 in the FIFA World Cup third-place play-off to secure their best ever finish at a World Cup and send Gareth Southgate's side home with a second straight loss.
Belgium football team. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
France will face Croatia in tomorrow's final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.
A fourth-minute goal from Thomas Meunier and an 82nd minute Eden Hazard strike earned Belgium the victory and the third-place, which improves on their previous best performance of a fourth-place finish in 1986.
Read more of our FIFA 2018 coverage:
"It's all about that achievement. I think these players deserve that," said Belgium coach Roberto Martinez.
"What we have seen in this World Cup is that the players did not want to rely on talent anymore, they wanted to rely on working as a team, becoming a group of players that would do anything to achieve results".
England were on top for most of the second half but with captain Harry Kane looking tired, Belgium's greater sharpness in the final third proved decisive.
"This game showed there is still room for improvement," said Kane.
"We're not the finished article, we're still improving and will only get better. We don't want to wait another 20 years to get into the semi-finals and the big matches. We need to improve, we need to get better but that will come," he said.
Belgium's early strike came when Romelu Lukaku swung the ball out left to Nacer Chadli who burst down the wing and slipped the ball across the face of the goal and Meunier confidently slotted past Jordan Pickford.
The goal means Belgium have had 10 different goalscorers at this World Cup -- equalling the record set by France in 1982 and Italy in 2006.
While England manager Gareth Southgate made five changes to the side which lost to Croatia, Martinez made just two switches.
Meunier returned from suspension and Youri Tielemans given a start ahead of Marouane Fellaini in midfield with the Belgians fielding their strong front three of Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne and Eden Hazard.
De Bruyne should have made it 2-0 in the 12th minute when the ball found him at the back post after a slip-up from John Stones, but his poorly struck shot was easily dealt with by Pickford.
Kane, the tournament's top scorer with six goals, had an opportunity when set up by Raheem Sterling in the 24th minute but was off-balance as he screwed his shot wide.
Southgate brought on Marcus Rashford for Sterling and Jesse Lingard for Danny Rose at the break and the change worked well, with England well on top in the second half.
Toby Alderweireld was forced to clear an Eric Dier effort off his line at full stretch after a neat exchange between the Tottenham midfielder and Rashford ended with a chip over Belgian keeper Thibaut Courtois.
Dier and then Harry Maguire both headed wide from promising positions, while at thee other end Meunier went close to a second with a powerful volley that Pickford did well to save.
But the game was wrapped up when De Bruyne burst from midfield and slipped the ball through to Hazard, who glided past Phil Jones and fired into the bottom corner. | Sports Competition | July 2018 | ['(Reuters via Radio New Zealand)'] |
Workforce wins the Epsom Derby. Jockey Ryan L. Moore also won the Epsom Oaks on Friday. | Workforce broke the track record with a blistering turn of foot as he won the 231st running of the Derby by seven lengths at Epsom.
The breathtaking victory in baking sunshine sealed a Classic double for champion jockey Ryan Moore after his Oaks win on Snow Fairy. It was the fifth victory in the race for Newmarket trainer Sir Michael Stoute as Workforce finished ahead of 100-1 shot At First Sight with Frankie Dettori third on 9-2 chance Rewilding.
Derby win 'special' for jockey Moore
Pacemaker At First Sight, the outsider of Aidan O'Brien's three runners, tried to steal the race but was reeled in by Dante Stakes runner-up Workforce. Moore was delighted with his mount and told BBC Sport: "We had a really clean run. He quickened up really well and he kept extending. He's a really good horse and I'm delighted. "He was awesome. He travelled beautifully. It's a very special day. I was delighted to win the Oaks but this is the most important race for me and to win it for the boss (Stoute) too is even more special." The horse is owned by Prince Khalid Abdulla, a first cousin to King Abdullah of Saudia Arabia, who has won the Derby before with Quest for Fame (1990) and Commander in Chief (1993). Stoute has won the Derby with Shergar (1981), Shahrastani (1986), Kris Kin (2003) and North Light (2004). The 64-year-old trainer added: "He was seriously good today. I think he has won one of the great Derbies in terms of the performance. I'm thrilled for Ryan.
"He's gone bang bang and the horse has answered his call. Ryan has a great temperament. "After a poor ride in the St Leger for me with the favourite (Conduit two years ago) I wanted him to get a monkey off his back. He has done that today." In the process, the winner rewrote the history books as no beaten Dante winner had ever gone on to land the premier Classic. O'Brien's favourite Jan Vermeer finished fourth, with stablemate Midas Touch in fifth in a race watched by a crowd of more than 100,000 on the Epsom Downs. Workforce's time of two minutes 31.33 seconds over the undulating mile-and-a-half trip smashed the previous track record set by Lammtarra, who won the 1995 Derby in a time of 2min 32.31s. What are these? | Sports Competition | June 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
The President of Singapore, Sellapan Ramanathan, "on the advice of the prime minister , has dissolved parliament" to prepare for the 2006 general election, to be held on May 6. | This will be the first electoral test for Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who was appointed in August 2004.
His People's Action Party (PAP), which has ruled the country for four decades, currently controls all but two of the 84 elected seats in the parliament.
The tiny opposition has vowed to campaign for more than half the seats in a bid to upset PAP's dominance.
President SR Nathan, "on the advice of the prime minister, has dissolved parliament", the government said in a statement.
Mr Lee, who is the eldest son of Singapore's first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, did not have to call an election until June 2007.
But speculation had been rife in recent weeks that he would call the ballot early to take advantage of the country's strong economy. | Organization Closed | April 2006 | ['(Lee Hsien Loong)', '(BBC)'] |
Refugees flee Nigeria's Borno State following the Boko Haram massacre in the town of Baga. 7,300 flee to neighbouring Chad while over 1,000 are trapped on the island of Kangala in Lake Chad. Nigeria's army vows to recapture the town, while Niger and Chad withdraw their forces from a transnational force tasked with combating militants. | A group of Nigerian traditional hunters and vigilantes gather on vehicles on their way to engage Boko Haram militants in Mubi from Yola, Adamawa State, in November. The hunters have being assisting the Nigerian military in their fight against the Islamic insurgents.
STR/EPA/Landov
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A group of Nigerian traditional hunters and vigilantes gather on vehicles on their way to engage Boko Haram militants in Mubi from Yola, Adamawa State, in November. The hunters have being assisting the Nigerian military in their fight against the Islamic insurgents.
Updated at 12:40 p.m. ET
Boko Haram extremists, who seized a northern garrison town in Nigeria less than a week ago, have reportedly carried out a massacre of its inhabitants, with Amnesty International saying as many as 2,000 have been killed.
"The attack on Baga and surrounding towns, looks as if it could be Boko Haram's deadliest act in a catalogue of increasingly heinous attacks carried out by the group," says Daniel Eyre, a Nigeria researcher for Amnesty International. "If reports that the town was largely razed to the ground and that hundreds or even as many as two thousand civilians were killed are true, this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram's ongoing onslaught against the civilian population."
However the BBC cautions that while there are fears of of thousands dead, "other reports have put the number in the hundreds."
Reuters quotes a Nigerian military spokesman as saying that government forces, backed by airstrikes, were battling to retake the town.
Journalists are unable to report freely from the area and most reports come from telephone contact with local officials and debriefing refugees from the area.
As we reported on Sunday, Boko Haram captured the town of Baga the only major holdout to the group's control of the northern state of Borno. Baga had been the headquarters of a multinational force, including troops from Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon that were charged with securing the area from the Islamist militants.
The Wall Street Journal reports: "Boko Haram fighters swept through the surrounding villages outside Baga, killing residents of communities who they consider to be opponents, as well as men who tried to escape, according to Mr. Masta and other survivors, as well as officials and local vigilantes. On Wednesday, Boko Haram burned down the entire town."
Since last weekend's attack, Niger has now said that it will not help the multinational force retake the town, the BBC says.
The violence has seen a bloody uptick in the run-up to next month's presidential elections in Nigeria.
The Associated Press quotes local officials as saying that about 140 children who have fled Baga and arrived in Yola, in neighboring Adamawa state, have no idea whether their parents are alive or dead. Seven others have been reunited with parents, the AP says.
By way of background, The Washington Post says: "In August, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau announced the establishment of his 'Islamic Caliphate,' quickly taking over every corner of Borno State in northeast Nigeria. But one town called Baga, populated by thousands of Nigerians along the western shores of Lake Chad, held out. Anchored by a multinational military base manned by troops from Niger to Chad, it was the last place in Borno under the national government's control. Over the weekend, that changed."
Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the mass kidnapping of schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in Borno last April. The plight of the girls, many of whom have not been seen since, led to a movement around the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. | Armed Conflict | January 2015 | ['(UNHCR)', '(NPR via BBC)'] |
Alan Shatter resigns from the Irish government after scandals over him came out in February. | The Government Chief Whip, Paul Kehoe, told the Dáil the nomination of a Government Minister will take place in the House following Ministers' Questions.
It comes after Taoiseach Enda Kenny announced Mr Shatter's resignation from Government this afternoon.
Mr Kenny told the Dáil Mr Shatter had resigned following receipt of the report of Seán Guerin into allegations made by Garda Sergeant Maurice McCabe.
It is critical of a number of agencies including the Department of Justice.
The minister has taken responsibility for this and is stepping down.
.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said it would have been appropriate to have informed the Opposition on the Guerin report.
He said it had caused a significant degree of surprise and shock.
He asked if there had been consultations with the Tánaiste and when he could expect to get a copy of the report.
Mr Kenny said he had received a letter from the Minister for Justice and he said he had made it with a great degree of dignity.
He said it was a testament to his work ethic, the report came to the conclusion that there was inadequate analysis by a variety of agencies.
He said he wished to point out that GSOC did not speak to Mr Guerin and said Mr Shatter’s output would stand the test of time
Mr Kenny said Mr Guerin's report came out of concerns he had raised.
He said the report was hard hitting and that the brunt of the report deals with An Garda Síochána and to a lesser extent the Minister for Justice.
He said the accompanying letter from Mr Guerin sent to him last night would have to take into account certain matters of privacy and he had asked the Attorney General to deal with that.
Mr Martin said he was still unclear as to the reasons that led to Mr Shatter’s resignation and he asked the Taoiseach to outline the detail.
He asked him to confirm that a Commission of Investigation was being set up and he asked about the role of the Garda Confidential Recipient and if Mr Kenny could shed any light.
The Taoiseach said the report was 300 pages long and that it was necessary to have a Commission of Investigation.
The report points out the inadequate response of the minister under his statutory function for independent analysis and it was in that respect he was resigning.
It was his feeling that this finding of inadequate use of his statutory responsibility that required him to tender his resignation.
He said Mr Guerin did not actually speak to the minister but was in possession of the documentation.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said no one in his party would take any pleasure in the resignation.
However, he said the minister defamed the whistleblowers and actively undermined the GSOC.
He asked Mr Kenny if he had sought the minister's resignation but the Taoiseach said he had not.
He said these were serious matters that would be treated seriously.
He noted that the Government had appointed Mr Guerin.
He said the report would be published with regard to parameters on privacy.
Mr Adams raised the resignation of former for justice minister Willie O'Dea.
He said the Taoiseach had sought the resignation of Mr O'Dea.
Mr Adams said that if Mr Shatter had not offered his resignation, he would still be minister today.
He said all of these events highlight the need for fundamental reform and the Taoiseach had failed to do that.
He said Mr Shatter was not the only one and asked if the Taoiseach expected other resignations
The Taoiseach said Mr Shatter was not Mr O'Dea and that GSOC did not cooperate with Mr Guerin.
He said at no time was Mr Shatter interviewed by Mr Guerin.
He said the report's conclusion about inadequate use of statutory powers by the minister, led to the resignation.
Mr Kenny said he had not seen anyone with Mr Shatter’s work ethic.
Sources close to Sergeant McCabe say that he hasn't seen the Guerin report and will study it thoroughly before making a detailed response.
Sources also say that Sgt McCabe was interviewed by Mr Guerin on four separate days in relation to the allegations in the report and is now awaiting the terms of reference of the commission of inquiry.
Gilmore pays tribute to Shatter
Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore this evening expressed his appreciation to Mr Shatter for his “outstanding record of accomplishment” as Minister for Justice and Defence.
In a statement, he said: “While I believe that the minister's decision to resign was, in the circumstances, inevitable I want to pay tribute to Alan Shatter for his work in the Departments of Justice and Defence.
“Alan Shatter is a talented legal thinker who worked incredibly hard on his reform agenda. He has had many accomplishments during his time in office, including reform of the legal profession, modernisation of the Courts, landmark personal insolvency legislation and modernisation and reform of the prison service.
“He was Minister for Justice in difficult economic times and he has a record of which he should be proud. I wish him every success in the future.”
Wallace critical of support for Shatter
Earlier, Independent TD Mick Wallace repeated calls for Mr Shatter to stand down over his disclosure of personal information about Mr Wallace.
He said the Taoiseach and Labour's continuing defence of Mr Shatter was undermining their own support among the public.
He was commenting following the release of a report by the Data Protection Commissioner, which found Mr Shatter broke the law by disclosing personal information about the deputy.
Mr Wallace said he believed the public at large had lost confidence in the minister, and the longer Mr Kenny stood by him the more confidence would dissipate from the Taoiseach.
He also said he believed every time the Taoiseach stood by Mr Shatter he was losing support within his own ranks.
Mr Wallace said he was getting legal advice about what to do in light of the ruling.
Asked about the potential cost to the taxpayer if he did pursue legal action and lose, due to his debts as a result of unpaid taxes, he there were a number of legal people who had offered their services for free, so that if he did go to court it would not be at the expense of the taxpayer.
Deputy Wallace told RTÉ'S Six One news this evening that Mr Shatter was a very able minister.
But he said he had failed to bring the accountability and transparency that is required to An Garda Síochána.
He said he was not expecting Mr Shatter's resignation but he had said a number of months ago that it would be a surprise if the minister would survive in office until the summer recess.
Deputy Wallace said his criticisms of the minister were not personal.
He also said he was disappointed with the minister's handling of the issues that he had brought before him.
Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea earlier said Mr Shatter should consider his position after failing to meet the standards he set for ministers when he was an opposition TD.
Mr O'Dea also questioned the fact that so many Government deputies had supported Minister Shatter, despite the Data Commissioner finding he breached the Data Protection Act.
He said it is significant that "those who shouted so loudly about accountability and loose standards in Opposition" have rushed out to renew confidence in Minister Shatter "as soon as the ink has dried" on the Data Commissioner's report.
"The question arises, why is he not resigning when he has failed to meet his own standards about how a minister should behave?" | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | May 2014 | ['(RTE)'] |
A military court in Vietnam sentences former deputy defense minister Nguyễn Văn Hiến to four years in prison for allowing three plots of land in Ho Chi Minh City to be illegally transferred from the Navy to private investors. He is also stripped of his Communist Party credentials. | HANOI(Reuters) - A military court in Vietnam on Thursday sentenced a former deputy defence minister accused of allowing three plots of land in Ho Chi Minh City to be illegally transferred to private investors from the navy to four years in prison.
State media said Navy admiral Nguyen Van Hien, 65, who was found guilty of “lack of responsibility”, had transferred plots totalling 7,300 sq metres for 45-49 years for the construction of office buildings.
Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong has presided over a crackdown on corruption that has seen several high-ranking ministers and politicians jailed, including a member of the one-party state’s ruling Politburo.
“Hien’s activity meant the Navy lost the use of the plots for 49 years, causing losses of nearly 940 billion dong ($40 million) to the state,” the Ministry of Public Security said.
The military court also sentenced four other military officers to between four and nine years in prison for their involvement in the case.
Hien, who was deputy defence minister from 2009 to 2016, was stripped of his party credentials in April, according to the Ministry of Public Security.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | May 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Pakistani Christian woman Asia Bibi, sentenced to death by hanging in 2010 and recently acquitted, is released from prison. Bibi has reportedly boarded a plane; however, its destination was not known. Several countries have offered her asylum. | Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy after spending eight years on death row, has been freed from prison.
Last week's Supreme Court ruling sparked violent protests from Islamists and the government agreed to their demand to stop her leaving Pakistan.
News of her release led to some confusion, with reports she had been taken to another country.
But the foreign office later said she was still in Pakistan.
The case is highly sensitive and Information Minister Fawad Hussein said journalists had been "extremely irresponsible" in reporting she had left the country without official confirmation.
Those reports were based on comments from her lawyer, Saiful Malook, who has been granted temporary asylum in the Netherlands after facing death threats.
Asia Bibi's husband had said they were in danger and pleaded for asylum. A number of Western countries are understood to have held discussions with Asia Bibi's family about granting them asylum.
The mother-of-five was released from prison in the city of Multan on Wednesday and the foreign office says she is in "a safe place in Pakistan".
Also known as Asia Noreen, she was convicted in 2010 of insulting the Prophet Muhammad during a row with neighbours.
The Pakistani government has said it will start legal proceedings to prevent her going abroad after agreeing the measure to end the violent protests.
Many of the protesters were hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws and called for Asia Bibi to be hanged.
One Islamist leader said all three Supreme Court judges also "deserved to be killed".
A spokesman for the hardline Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLP) party, which blocked roads in major cities for several days, said Asia Bibi's release was in breach of their deal with the government.
"The rulers have showed their dishonesty," TLP spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters.
The deal also saw officials agree not to block a petition for the Supreme Court to evaluate Asia Bibi's acquittal in the light of Islamic Sharia law.
The trial stems from an argument Asia Bibi had with a group of women in June 2009. They were harvesting fruit when a row broke out about a bucket of water. The women said that because she had used a cup, they could no longer touch it, as her faith had made it unclean. Prosecutors alleged that in the row which followed, the women said Asia Bibi should convert to Islam and that she made offensive comments about the Prophet Muhammad in response. She was later beaten up at her home, during which her accusers say she confessed to blasphemy. She was arrested after a police investigation. Acquitting her, the Supreme Court said that the case was based on unreliable evidence and her confession was delivered in front of a crowd "threatening to kill her".
Islam is Pakistan's national religion and underpins its legal system. Public support for the strict blasphemy laws is strong. Hard-line politicians have often backed severe punishments, partly as a way of shoring up their support base. But critics say the laws have often been used to exact revenge after personal disputes, and that convictions are based on thin evidence.
The vast majority of those convicted are Muslims or members of the Ahmadi community who identify themselves as Muslims but are regarded as heretical by orthodox Islam. Since the 1990s scores of Christians have also been convicted. They make up just 1.6% of the population.
The Christian community has been targeted by numerous attacks in recent years, leaving many feeling vulnerable to a climate of intolerance. Since 1990, at least 65 people have reportedly been killed in Pakistan over claims of blasphemy. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | November 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
Both countries announce an initial deal where new tariffs to be mutually imposed on December 15 would not be implemented. China says it "will buy more high quality of American agricultural products", while the United States says it will halve the existing 15% tariffs. | China and the US have reached an initial deal to resolve a bruising trade war between the two countries, according to statements from both sides.
China’s vice-commerce minister, Wang Shouwen, said in a late night briefing on Friday that the US had agreed to cancel some of its existing tariffs on Chinese goods, while Donald Trump tweeted that the two countries had agreed to a “very large Phase One Deal”.
Calling the agreement an “amazing deal for all”, Trump said China had agreed to “many structural changes and massive purchases” of “Agricultural product, Energy, Manufactured Goods, plus much more”. He said the 25% tariffs would remain and previous 15% tariffs would be halved to 7.5%.
He also confirmed that a new round of tariffs planned for 15 December on goods including laptops, toys and video games would not go ahead “because of the fact that we made the deal”.
Trump said negotiations on a phase two deal would begin “immediately, rather than waiting until after the 2020 election”.
The remarks came after a day of silence from Beijing, following US media reports that an agreement “in principle” had been reached that would see the US roll back some of the tariffs on $360bn of Chinese goods in exchange for Chinese commitments to buy US agricultural products and other concessions.
News of the deal comes days before the White House is due to impose the new tranche of tariffs on $160bn in consumer goods, which experts say would have escalated trade tensions further. Reports said China had agreed to purchase $50bn worth of US farm goods while the US offered to cut existing tariffs on Chinese goods by as much as 50%.
Chinese officials did not confirm commitments to purchase US agricultural products, stating only that the country “will buy more high quality of American agricultural products” but relevant detail would be disclosed later.
Officials said the two sides had agreed on the text of a nine-chapter agreement covering intellectual property, technology transfers, agricultural products and dispute settlement among other topics. Wang said both sides would need to go through legal checks, translations, and arrangements for an official signing ceremony.
Liao Min, of the office of the Central Commission for Financial and Economic Affairs, said China would also consider not implementing previously planned tariffs on US products, to go in effect on 15 December.
“China hopes the US will fulfill its commitment. Removing tariffs is the core concern of China’s,” he said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 index closed only slightly higher on the news on Friday and experts questioned how much the agreement resolves long-running tensions between the two countries.
“The deal will ultimately be weighed in terms of how much it does to address structural issues like intellectual property and market access,” said Shehzad Qazi of China Beige Book. “The push for financial decoupling and of course the larger technological competition are also all here to stay.”
“Trump’s trade war may have been the opening salvo of a long drawn conflict,” he said.
As China comes under more pressure to support its slowing economy, major structural changes are less likely.
“The trade war so far has damaged the bilateral relationship in every dimension,” said Dan Wang, the China analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit.
“This may be the end of act 1, but far from the end of the trade talks. China will continue to rely on industrial policies and the state sector to lead growth. The role of state-owned enterprises is strengthened, not weakened during this economic downturn and the opening-up policies are rather limited,” she said.
Beijing’s muted response earlier on Friday had raised questions about whether an agreement had been reached. Speaking at a symposium in Beijing, China’s minister of foreign affairs, Wang Yi, did not mention the negotiations.
Instead, he took the occasion to criticise the US for having “seriously damaged the hard-won mutual trust” between the two countries. Wang said the US had “slandered” China by criticising it over its policies in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
“We will never accept the so-called unilateral sanctions and any acts of bullying,” he said.
For the last year and a half, Beijing and Washington have been locked in a tit-for-tat trade war that has inflicted pain in both economies, caused market uncertainty, and slowed global growth.
Critics say striking a deal now negates the last year and a half of pressure on China to reform practices that give its businesses an unfair advantage.
The US senator Marco Rubio wrote on Twitter that the deal would “give away the tariff leverage needed for a broader agreement on the issues that matter the most such as subsidies to domestic firms, forced tech transfers & blocking US firms access to key sectors”. | Sign Agreement | December 2019 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Voters head to the polls to elect their next president and parliament. The two main presidential candidates are incumbent President Yoweri Museveni and opposition activist and musician Bobi Wine. The election has been widely criticized as being unfair, with both the United States and European Union cancelling their observations of the election. | The internet is blocked and security has been stepped up in Uganda as counting gets under way after polls closed in a hotly contested election.
A 38-year-old singer is challenging Yoweri Museveni, 76, in one of the world's youngest countries.
Robert Kyagulanyi, known by his stage name Bobi Wine, says he represents the younger generation, while Mr Museveni says he is standing for stability.
Dozens of people have been killed in the run-up to the election.
Polls closed at 16:00 local time (13:00 GMT) but remain open for those still queuing at the time.
Some polling stations did not open for close to two hours and voters in the queue had grown angry and had started shouting at the polling gate officials as the cause of the delay was not clear, the BBC's Patience Atuhaire reports from the capital, Kampala. As vote counting began, lorries carrying soldiers drove through the city and police and local defence units were also seen patrolling, she says.
Twenty-six people from a coalition of civil society groups have been arrested for allegedly manning an illegal vote-tallying centre at a hotel in the capital.
Ahead of the vote, the electoral commission banned the setting up of alternative polling centres.
Earlier, the police said they intended to deploy officers on rooftops of Kampala during the election period, saying that opposition activists commanded protests from high-rise building in November, when more than 50 people were killed after Bobi Wine was arrested.
Dressed in military fatigues, Mr Museveni gave a stark warning during a televised speech on Tuesday evening: "If you try to disturb peace, you will have yourself to blame. The security forces, following the law, are ready to deal with any troublemaker."
Results are not expected before Saturday.
As well as being unable to get online, people are even having trouble sending text messages. Earlier in the week the authorities ordered the blocking of social media, messaging apps and certain sites for virtual private networks (VPNs) which people use to get around social media blocks. The Ugandan authorities appear to have ordered internet providers to shut down the whole internet at 19:00 local time (16:00 GMT) on the eve of the election, according to a letter shared by journalist Samira Sawlani .
In the letter, which we have not verified, the Uganda Communications Commission orders internet providers to "implement a temporary suspension of the operation of all your internet gateways and associated access points". While it said the order was temporary, the letter did not state when the suspension should end.
The internet access advocacy group Access Now has urged telecoms providers to challenge the order, saying they should be "enablers of human rights, not gatekeepers". By Catherine Byaruhanga, BBC News, Kampala
Coronavirus guidelines on social distancing and handwashing are proving hard to implement but here in Kibuli, which sits in the shadow of downtown Kampala, everyone queuing up is wearing facemasks.
There are reports that a new biometric system to verify people's identities is not working in some areas. The electoral commission's spokesperson would not confirm whether this was because the internet has been cut off. There are questions about how results from around the country will be transmitted to the national tally centre in Kampala without the internet. The electoral commission told the BBC it has systems in place to do this but didn't explain further. How bad was the violence during the campaign?
Violence has been at an unprecedented level.
Security forces cracked down on gatherings ahead of the election and dozens have been killed.
The government says the ban on gatherings was to prevent the spread of coronavirus while the opposition say it was a smokescreen for repression.
Bobi Wine and others out of the 10 opposition candidates have been arrested on several occasions.
It depends who you ask.
The government has previously said the election would be free and fair.
But the US cast doubt over the electoral process and withdrew its election observers after most of its accreditation requests were denied.
In response, Mr Museveni's spokesman Don Wanyama tweeted that there were observers from the African Union and East African Community.
"I don't remember when Uganda last sent election observers to the US," he added. Bobi Wine has called on voters to remain at polling stations on Thursday and use their mobile phone cameras to record the tallying process in an effort to prevent vote rigging.
Mr Museveni is standing for a sixth elected term in office, as leader of the National Resistance Movement (NRM).
He came to power on the back of an armed uprising in 1986 and has long been depicted to Ugandans as a liberator and peace bringer. But he has managed to maintain his grip on power through a mixture of encouraging a personality cult, employing patronage, compromising independent institutions and side-lining opponents, says the BBC's Patience Atuhaire.
Bobi Wine is widely thought to be the strongest of the 10 opposition candidates in the presidential race.
The 38-year-old reggae star is known by his supporters as the ghetto president.
His party, the National Unity Platform (NUP) party campaigns for basic needs like improving access to healthcare, education, clean water and justice. Over the last two decades Bobi Wine's musical output has been filled with songs about these issues and they have inspired a fervent following.
He grew up in Kampala's Kamwokya slum where he went on to build his now world-famous recording studio. | Government Job change - Election | January 2021 | ['(BBC)'] |
Former Prime Minister of Mongolia Jargaltulgyn Erdenebat is senteced to six years in prison and banned from government work for six years from working in government office accused of abuse of power. | Earlier today (6 July), a Mongolian court sentenced former Prime Minister J.Erdenebat to six years in prison for abuse of power and banned him for six years from working in government office. The trial of the politician has been continuing for three days in Ulaanbaatar at the Bayanzurkh, Sukhbaatar and Chingeltei District Court.
J.Erdenebat from the Mongolian People’s Party won a seat in the State Great Khural for a constituency in the Selenge Province in the parliamentary election, which took place on 24 June, while he was still in detention. Subsequently, a bi-election will be held in Selenge to elect a new MP.
J.Erdenebat was imprisoned on 16 June after failing to pay the ridiculously large MNT 10 billion bail issued by the court. The 45-year-old politician was accused of abuse of power for illegally owning protected areas with special licenses in Tost, in the Tosonbulba Mountain Range in the South Gobi Province whilst working as Prime Minister.
Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar city, Sukhbaatar district, Baga toiruu, Sukbaatar Square 8/1, “Khuvsgul lake” city tower, 14 floor | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | July 2020 | ['(News.mn)'] |
Millions of young people take to the streets and numerous businesses worldwide go on strike days before the UN Climate Summit, demanding that further action be taken to confront climate change. | (Reuters) - Millions of young people flooded the streets of cities around the world on Friday to demand political leaders take urgent steps to stop climate change, uniting in a worldwide protest inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
Thunberg on the climate march she inspired around the world
01:03
Alarmed by images of the Greenland ice sheets melting and the Amazon rain forests burning, students and workers abandoned schools, shops and offices in nearly every corner of the globe, aiming to stop what they see as a looming environmental catastrophe.
The protests started in the Pacific islands, where rising sea levels threaten a way of life, and followed the sun across Australia, Japan, Southeast Asia and on to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. The coordinated student “strike” culminated in New York’s Wall Street, where some investors have embraced the fossil fuel industry.
Massive crowds overwhelmed the streets of lower Manhattan, chanting “Save our planet!” while anticipating an address by Thunberg, an international figure who sailed across the Atlantic in an emissions-free yacht ahead of next week’s climate summit at the United Nations.
“Right now we are the ones who are making a difference. If no one else will take action, then we will,” Thunberg told tens of thousands of people gathered at a park with a view of the Statue of Liberty.
Once she took the stage, the crowd chanted her name, then went silent to hang on her every word. As she paused between sentences, people erupted into applause.
“If you belong to that small group of people who feel threatened by us, then we have some very bad news for you. Because this is only the beginning. Change is coming whether they like it or not,” she concluded.
Demonstrators in Paris raised a painting of Thunberg as the Virgin Mary, a halo around her head reading, “Our house is on fire.”
“She’s like the icon of our generation,” New York protester Fiamma Cochrane, 17, said, highlighting the leadership role of young people in the international movement to reduce consumption of fossil fuels.
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Four million people participated worldwide including 300,000 in New York, organizers with the anti-fossil fuels group 350.org said. Reuters could not verify the crowd sizes.
Concern has escalated since U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the international Paris Accord on climate change and took a series of steps to dismantle environmental protections, including moving on Thursday to block stricter vehicle emissions standards in California.
Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro are among the world’s only national leaders who publicly question the science of climate change, and they are not taking part in next week’s U.N. climate summit.
Thousands gathered across Brazil to take aim at Bolsonaro, who they say is allowing the destruction of the Amazon rainforest to clear space for soy beans and cattle ranching. In August, fires there surged to their greatest level since 2010.
“The policy of the Bolsonaro government is the policy of environmental destruction and deepening the climate crisis ... this is why we’re on strike,” said Marcela Pimentel Miranda, an organizer for Youth for Climate’s affiliate in Brasilia.
One protester in Sao Paulo held up a picture of Bolsonaro and Trump beneath the hand-written “Abolish fossil fools!”
Demonstrators in Thailand stormed the environment ministry and feigned death, while activists in Berlin and Munich stood on melting blocks of ice with nooses around their necks to symbolize the earth’s fate when the polar ice caps melt.
Protesters in Warsaw staged a performance of people drowning in a sea of plastic waste.
“The planet is getting hotter than my imaginary boyfriend,” read a poster held by a teenager in Thailand.
“Make love, not CO2” signs were spotted in Berlin and Vienna.
While Europeans filled the streets, students in the Solomon Islands gathered at the rising ocean water’s edge wearing traditional grass skirts. The issue is vital to low-lying Pacific islands, which have repeatedly asked wealthier nations to do more to prevent rising sea levels.
Global warming caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels has already led to droughts and heat waves, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and floods, according to scientists.
“There is no Planet B,” read a sign hoisted by a young woman in London.
In Kenya, around 500 activists marched to demand that the government cancel plans for a coal plant and investigate corruption in hydropower dams.
“In Samburu there is a lot of heat, the grass has dried up, there is little water,” said Francis Lentel, a young herdsman in traditional beads, holding a picture of the Earth weeping.
The protest movement is putting increasing pressure on governments and companies to respond.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel unveiled a new climate protection package thrashed out by parties in her coalition during all-night talks.
Private industry has also responded. Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos on Thursday pledged to make the largest U.S. e-commerce company net carbon neutral by 2040.
Hundreds of workers from Google, Amazon and other technology companies on Friday criticized their industry for being slow to tackle climate change and joined marches in San Francisco and Seattle calling for action.
| Strike | September 2019 | ['(Reuters)', '(NBC News)'] |
The death toll rises to 104 in a northern China coal mine gas blast. | Taiyuan -- Rescuers said they had nearly finished search and rescue operations in a coal mine in north China's Shanxi Province, and confirmed a total of 104 bodies had been recovered from the pit by Friday, fewer than the total of 105 which they had feared.
The gas explosion happened at 11:15 pm Wednesday inside the Xinyao Coal Mine, a village-run coal mining venture in Hongtong County, Linfen City.
Police have detained 33 people who are alleged to be relevant to or responsible for the fatal gas explosion, said Wang Qingxian, a spokesman with the provincial government.
China's Ministry of Public Security on Friday issued a class-B arrest warrant for the owner of the mine.
The latest information on survivors was that 15 workers either escaped or were rescued later.
The official cause of the accident has yet to be confirmed but preliminary investigations cite a coal dust explosion as the root cause, according to Xu Zhancheng, engineer-in-chief with the Shanxi Provincial Bureau of Coal Mine Safety.
More than 120 rescuers from 13 crews are participating in the rescue operation. They have finished the rescue operation at the No. 2 coal seam, and are carrying out rescue efforts at the No. 9 coal seam. The vertical distance between the two coal seams is 30 meters.
"Xinyao is a low-gas coal mining pit," said Xu, "I think the explosion first happened at the coal seam No. 9 and later spread, affecting coal seam No. 2."
There was a delay of about six hours in reporting the explosion to the local authorities, who were not contacted until 5:00 a.m. Thursday. The authorities said they believed the colliery managers delayed reporting the accident while they tried to begin their own rescue operations, which meant that crucial time passed and casualties probably increased as many rescuers were among the dead.
Xinyao, owned by Ruizhiyuan Mining Co., held full, valid licenses at the time of the accident that allowed it to produce 210,000 tons of coal annually.
Rescue and recovery work was continuing on Friday morning and officials were seeking to identify the dead. Many of the victims were residents of Hongtong and others came from Hebei and Sichuan provinces and Chongqing Municipality.
The density of carbon monoxide with the No. 9 coal seam is said to have hindered access, further thwarting the rescue efforts. The rescue headquarters have worked out measures for ventilation to guarantee safety of the rescuers while the rescue operation continues.
Authorities including Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, and Zhang Baoshun, Party secretary of the Shanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), on Thursday rushed to the site of the accident. They called for "all-out efforts" be made to save those trapped inside the shaft.
Among those detained are the mine's manager Gao Jianmin and its legal representative. Wang Hongliang. The mine licenses have been sealed and bank accounts frozen.
The accident is the nation's second deadliest mining disaster so far this year. In August, 181 miners died when heavy rains flooded two mines in eastern Shandong province. | Gas explosion | December 2007 | ['(China Daily)'] |
Team China is stripped of a 2000 Olympics bronze medal in women's gymnastics after it is revealed that one member of the team was underage. | The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday stripped the Chinese women’s gymnastics team of a bronze medal it won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The move came two months after one of China’s athletes, Dong Fangxiao, was found to be under-age at those Summer Games.
The I.O.C. will award the bronze medal to the United States , which had finished fourth in the team event and had left the 2000 Olympics empty-handed. The team members were Amy Chow, Jamie Dantzscher, Dominique Dawes, Kristen Maloney, Elise Ray and Tasha Schwikert.
| Sports Competition | April 2010 | ['(NY Times)'] |
A major earthquake strikes New Zealand with minor damage reported. | A major earthquake has rattled parts of New Zealand, including the capital Wellington. New Zealand geologists say the tremor had a magnitude of 7, but the US Geological Survey is putting it at 6.2. The long, rolling tremor was felt from the Bay of Plenty in the North Island to Dunedin in the South Island. The quake hit at a depth of 236 kilometres, around 173 kilometres north-west of Wellington, the USGS said.
No tsunami warnings have been issued.
Steve Sherburn from New Zealand's Geological and Nuclear Sciences says there are no reports of major damage or injuries yet.
"A shallow earthquake this size underneath the city would have been producing Christchurch-like effects so potentially in the southern and western-North Islands there may be some slight damage," he said.
A 6.3-magnitude quake hit New Zealand's second largest city of Christchurch in February last year, flattening office blocks and toppling buildings onto lunchtime crowds and leaving 185 people dead.
The country sits on the so-called Ring of Fire, the boundary of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, and experiences up to 15,000 tremors a year.
ABC/wires
We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
| Earthquakes | July 2012 | ['(The New Zealand Herald)', '(ABC News)'] |
The United Kingdom Home Office is restructured with a new Ministry of Justice being formed to handle prisons, probation and the sentencing of offenders. |
9 May 2007
A leaner, more focused Home Office starts today, and a new Ministry of Justice launches.
The division of the Home Office culminates an extraordinary programme of reform and change initiated by Home Secretary John Reid shortly after he took over running the department last year.
Welcoming the changes to the department, the Home Secretary said: 'The world doesn't stand still and neither should we. That's why we have refocused the Home Office on the issues that matter most to the public - crime, immigration and protection against terrorism.
'These are the great issues of our time - issues of personal, community and national security. It is right that they should be the focus of the new Home Office that comes into being today - a Home Office dedicated to protecting the public and securing the future.'
As the Home Secretary indicated, from today the department will target its attention on some of the most critical issues facing Britain.
Specialising in fighting crime and terrorism and protecting our borders will mean that the Home Office will turn all of its attention on these important issues:
Included in the new Home Office is an Office for Security and Counter-terrorism, which will be the nation's specialists in fighting the threat of terrorism.
Dr Reid said the new anti-terror unit 'will ensure a seamless response to the terrorist threat.'
From today, all responsibilities for criminal law and sentencing, reducing re-offending, and prisons and probation will transfer from the Home Office to a new Ministry of Justice (new window), built around the Department for Constitutional Affairs.
The Home Secretary said the Home Office will now devote all of its attention to its most important role: protecting the public.
'The newly formed Border and Immigration Agency will build on successes in bringing asylum claims to their lowest level in 10 years, and removing record numbers of people who have no right to be here,' he said.
'We will build a national ID card scheme to combat illegal immigration, organised crime and international terrorism, and we will continue to deliver on our commitment to protect the public from crime and anti-social behaviour.'
| Organization Established | May 2007 | ['(UK Home Office)', '(BBC)'] |
A magnitude 5.8 earthquake strikes near Mineral, Virginia; a nearby nuclear reactor is automatically shutdown due to the quake. This is the most powerful earthquake to hit Virginia since 1897. | Of all the things there are to worry about, earthquakes are fairly low on the list for those on the East Coast. So it was startling, just as the lunch hour was ending Tuesday and workers in a broad area of North America were settling back into their cubicles, when floors began to shake and chairs rocked.
In Clemson, S.C., water sloshed in glasses. In Washington, chandeliers swayed in the Capitol. And in the tiny town of Mineral, Va., china cabinets exploded.
Reporting was contributed by Elisabeth Bumiller, Eric Lipton and Jeff Zeleny from Washington; Henry Fountain, Elizabeth A. Harris, Michael Barbaro, Serge F. Kovaleski and Catrin Einhorn from New York; Abby Goodnough from Brattleboro, Vt.; Michael D. Shear from Mineral, Va.; Lisa A. Bacon from Richmond, Va.; and Kim Severson from Atlanta. | Earthquakes | August 2011 | ['(New York Times)', '(The Guardian)'] |
Chansa Kabwela, editor of Zambia's biggestselling newspaper The Post, is charged with distributing obscene materials relating to a health sector crisis. | An editor at Zambia's biggest-selling newspaper has been charged with distributing obscene materials relating to a health sector crisis.
The Post sent harrowing images of a woman giving birth in the street to government ministers to highlight the effects of a health sector strike. In May and June, Zambia's hospitals and clinics ground to a halt as doctors and nurses went on strike over pay. An official government spokesman declined to comment on the case. The trial of the Lusaka-based Post's female news editor, Chansa Kabwela, is due to start at the beginning of August. 'Too gruesome to publish'
Pictures of the woman giving birth, to a child which subsequently died, were taken by a family member and handed to the Post. Nine months pregnant and unable to afford private care, she had gone into labour. But with her baby emerging feet first, she was turned away from two clinics and then Zambia's largest hospital. Sam Mujuda, the Post's deputy editor-in-chief, described the pictures as "particularly graphic". "I found these pictures quite gruesome and our decision was that we could not publish these pictures," he said. "Here was a woman giving birth, it was a breach birth, legs first dangling between the legs of this woman." The editors' decision to post copies of the pictures to government ministers to focus their minds on the consequences of the strike did not go down well, the BBC's Jonah Fisher reports from Zambia. At a press conference, Zambian President Rupiah Banda condemned the Post for circulating what he called pornography. Then, this week, the paper's Ms Kabwela was charged with distributing obscene materials. "What I see in those pictures is suffering," Sam Mujuda added. "Suffering of a helpless woman who needed assistance. Unfortunately the president and his ministers and some of his supporters have chosen to ignore the plight of that woman." | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2009 | ['(BBC)', '(IOL)', '[permanent dead link]', '(Sowetan)', '[permanent dead link]'] |
In association football, Corinthians win their sixth Campeonato Brasileiro Série A title with four games remaining of the season. | Sao Paulo (AFP) - Corinthians sealed a sixth Brazilian league title after a late 1-1 draw at Vasco de Gama late Thursday gave them an unassailable 12-point lead with three games remaining.
Having slumped out of the Libertadores Cup early, the Sao Paulo outfit famous for their black and white shirts and former players such as 1970 World Cup hero Rivellino, went top in Brazil after match-day 18 and have been there since.
The title clinching round saw their nearest rivals Atletico Mineiro beaten 4-2 at Sao Paulo, while striker Wagner Love's goal for Corinthians at Vasco earned them a 1-1 draw.
A great deal of Corinthians' success is being put down to coach Adenor Leonardo Bachi, who came back this season from a sabbatical year where he observed Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti at Real Madrid. | Sports Competition | November 2015 | ['(Yahoo! via AFP)'] |
Corruption charges against former Premier of Western Australia Brian Burke are dropped. | Former West Australian premier Brian Burke has walked free from court after corruption charges against him were dropped.
Prosecutors announced in the Supreme Court they would not be proceeding with the charges against the former Labor premier, his lobbying business partner Julian Grill and former public servant Nathan Hondros.
All three were charged after a 2007 Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) inquiry into the influence of lobbyists on public servants. It was alleged Mr Burke and Mr Grill improperly procured information from Mr Hondros so they could benefit their clients. They stood trial in 2010, but the case was thrown out by a Supreme Court judge.
Prosecutors successfully appealed and the charges were reinstated.
But today the Supreme Court was told prosecutors believed it was not in the public interest to continue with the case. Outside the court, Mr Burke said he had been subjected to an unfair process.
"Julian and I have been reduced to financial ruin almost and it's been a time of great physical and emotional pressure and stress on all our families," he said. He estimates he has spent more than $1.7 million on his legal costs.
Mr Hondros says he has spent about $1 million defending himself.
"It's going to be very difficult to take stock of that," he said.
"It's going to take a while to work out exactly what it is.
"It's easy to talk about the financial and emotional burdens that you bear but it's more than that, so we'll just see what happens."
But Premier Colin Barnett says the decision to drop the case does not mean it was a waste of time.
"Everyone likes independent bodies, the CCC conducts itself accordingly, made recommendations and it's up to the DPP to act on it," he said. "Now in response to some of the comments made through judges and the like, they've decided not to proceed with it. "That's their decision, but boy I would hate a situation if we didn't pursue wrongdoing in our community." Mr Burke was the premier from 1983 until his resignation in 1988.
He was jailed in 1994 for seven months for rorting his travel expenses and then again in 1997 for six months before the second conviction was quashed. Before his fall from grace, some considered Mr Burke a potential prime minister.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | February 2012 | ['(ABC News Australia)'] |
Former Taiwanese President Chen Shui–bian and his wife, Wu Shu–chen, are both sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of corruption. | Friday 11 September 2009 - Former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian, known for fiery anti-China rhetoric while in office, was found guilty of corruption on Friday and sentenced to life in prison.
Taipei District Court convicted the two-term president on six charges related to bribery and corruption, closing a fractious, high-profile case that opened nearly three years ago and involved Chen’s wife and numerous family members and aides.
He was also fined T$200 million ($6 million).
Several hundred supporters demonstrated near the court and some threw plastic bottles and trash at police in protest after the verdict and sentence were announced.
Prosecutors had charged Chen with embezzling T$104 million ($3.185 million) from a special presidential office fund, accepting bribes of about $9 million related to a land procurement deal and taking another $2.73 million in kickbacks to help a contractor win its bid for a government project.
Chen has said the charges were political, denied wrongdoing and will appeal against the verdict which is unlikely to affect China’s relations with President Ma Ying-jeou of the China-friendly Nationalist Party (KMT).
Chen’s wife, Wu Shu-chen, was convicted on seven counts of graft and also sentenced to life in jail, a court spokesman said in a televised address. She was fined T$700 million.
Chen’s son and daughter-in-law were handed down sentences ranging from 20-30 months for related crimes.
While ruling from 2000-2008, Chen upset Beijing by advocating formal independence from China, which has claimed sovereignty over the self-ruled island since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | September 2009 | ['(Taiwan News)', '(France 24)'] |
A group of 65 Rohingya Muslims are left stranded on Rawi Island in southern Thailand after their boat shipwrecked during a journey to flee genocide in their native Rakhine State in Myanmar. | BANGKOK (Reuters) - A fishing boat carrying more than 60 Rohingya Muslims was found beached on an island in southern Thailand on Tuesday, officials said.
The passengers - 28 men, 31 women and five children - were stranded on Rawi island in Tarutao National Park in Thailand’s southern Satun province after the boat suffered engine trouble, a park official told Reuters.
Scores of Rohingya Muslims have boarded boats in recent months to try to reach Malaysia, part of what authorities fear could be a new wave of people smuggling by sea after a 2015 crackdown on trafficking.
A Satun government official said the passengers would be transferred to the mainland.
“Everyone will be investigated in order to see whether they are victims of trafficking or illegal immigrants,” said the official who declined to be named.
More than 700,000 Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh in 2017 fleeing an army crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, according to U.N. agencies.
Myanmar regards Rohingya as illegal migrants from the Indian subcontinent and has confined tens of thousands to sprawling camps in Rakhine since violence swept the area in 2012.
The unrest prompted tens of thousands of Rohingya to flee Myanmar by sea. The exodus peaked in 2015, when an estimated 25,000 people crossed the Andaman Sea for Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, many drowning in unsafe and overloaded boats.
| Shipwreck | June 2019 | ['(Reuters)', '(The Washington Post)'] |
Islamist al-Shabaab militants attack a hotel in Mogadishu resulting in at least 12 deaths. | Mogadishu (AFP) - At least 12 people were killed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu on Sunday after Shebab gunmen used a vehicle packed with explosives to blast their way inside a hotel, police said.
The Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab claimed responsibility for the dawn attack at the Sahafi hotel, which is popular with members of parliament, government employees and businessmen.
After the car bomb ripped a hole in the hotel's fortified walls, gunmen stormed the building firing semi-automatic rifles and throwing grenades, witnesses said.
"This is the action of an increasingly desperate, internally-divided group of extremists," Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said in a statement, after security forces overpowered the attackers in a gunbattle.
"Our security forces have full control of the situation," he added.
Somalia's National Intelligence and Security Agency declared the attack over several hours after the shooting began, although special forces appeared to be carrying out mopping-up operations for some time afterwards.
"Attackers exploded a car bomb to gain entry before going inside... we have reports of 12 dead," policeman Abdulrahid Dahir said.
The African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM), a 22,000-strong force fighting the Shebab, strongly condemned the "heinous terrorist attack" and said it had helped government troops repel the assault and secure the hotel.
Among the fatalities was a Somali freelance journalist, the Somali Association of Journalists said, adding that a photographer with the Reuters news agency had been slightly hurt.
The pair were hit when they arrived at the hotel to report on the first explosion. It was then that the second car bomb detonated.
A former senior army commander was also among the dead.
The UN envoy to Somalia, Nick Kay, also condemned the "bloody attack", which he said underlined the need to help support Somalia's security forces in stopping such assaults.
The European Union in a statement called the bloodshed "an act of terrorism by those who want to undermine progress towards a stable and secure Somalia".
- 'Huge explosion' -
Witnesses said they had seen several bodies of people killed in the initial blast, when a minibus packed with explosives was reportedly used to ram the gates of the hotel compound. A second heavy explosion followed shortly afterwards.
The fighters then poured inside, with witnesses reporting intense gunfire and several loud blasts.
"There was a huge explosion and people around the entrance were killed," said Mohamed Ismael, who was nearby when the attack began.
Shebab insurgents, who are fighting to overthrow the internationally backed government in Mogadishu, have carried out a string of attacks on hotels in the capital.
The Islamists have frequently used car bombs driven by suicide bombers to break into a complex or a building, with more attackers then following on foot.
Like other international hotels in Mogadishu, the Sahafi is heavily fortified.
It was the site of the kidnapping of two French security agents in 2009, one of whom later escaped while the other was killed by the Shebab during a failed rescue attempt in 2013.
Shebab spokesman Abdulaziz Abu Musab claimed the gunmen had overrun the hotel, which is situated near the major K4 roundabout.
"The mujahedeen fighters took control of the Sahafi hotel, where apostates and invading Christians were staying," he said in a statement.
The Shebab are on a mission to disprove claims they are close to defeat since being routed from Mogadishu in mid-2011 and losing several alleged commanders in US drone strikes.
The militants, who still hold large swathes of the countryside, have also carried out a string of strikes in neighbouring countries.
This week, President Mohamud called on Shebab fighters to surrender amid reports some factions may have shifted allegiance from Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State group.
Mohamud said the reported divisions were "symptomatic of a group that has lost its way", and warned that Somalis "do not need a new brand of horror and repression".
About 84 million years ago, Earth's crust and the mantle below it rotated around the planet's inner core - causing the Earth to tip over.
Vice reported that the woman, who works at Amazon's JFK8 facility on Staten Island, lives in her car in the warehouse parking lot.
The couple went to the cliff to watch the sunrise.
Hart said in an interview with Romper that his children are aware of the "gift and a curse" that celebrity brings.
In an interview with McClatchy, Anthony Fauci discusses the Delta variant and his plans to eventually return to research.
Alexandr Kudlay and Viktoria Pustovitova's last attempt to mend their relationship involved handcuffing themselves together. It didn't work.
Rumours abounded on Friday night that China's top spycatcher had defected to the US, amid a growing focus in Washington on the theory that Covid-19 escaped from a Wuhan laboratory. Dong Jingwei, vice minister of state security, was reported to have flown from Hong Kong to the US in February with his daughter. There was no confirmation of the rumoured development from either the US or China. Dr Han Lianchao, a former Chinese foreign ministry official who is now a pro-democracy activist in the US,
Trump's former Vice President Mike Pence was booed at what should've been a friendly crowd at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Orlando.
The urine test could help detect brain cancer earlier than traditional scans, improving patient survival.
The group of tubers passed over the approximately eight-foot-high Duke Energy dam along the Dan river while on a floating trip in North Carolina.
“12 Mighty Orphans” opens nationwide to positive reviews, audiences are seeing Lane Garrison’s talents
Teachers should drop the terms boys and girls in favour of “learners”, and mix up the sexes in PE classes, Stonewall has told schools. The controversial LGBT charity is urging teachers to ditch all gendered language and gendered uniforms and suggests that children should compete against the opposite sex in sport. A series of guidance documents state that uniform policies should "give the option to wear a skirt as well as the option to wear trousers". One of Stonewall’s guides said that its work
The last 15 months haven’t been kind to our bodies. A more sedentary lifestyle and the pursuit of something to salve the fear of the deadly pandemic raging around the globe has pushed us to the biscuit tin and takeaway delivery apps. In the first three months of the pandemic, Brits reportedly saw body weight increase by between 1.6 and 6.5lbs. Recognising the potential damage that could cause, and preparing for society reopening, we’ve started to take action. Six in 10 of us have made at least o
Former White House doctor Rep. Ronny Jackson and 13 other Republicans want President Joe Biden to take a mental cognition test and share the results.
Much to the surprise of a puzzled pundit corps, history may well conclude that, while President Joe Biden and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin produced no big-deal breaking news headline, their summit may prove to be one of the 21st century’s pivotal events.
It wasn’t the Emancipation Proclamation, but rather “General Order No. 3”
The "Daily Show" correspondent Jordan Klepper confronted Mike Lindell about his conspiracy theories during the Frank Free Speech Rally in Wisconsin.
Stepp and his wife spent 19 days in the hospital with Alli.
Daredevil Alex Harvill, 28, crashed his motorcycle while practicing to perform a 351-foot jump at an airshow in Washington state on June 17. | Armed Conflict | November 2015 | ['(AFP via Yahoo! News)', '(Reuters via ABC News Australia)'] |
Protestors set fire to the National Assembly of Gabon in Libreville in response to the disputed presidential election result. | Protesters in Gabon set alight the country's National Assembly building Wednesday night after a day of agitations against what many saw as a rigged election.
The small central African country has been governed by one family, the Bongos, since 1967. Ali Bongo, who took over from his father in 2009, was announced midday Wednesday as the winner in the election by a razor-thin margin, after the release of the results were delayed by one day.
Bongo received 49.8 percent of the vote, and his main rival, Jean Ping, received 48.2 percent, according to Gabon's Interior Ministry. While nationwide turnout was 59.6 percent, turnout in Bongo's home region of Haut-Ogooué was reported at 99.3 percent, prompting many to question the veracity of the results.
The unlikely contender to dethrone Gabon’s 50-year-old dynasty
Photos taken Wednesday by Agence France-Presse photographer Marco Longari in the capital city of Libreville showed Ping supporters facing off against riot police.
Both France, which once ruled Gabon as a colony, and the United States released statements that voiced concern about the transparency of the election results and called for the results from each polling station to be made public.
The U.S. Embassy in Libreville said — via a somewhat contradictory Facebook post — that the election had been professional yet marked by "many systemic deficiencies and irregularities."
Riots broke out, too, in 2009 when Ali Bongo won his first election.
Bongo has sought to portray himself as a responsible leader who doesn't lead the lavish lifestyle his father was known for. Gabon has large oil reserves, and wealth from them has made the Bongos rich, even though much of the population still lives in poverty.
Jean Ping spent most of his life working in Omar Bongo's administration, as well as acting as chairman or president of large international bodies such as OPEC, the U.N. General Assembly and the African Union. He has portrayed himself as an agent of change after five decades of Omar and Ali Bongo.
Ping said in a statement that the people chose "our country’s next president" and that Bongo did not approve of their choice, "so he substituted his will for theirs."
He called on Bongo to "turn to peace and stop the violence by ordering our brothers, sisters and children in the security forces to attack our own."
The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. | Riot | August 2016 | ['(The Washington Post)'] |
Qatar defeats Japan 3-1 to win the 2019 AFC Asian Cup, earning them their first continental championship title. | Almoez Ali scored with a spectacular overhead kick for a record ninth goal of the Asian Cup to set Qatar on their way to a first continental title with a stunning 3-1 win over four-times champions Japan. Ali’s early goal took him past Ali Daei’s 1996 tally and, combined with a 27th minute strike from Abdulaziz Hatem and a late Akram Afif penalty, helped the Qataris make an emphatic statement ahead of their hosting of the 2022 World Cup. Sudan-born Ali’s record goal came after a protest by the host United Emirates FA into his eligibility to represent Qatar was dismissed by the Asian Football Confederation only a few hours before kickoff. Japan finally found a way through a Qatar defence that had not conceded in six previous matches when Takumi Minamino scored in the 69th minute but the penalty condemned the Samurai Blue to their first defeat in an Asian Cup final. The victory was celebrated wildly by thousands of Omanis who had turned out to support Qatar in the absence of their own fans, who were unable to travel because of a deep political rift with the UAE. Japan, chasing a record-extending fifth title, started the brighter but it was the Qataris who drew first blood through the prolific Ali, who was later named Player of the Tournament. Afif has set up most of Ali’s goals in the UAE and he was again the provider in the 12th minute with a cross that found the striker in space with his back to goal close to the penalty spot. There was still plenty of work to do but Ali took a touch off each foot to tee up the ball before angling it past Shuichi Gonda into the corner of the net with a bicycle kick. The Afif-Ali combination nearly struck again a minute later but the Qataris did not have to wait long to double their lead. Hatem, who scored the winner against South Korea in the quarter-finals, summoned up another magnificent strike, cutting in from the right before curling the ball past the helpless Gonda into the top left-hand corner. The Japanese, who had weathered a first-half storm before beating Iran in the semi-finals, kept their composure but were simply unable to break through the compact lines of Qatar’s defence. Japan skipper Maya Yoshida clashed heads with Boualem Khoukhi on the hour mark resulting in the big Qatari defender being carried off on a stretcher. The Qatar defence looked less assured without him and Japan took full advantage when Yuya Osako played in Minamino and the winger chipped the ball over advancing goalkeeper Saad Al Sheeb. Japan poured forward looking for an equaliser but, after reference to VAR, Yoshida was adjudged to have blocked Abdelkarim Hassan’s header with his hand in the 80th minute and Afif calmly sent Gonda the wrong way from the spot. | Sports Competition | February 2019 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Militant Palestinian extremists again fire mortars at settlements in the Gaza Strip. They are believed to have been fired by Islamic Jihad. | Palestinian resistance groupshave fired dozens of mortar shells overnight at Israeli settlers and troop positions in the Gaza Strip, after the killing of three Palestinian youths by Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
Military sources said on Sunday that 25 mortar shells had been fired at Jewish settlements, causing damage to three houses but no injuries.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Ahmad Abu al-Rish Brigades and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine all have confirmed they had shelled settlements in Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Israeli "crime". Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, reaffirmed the right of "our people and its armed groups to respond to this dangerous aggression". The incident
The killing of the three youths on Saturday was the deadliest incident in the territory since the main Palestinian resistance groups agreed to a de facto truce in January.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Interior Ministry, Tawfiq Abu Khusa, told Aljazeera that investigations revealed the three Palestinian teenagers were playing football when they were shot and killed.
Israelis earlier said the three were killed in a closed military zone after warning shots were fired, but an official later apologised over the incident.
Apology
According to Palestinian sources, Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz telephoned Palestinian Authority (PA) Interior Minister Nasr Yusuf on Saturday night to apologise for the incident.Mofaz reportedly urged Yusuf to make sure the killings remain a "localised incident" and to not let them wreck the uneasy calm in the occupied territories. | Armed Conflict | April 2005 | ['(Al Jazeera)'] |
Kofi Annan says peace proposals have failed as the Syrian army allegedly kills 60 civilians across Syria. | DAMASCUS, : International envoy Kofi Annan acknowledged the failure so far of his mission to bring peace to Syria, as more than 60 people were killed in violence on Saturday that also spilled over into Lebanon.
In comments published by French newspaper Le Monde, Annan was quoted as saying that significant efforts had been made to try to resolve the crisis peacefully and politically.
However, the plan had not been successful and perhaps there was no guarantee that it would succeed, he said.
The Annan plan, which insists on a cessation of violence by all sides, has made little headway, and activists say more than 17,000 people have now died since the uprising began in March last year.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon called on Friday for scaling down an observer mission in Syria to refocus on political efforts to end the bloodshed.
The former UN chief spoke of the importance of Russia, a Damascus ally which has so far blocked international action against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, while stressing that Iran should be involved in discussions.
The UN-Arab League envoy, whose plan called for a ceasefire that has been ignored on a daily basis since April, said Syria's ally Iran had a role to play in efforts to end the crisis despite US opposition.
On the ground, Syrian forces bombarded towns in the northern province of Aleppo in violence on Saturday that claimed at least 60 lives across the country, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“Regime forces are attempting to regain control over this (Aleppo) region, where they suffered heavy casualties over the past months,” the Britain-based Observatory said.
“A large number of families have been displaced from the area for fear of shelling and lack of water, electricity and medical services,” the watchdog added of the attacks in Aleppo.
In the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, seven members of the same family were among 13 people killed in a bombardment by regime forces, according to the Observatory.
General strikes
In Damascus, regime forces clashed with rebels and stormed the neighbourhood of Barzeh, attempting to break a strike, while a taxi driver was shot dead in the same area, it said.
The Local Coordination Committees, made up of anti-regime activists on the ground, reported general strikes in and around Damascus to honour those killed in the anti-regime uprising.
The latest violence came a day after 93 people were reportedly killed across Syria on Friday, as dozens of protesters took to the streets calling for a “people's liberation war.”
In Lebanon, a teenager died when a rocket hit her house in the border region of Wadi Khaled, a Lebanese security official told AFP, adding that five others were wounded by rockets and exchanges of gunfire.
“A few hours later, an eight-year-old Bedouin girl, who recently fled with her parents from Syria, was killed,” said a hospital source in Akkar province.
“A military expert who visited the site said it was either a mine planted in the area or an explosive they were handling,” the security source said, after initially reporting that a shell had hit their tent.
A local official said clashes had broken out at dawn between the Syrian army and gunmen on the Lebanese side of the border.
On Friday, some 100 countries and international organisations meeting in Paris urged the Security Council to adopt Annan's peace plan under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
“We should go back and ask for a resolution in the Security Council that imposes real and immediate consequences for non-compliance, including sanctions,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
Despite Annan's efforts to broker a cessation of violence by all sides, more than 17,000 people have now been killed since the uprising began in March last year, the Observatory said on Saturday.
It broke down its latest death toll of 17,012 to 11,815 civilians, 4,316 members of the army and security services and 881 deserters.
It added that 5,898 have been killed since the April ceasefire was due to come into effect. | Armed Conflict | July 2012 | ['(Dawn)'] |
First Lady of Lesotho, Maesiah Thabane, is arrested and charged in connection to the 2017 murder of Lipolelo Thabane, ex–wife of current Prime Minister Tom Thabane. | Lesotho’s first lady Maesiah Thabane has been charged with murder for her alleged links to the brutal 2017 killing of the prime minister’s previous wife.
Maesiah Thabane, 42, will spend the night in custody after she came out of hiding and turned herself in to the police earlier on Tuesday.
“She has been charged with murder alongside eight others who are in Lesotho and South Africa,” deputy police commissioner Mokete Paseka told reporters, adding that investigations had been “satisfactorily completed”.
He said police had a “strong case” against the first lady, who was unable to appear in court on Tuesday due to logistical reasons.
The eight other accused will also be summoned by the police.
Maesiah Thabane went missing last month after being summoned as part of an investigation into the killing of Lipolelo Thabane – prime minister Thomas Thabane’s estranged wife.
Lipolelo and Thomas Thabane were involved in bitter divorce proceedings when she was gunned down outside her home in Lesotho’s capital Maseru in June 2017, two days before her husband’s inauguration.
New evidence surfaced in early January, when a letter from Lesotho’s police chief was made public alleging that communication records from the day of the crime picked up the prime minister’s mobile number.
Thomas Thabane, who is now 80, has since bowed to pressure and offered to resign at a date not yet disclosed. He has also been questioned by the police over the killing.
But his current wife Maesiah vanished when the police called her in to testify last month, prompting the issuing of an arrest warrant.
The prime minister’s press attaché did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the murder charge.
The murder of 58-year-old Lipolelo Thabane sent shock waves through the tiny mountain kingdom, which is ringed by South Africa and has a long history of political turmoil.
Senior members of the ruling All Basotho Convention (ABC) party accused the prime minister of hampering investigations into the killing.
Thabane said last month he would leave office on the grounds of old age, but gave no timeframe for his departure.
Hundreds of opposition supporters marched through the streets of Maseru on the day the prime minister was quizzed by police, demanding he step down with immediate effect.
Maesiah Thabane was picked up on the border with South Africa following an arrangement between her lawyer and the police. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | February 2020 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says, for the first time, that they suspect Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other senior officials of the Syrian government are responsible for the use of chemical weapons in the conflict. | (Reuters) - International investigators have said for the first time that they suspect President Bashar al-Assad and his brother are responsible for the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, according to a document seen by Reuters.
A joint inquiry for the United Nations and global watchdog the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had previously identified only military units and did not name any commanders or officials.
Now a list has been produced of individuals whom the investigators have linked to a series of chlorine bomb attacks in 2014-15 - including Assad, his younger brother Maher and other high-ranking figures - indicating the decision to use toxic weapons came from the very top, according to a source familiar with the inquiry.
The Assads could not be reached for comment but a Syrian government official said accusations that government forces had used chemical weapons had “no basis in truth”. The government has repeatedly denied using such weapons during the civil war, which is almost six years old, saying all the attacks highlighted by the inquiry were the work of rebels or the Islamic State militant group.
The list, which has been seen by Reuters but has not been made public, was based on a combination of evidence compiled by the U.N.-OPCW team in Syria and information from Western and regional intelligence agencies, according to the source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Reuters was unable to independently review the evidence or to verify it.
The U.N.-OPCW inquiry - known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) - is led by a panel of three independent experts, supported by a team of technical and administrative staff. It is mandated by the U.N. Security Council to identify individuals and organizations responsible for chemical attacks in Syria.
Virginia Gamba, the head of the Joint Investigative Mechanism, denied any list of individual suspects had yet been compiled by the inquiry.
“There are no ... identification of individuals being considered at this time,” she told Reuters by email.
The use of chemical weapons is banned under international law and could constitute a war crime. (For graphic on chemical attacks in Syria, click tmsnrt.rs/2cukvFr)
While the inquiry has no judicial powers, any naming of suspects could lead to their prosecution. Syria is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), but alleged war crimes could be referred to the court by the Security Council - although splits among global powers over the war make this a distant prospect at present.
“The ICC is concerned about any country where crimes are reported to be committed,” a spokesman for the court said when asked for comment. “Unless Syria accepts the ICC jurisdiction, the only way that (the) ICC would have jurisdiction over the situation would be through a referral by the Security Council.”
The list seen by Reuters could form the basis for the inquiry team’s investigations this year, according to the source. It is unclear whether the United Nations or OPCW will publish the list separately.
‘HIGHEST LEVELS’
The list identifies 15 people “to be scrutinized in relation to use of CW (chemical weapons) by Syrian Arab Republic Armed Forces in 2014 and 2015”. It does not specify what role they are suspected of playing, but lists their titles.
It is split into three sections. The first, titled “Inner Circle President” lists six people including Assad, his brother who commands the elite 4th Armoured Division, the defense minister and the head of military intelligence.
The second section names the air force chief as well as four commanders of air force divisions. They include the heads of the 22nd Air Force Division and the 63rd Helicopter Brigade, units that the inquiry has previously said dropped chlorine bombs.
The third part of the list - “Other relevant Senior Mil Personnel” - names two colonels and two major-generals.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, an independent specialist in biological and chemical weapons who monitors Syria, told Reuters the list reflected the military chain of command.
“The decisions would be made at the highest levels initially and then delegated down. Hence the first use would need to be authorized by Assad,” said de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of British and NATO chemical and biological defense divisions who frequently visits Syria for professional consultancy work.
The Syrian defense ministry and air force could not be reached for comment.
Syria joined the international Chemical Weapons Convention under a U.S.-Russian deal that followed the deaths of hundreds of civilians in a sarin gas attack in Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus in August 2013.
It was the deadliest use of chemicals in global warfare since the 1988 Halabja massacre at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, which killed at least 5,000 people in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Syrian government, which denied its forces were behind the Ghouta attack, also agreed to hand over its declared stockpile of 1,300 tonnes of toxic weaponry and dismantle its chemical weapons program under international supervision.
The United Nations and OPCW have been investigating whether Damascus is adhering to its commitments under the agreement, which averted the threat of U.S.-led military intervention.
The bodies appointed the panel of experts to conduct the inquiry, and its mandate runs until November. The panel published a report in October last year which said Syrian government forces used chemical weapons at least three times in 2014-2015 and that Islamic State used mustard gas in 2015.
The October report identified Syria’s 22nd Air Force Division and 63rd Helicopter Brigade as having dropped chlorine bombs and said people “with effective control in the military units ... must be held accountable”.
The source familiar with the inquiry said the October report had clearly established the institutions responsible and that the next step was to go after the individuals.
Washington on Thursday blacklisted 18 senior Syrian officials based on the U.N.-OPCW inquiry’s October report - some of whom also appear on the list seen by Reuters - but not Assad or his brother.
The issue of chemical weapons use in Syria has become a deeply political one, and the U.N.-OPCW inquiry’s allegations of chlorine bomb attacks by government forces have split the U.N. Security Council’s veto-wielding members.
The United States, Britain and France have called for sanctions against Syria, while Assad’s ally Russia has said the evidence presented is insufficient to justify such measures.
A Security Council resolution would be required to bring Assad and other senior Syrian officials before the International Criminal Court for any possible war crimes prosecution - something Russia would likely block.
| Government Policy Changes | January 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The Philippine government places more than two dozen provinces on alert before Typhoon Haima makes landfall over Luzon. Haima, downgraded by the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System to a Category 4 storm, landfalls Cagayan province in the island's northeast. Weather forecasters expect the storm to impact up to 2.7 million people before veering northwest toward the Chinese coast on October 21. , , | MANILA — The Philippines cancelled flights, shut schools and stockpiled supplies before Super Typhoon Haima reaches land on Thursday morning (Oct 20).
Haima is a Category 5 storm that is packing maximum winds of 145 knots (268.5kph) and gusts of up to 175 knots, according to the latest bulletin from the US Navy and Air Force's Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The storm is expected to reach land in the northern province of Cagayan, the nation's weather bureau said.
Four local flights have been canceled as of 9am Manila time (9am Singapore time), airport authorities said. School classes were suspended in Isabela province, while more than 1.28 billion pesos of food and supplies are on standby, the disaster monitoring agency said on its website. Typhoon alerts have been raised in more than 20 areas, including the capital.
Haima, the second storm to hit the Philippines' main Luzon island in a week, may have a "high humanitarian impact" and could affect as many as 11.6 million people, according to the United Nations Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System. Named after a sea horse in China, the Category 5 storm's "powerful winds in combination with the torrential rain will down trees, and may cause widespread power outages that could linger well after the storm has passed," Accuweather said.
The Philippines, battered annually by an average of 20 cyclones that form over the Pacific Ocean, is among countries most vulnerable to climate change, according to risk analysis company Verisk Maplecroft. Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms in the world to hit land, killed more than 6,000 people in November 2013 and left more than a thousand missing.
Haima will remain a "violent tropical system" as it approaches China and may impact Hong Kong, Accuweather said. The storm is expected to enter the northern part of the South China Sea on Thursday, edging close to the coast of Guangdong on Oct 21, the Hong Kong Observatory said. BLOOMBERG
| Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | October 2016 | ['(Media Corp Press Today Online)', '(CNN via KCCI)', '(The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System)'] |
Isner–Mahut match at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships becomes the longest match in Association of Tennis Professionals history, and is adjourned after 9 hours. | Somewhere around five hours into the final set of the longest tennis match ever seen in the professional game, with an increasingly sunburned crowd leaning on the metal barriers of court 18 for support, Sue Barker summed up the mood for TV viewers: "Is this match ever going to end?"
Apparently not, it seemed. Last night, France's Nicolas Mahut and John Isner from the US, two of the lesser known names on the men's singles circuit, remained deadlocked on two sets each and both with 59 games in the longest fifth set ever, of the longest tennis match ever.
It was Mahut who finally implored the officials to take the players off shortly after 9pm as he could no longer clearly see the ball. The match had lasted exactly 10 hours at close of play, according to official statistics, with the pair holding their serves for 118 games before the end. They had battled through more than seven hours alone, with one of the scoreboards giving up, forcing them to carry on with a blank screen.
Fans were happy they had brought a packed lunch, but some worried about the late trip home. "I'm glad I brought sandwiches with me - it's tiring just watching," said Mark Gerrard, 41, from Bournemouth, who had been there since 5pm. But spectators still chanted, "We want more", as they gave the players a standing ovation. "Nothing like this will happen again. Ever," vowed Isner as he left the court. "He was serving fantastic, I was serving fantastic. I would love to see the stats."
Even before the pair began warming up shortly after lunch yesterday they had already played out something of an epic, which ended on Tuesday evening tied at two sets each following, even then, 45 games of thunderous tennis. As the players dragged themselves across the court with increasingly leaden feet following a day in which temperatures reached 28 degrees, the TV commentators began to sound worried. "Something surely has to give?" Boris Becker asked.
Federer described the match as "absolutely amazing". "In a way, I wish I was them; in some ways I wish I wasn't them," he admitted. Andy Murray was stunned by the tussle. "This is why tennis is one of the toughest sports in the world, this will never ever be matched again," he Tweeted.
The winner is due on court for his second round match later today, presuming a conclusion is eventually reached. The loser will have to be consoled with a cheque for £11,250, and maybe immortality as a future Trivial Pursuit question. | Sports Competition | June 2010 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The President of South Korea Roh Moo–hyun walks across the Korean Demilitarized Zone in travelling to Pyongyang for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. | SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- The United States said Tuesday it has backed a plan aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear facilities by the end of the year, The Associated Press reported.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, left, welcomes South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in Pyongyang.
Six nations reached a tentative agreement in Beijing on Sunday but said the plan needed further consideration by their governments. The plan was to establish the steps to be taken in the denuclearization process for the remainder of the year, AP reported. "We have conveyed to the Chinese government our approval for the draft statement. All the parties went back to their capitals. We studied it, examined it, gave our approval to the Chinese. I can't speak to the status of all the other countries," State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said, according to AP. He declined to comment on specifics of the agreement. Negotiators have been working to move forward an agreement made in February under which the countries agreed to give North Korea 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil, or the monetary equivalent in other aid and assistance, according to AP.
North Korea in return agreed to shut down its main nuclear reactor, which it did in July, and declare and ultimately dismantle all its nuclear programs, AP reported.
Last year, North Korea tested a nuclear bomb, rattling regional stability and leading to a dramatic turnaround in a previously hard-line U.S. policy.
On the eve of this week's summit, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told graduating military cadets that his goal is to secure peace on the Korean peninsula. Roh acknowledged that ridding the North of nuclear weapons and establishing a peace treaty could not be realized by the two Koreas alone. But he said he would work to establish a concrete agreement on "building military trust and addressing humanitarian matters."
Earlier Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il greeted Roh in Pyongyang to begin the second summit between the two countries since the peninsula's division after World War II.
Thousands of cheering North Koreans and a military honor guard bearing rifles with bayonets heralded the leaders' first encounter outside a cultural hall in the North Korean capital, where Roh traveled 3½ hours by road from the South Korean capital, Seoul.
The two leaders shook hands, but the only words exchanged were a mutual "glad to meet you."
Neither made any public comment before Roh got back into his armored limousine to travel to the state guesthouse where he is staying for the summit, which runs through Thursday. Watch Roh say what he wants to achieve with this summit »
Roh later attended a welcoming dinner hosted by North Korea's second most senior leader, Kim Yong-nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly. Kim Jong Il did not attend the dinner. Earlier, Roh symbolically walked across the North's border, pledging to foster peace on the divided peninsula.
Roh became the first leader from either side to cross the border on foot.
"This line is a wall that has divided the nation for a half-century. Our people have suffered from too many hardships and development has been held up due to this wall," Roh said, crossing near the North Korean city of Kaesong.
"This line will be gradually erased and the wall will fall," he said. "I will make efforts to make my walk across the border an occasion to remove the forbidden wall and move toward peace and prosperity."
The three-day meeting in Pyongyang will mark the first extended appearance of the enigmatic, authoritarian Kim before the world since the two Koreas' only other summit in June 2000. But Tuesday's meeting contrasted with the 2000 summit, when Kim warmly greeted the then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.
The meeting with the North Korean leader, announced in early August, was initially scheduled for the end of that month but was postponed after massive flooding in Pyongyang.
The Koreas summit comes in the final months of Roh's scandal-ridden term, and some analysts suspect the South Korean leader is hoping the Pyongyang meeting will boost his sagging approval ratings and help position his party in the upcoming elections against the conservative opposition.
A joint statement following the 2000 summit between Kim Jong Il and Kim Dae-jung indicated the next meeting between the Korean leaders would take place in Seoul.
Roh's decision not to push for a meeting outside the North Korean capital was criticized by Bruce Klinger of the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center in a recent article titled, "Seoul's Impetuous Summit Initiative."
"It is indicative of Roh's eagerness that he failed to insist on holding the summit in the Kaesong special economic zone in North Korea to highlight the flagship initiative of Seoul's engagement policy," Klinger wrote.
But one South Korean woman said she believes the summit "is our last chance" to negotiate the freedom of hundreds of Korean prisoners of war and abductees, including her father, a fisherman on a boat believed abducted by the North more than 30 years ago.
Other South Koreans have protested the summit -- including one man who set himself on fire during a demonstration in Seoul -- demanding that Roh push North Korea on its human rights violations during the talks.
Instead, the summit is expected to address military tensions, including settling a sea border dispute on the west coast of the Korean peninsula, and economic issues, such as how South Korean businesses can help the North climb out of extreme poverty.
The 2000 summit, part of Kim Dae-jung's policy of engagement with North Korea, paved the way for his Nobel Peace Prize awarded that same year.
But South Korean investigators later revealed that Kim Dae-jung paid hundreds of millions of dollars to secure the meeting, the first between Stalinist North Korea and capitalist South Korea. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | October 2007 | ['(BBC)', '(CNN)'] |
Voters in the Indian state of Gujarat go to the polls for a state election. | Voting has ended in the second and final phase of polls in India's Gujarat state where Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi is seeking re-election.
There were long queues at many polling centres and election commission officials said an estimated 68-69% voters had cast their ballots.
The polls are seen as a referendum on the popularity of Mr Modi, who has ruled the state since October 2001.
Mr Modi has been tipped as a potential future prime minister.
Under his leadership, Gujarat has been turned into one of India's economic powerhouses.
Nearly 40 million people were eligible to vote in 182 assembly constituencies in the state.
Voting was held in 95 of these constituencies during the second phase of polls on Monday. Counting is set for Thursday.
Voting took place in central and north Gujarat, the Ahmedabad city area and in Kutch district.
Mr Modi was among the early voters in the state on Monday.
"It's a very peaceful election," he said after casting his vote in Ahmedabad. "It will be a historic [election] because it has been contested on the issue of good governance and development," he said.
"I thank all the voters. In this election, people of Gujarat will make a hat-trick by giving a third term to us. People of the state will once again vote BJP to power... the sentiments of people here is giving you a clear indication of that," Mr Modi said.
His Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has governed the state for 15 years, is facing a Congress party challenge in the election.
Mr Modi is also seen as India's most divisive politician.
He was chief minister of the state during the 2002 religious riots when more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.
He was accused of doing little to stop the riots and in subsequent years the US denied him visas.
In October the UK's high commissioner in India, James Bevan, met Mr Modi, ending a 10-year boycott of the controversial leader.
| Government Job change - Election | December 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Spanish Audiencia Nacional reveals that an attack on the North Korean embassy in Madrid on February 22 was led by a Mexican citizen residing in the United States who later offered the FBI data stolen during the incident. | MADRID (AP) Spain has issued at least two international arrest warrants for members of a self-proclaimed human rights group who allegedly led a mysterious raid at the North Korean Embassy in Madrid last month and offered the FBI stolen data from the break-in.
A National Court judge who lifted a secrecy order in the case Tuesday said an investigation of the Feb. 22 attack uncovered evidence that “a criminal organization” shackled and gagged embassy staff members before escaping with computers, hard drives and documents.
The intruders also urged North Korea’s only accredited diplomat in Spain, business envoy So Yun Sok, to defect, Judge Jose de la Mata said in a written report on the Spanish investigation. So refused to do so and was gagged, according to the report.
The assailants identified themselves as “members of an association or movement of human rights for the liberation of North Korea.”
That group is the Cheollima Civil Defense, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the incident. The shadowy activists have the self-declared mission of helping defectors from North Korea.
De la Mata identified citizens of Mexico, the United States and South Korea as the main suspects being investigated on charges that include of causing injuries, making threats and burglary. He named Adrian Hong Chang, a Mexican citizen living in the United States, as the break-in’s leader.
Hong Chang flew to the U.S. on Feb. 23, got in touch with the FBI and offered to share material and videos with federal investigators, according to the court report. The document did not say what type of information the items contained or whether the FBI accepted the offer.
The FBI said in a statement that its standard practice is to neither confirm nor deny the existence of investigations. The agency added that “the FBI enjoys a strong working relationship with our Spanish law enforcement partners.”
An official with Spain’s National Police who wasn’t authorized to be named in media reports confirmed to The Associated Press that arrest warrants were issued for Hong Chang and one other suspect. No one had been charged as of Tuesday.
The assailants purchased knives and handgun mock-ups when they visited Madrid in early February and used them during the attack, according to the investigation document.
While in Madrid, Hong Chang also applied for a new passport at the Mexican Embassy, the investigation found, and used the name “Oswaldo Trump” to register in the Uber ride-hailing app.
The North Korean Embassy hasn’t pressed charges in Spain, and officials in Pyongyang haven’t officially commented on the attack.
Spanish police learned about the break-in after the wife of an embassy employee escaped by jumping from a window. When officers went to check on the situation, Hong Chang allegedly greeted them at the door and pretended to be a diplomatic official, the investigation found.
He sent the officers away with assurances everything was fine, paving the way for the invading group to make a getaway in the embassy’s cars.
A police investigator with knowledge of the case told the AP that “this attack, whatever it is, would have gone unnoticed if it wasn’t for the woman who escaped.”
So, the North Korean diplomat, didn’t respond to written questions from The Associated Press and declined to talk to reporters during a recent encounter outside the Madrid embassy.
The timing of the incident, which happened less than a week before a high-stakes U.S.-North Korea summit on denuclearization derailed in Hanoi on Feb. 28, led to speculation the incursion was carried out to obtain data related to North Korea’s former ambassador to Spain.
Kim Hyok Chol, who was expelled from Spain in September 2017 following Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear test and its missile launches over neighboring Japan, has become North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator with the U.S.
Asked if Washington had any connection to the embassy break-in, U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Palladino answered, “The United States government had nothing to do with this.”
Palladino said that “regarding the specifics of what’s going on, the Spanish authorities are investigating. The investigation is still underway. For any details on their investigation, I would have to refer you to Spanish authorities.”
The South Korean Embassy in Madrid said it had no knowledge of the events and couldn’t offer further comment.
Others identified as part of the assailants’ group were Sam Ryu, from the U.S., and Woo Ran Lee, a South Korean citizen. Their whereabouts and their hometowns weren’t immediately known. None of the suspects were thought to be still in Spain, the judge wrote.
Spanish authorities tried to keep information about the attack from becoming public until Spain’s El Confidencial news site revealed some details on Feb. 27.
Last week, the rights group that allegedly led the attack posted a short video on its website allegedly showing a man shattering portraits of late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on the floor.
The group said the video was filmed recently “on our homeland’s soil,” wording that would accurately apply to the North Korean Embassy in Madrid. | Armed Conflict | March 2019 | ['(Associated Press)', '(Euro news)', '(New York Times)'] |
Two US marine harrier jets forced to drop several unarmed bombs on the world–heritage listed Great Barrier Reef due to an emergency during a training exercise. | FOUR US bombs lie on the bottom of the sea in the Great Barrier Reef after a training emergency. Now someone has to go get them.
US jets drop bombs on Barrier ReefSource:AP
TWO US Marine Corps jets have been forced to drop four unarmed bombs on the Great Barrier Reef.
The two AV-8B Harrier jets each dropped two 226kg bombs on the world heritage-listed reef in an emergency jettison during a training mission on Tuesday.
The incident came ahead of Exercise Talisman Saber, a biennial training operation between Australian and US forces based at Shoalwater Bay on the central Queensland coast.
The dropped bombs had not detonated and a US official has reportedly said the chance of any of them exploding is "extremely remote".
A Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority spokeswoman told News Corp Australia she had not heard about the incident, but would look into it.
The extent of any environmental damage was not clear.
US Navy Commander William Marks, of the 7th Fleet Public Affairs, said the jets had planned to drop the bombs on a range on Townshend Island, but that was foiled when the range was not clear.
After several attempts, the jets were running low on fuel and could not land with the bombs they were carrying.
"Due to low fuel and inability to land with the amount of ordnance they were carrying, the on scene commander determined it was necessary to designate an emergency jettison area for the ordnance," Commander Marks said.
He said each bomb was jettisoned in a "safe, unarmed state and did not explode".
"The US Navy and Marine Corps are working closely with Australian authorities to investigate the incident." | Military Exercise | July 2013 | ['(news.com.au)'] |
Twelve people die in Nandigram near Kolkata in India, as police shoot at farmers protesting the establishment of a special economic zone. | Fourteen people were killed and more than 70 injured during Wednesday's violence at Nandigram in West Bengal.
The farmers were protesting against government plans to set up a chemical hub and an industrial zone in the area.
Doctors who operated on the injured villagers say many of them were not hit by bullets from police weapons.
Khaki uniforms
"Some of these bullets are surely not from weapons issued to the police forces in West Bengal," a medic who wished to remain unnamed told the BBC from Calcutta's RG Kar Medical College.
"There are shotgun wounds, even injuries suffered from pipe guns widely used by local gangsters and political toughs in Bengal," he said. The BBC's Subir Bhaumik in Calcutta says that locals and opposition activists in Nandigram allege that many of those involved in Wednesday's shooting of villagers were not policemen, even though they were wearing police uniforms.
"In Gokulpur and Bankhaberia, the second wave of attack on the villagers was carried out by men in khaki uniform, but they had no caps or service boots used by policemen," said Subhendu Adhikari, a local member of the main opposition Trinamul Congress party.
"They were wearing sneakers or sports shoes. We are sure they were armed Marxist cadres," he said.
Hugely contentious
Journalists heading for Nandigram on Wednesday ran into makeshift checkpoints manned by Marxists wearing red caps.
The BBC's Amitabh Bhattasali was among those whose vehicle was stopped at Chandipur by them. There has been severe criticism of the police firing
Our correspondent said that they were clearly angry with the way journalists had covered the story, and were preventing journalists from travelling to Nandigram. Protests have gone on there despite the state government pledging to move the hub elsewhere.
New economic zones are a hugely contentious issue in India.
What began as protests against the state takeover of farmland for industrial development has now turned into a trial of strength between farmers and the West Bengal government. 'Cold horror'
Nandigram remained tense on Thursday with the police using tear gas and staging baton charges to break up protests by angry villagers in the area.
Villagers also set fire to a local administration office and attacked policemen in front of the local hospital, which is teeming with relatives of the dead and injured.
The high court in Calcutta has ordered an investigation into the incident.
West Bengal chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya said 14 people had died and more than 70 people, including at least 30 policemen, had been injured in Wednesday's clashes.
The police action by the ruling Communist-led state government has been severely criticised by the ruling party's allies and the Trinamul Congress.
Locals believe that the government will be buying farmland for industry
Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi said in a statement that the news of police firing had filled him with a "sense of cold horror", and that the police action was perhaps avoidable.
Since January the villagers have violently opposed the state government's plans to take over nearly 10,000 acres of crop land to set up a special economic zone that would contain a hub of chemical industries to be commissioned by Indonesia's Salim Group. Angry farmers along with political activists, belonging to the state's governing Communist party and the Trinamul Congress, have dug up roads, burnt down wooden bridges and attacked government officials and policemen trying to enter the area during the past two months.
Six people, including a policemen, died during protests in the area in January.
'Fierce resistance'
In recent weeks Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya, who is pushing for Bengal's speedy industrialisation, has said that the project would be shifted elsewhere if the locals did not want it.
But he said Nandigram had descended into lawlessness and ordered the police to take control of the area this week.
The Trinamul Congress has called for a state-wide strike on Friday to protest against the police firing. Two allies of the Communist party have said the police action was "most unfortunate".
State governments in India are acquiring large tracts of land to set up special economic zones (SEZs) to push up employment and earnings. The federal government reckons that SEZs will bring in $13.5bn in investment and create 890,000 jobs by 2009 if the ambitious plan is allowed to proceed.
Critics say this is destined to become the biggest land grab in post-colonial India, given the lack of transparency and rampant corruption in government.
You can send pictures and video to: yourpics@bbc.co.uk or to send via MMS please dial +44 (0)7725 100 100. The BBC may edit your comments and not all emails will be published. Your comments may be published on any BBC media worldwide. The most read story in Australasia is: In pictures: New 9/11 photos released | Protest_Online Condemnation | March 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
Heavy rain in the United Kingdom causes flash flooding in the coastal village of Clovelly, Devon, damaging homes and pulling up cobbles in the street. | Heavy rain has caused flash floods in a Devon coastal village, damaging homes and pulling up cobbles in the street.
Villagers in Clovelly said about 2in of rain had fallen in an hour earlier.
The worst of the flooding was said to be in the main part of the village - a popular tourist destination - where one villager described the scene as a "brown river". Devon and Somerset fire service was expected to be in the village late into the evening.
Gary Hanger, who lives in Clovelly, said: "People who have lived here all their lives, 50 years or more, have never seen anything like this. "It's about 2in deep. It's just pouring into some houses, in one door and out the other."
Resident Sally Stevens said: "The water swept down the street and a few houses are flooded. The heavy rain has gone now, but the damage has been done."
Paula Cook, another resident in the privately owned village, said: "It was like the high street had been turned into a river. I have never seen anything like it."
Residents and volunteers are expected to spend much of the night helping those whose properties have been damaged.
Bysha Beani, from Clovelly Lifeboat Station, said: "We have been making an effort along with everyone else in Clovelly to help those most in need.
"The floodwater has caused a lot of damage, mostly to people's homes, and it seems the whole village is trying to do what it can to clean up."
The fishing village is traffic-free and popular with tourists for its tranquillity and its donkeys, which traditionally carry goods up the hill in the centre.
Clovelly has been privately owned by the same family since 1738. About 1,600 people live in the village and Clovelly Bay.
Other parts of Devon have also been affected by the heavy rain. The A39 at Parracombe in Devon was shut both ways in the late afternoon due to flooding at Broadoak Hill. Low-lying parts of Tiverton have been flooded, with the river Lowman bursting its banks. Kevin Martin, who runs the Inn on the Green pub, said: "We can't open the front door at all. People are having to come in around the back."
The county council said the A388 outside Southcott Garage, Holsworthy, had flooded.
The A3072 between Bude in north Cornwall and Holsworthy was blocked in places.
David Quance, who lives at Sutcombe Mill, between Holsworthy and Bradworthy, said: "The water has come over a wall our neighbour had built.
"It's coming out of the entrance to their drive at tremendous force."
s
| Floods | October 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Libyan National Army warplanes carry out airstrikes on the port city of Misrata. The LNA say they were targeting munitions and armored vehicles that had been delivered from Turkey. | BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - East Libya-based forces said they had carried out air strikes on the port city of Misrata in the early hours of Tuesday, targeting armored vehicles delivered from Turkey and a munitions depot.
The strikes came hours after a deadly air strike on a biscuit factory in the capital Tripoli, 190 kms (118 miles) to the west, that the United Nations envoy to Libya said could constitute a war crime.
They mark a new escalation in the conflict around Tripoli, where forces loyal to east Libya-based commander Khalifa Haftar have been on the offensive since early April.
The attempt by Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) to take Tripoli quickly stalled, and both sides have used drones and fighter jets to carry out air strikes amid sporadic fighting.
Forces from Misrata have led the defence of Tripoli, home to Libya’s internationally recognised government. Misrata is the second largest city in western Libya and a major source of opposition to Haftar.
Residents said the strikes there were unusually powerful and followed by repeated explosions. Pictures posted on social media showed a large ball of fire over surrounding houses.
Libya has been divided between rival political and military camps based in Tripoli and the east since 2014. In recent months the conflict has become increasingly internationalized.
Haftar has received backing from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia. The Tripoli government has been backed by Turkey.
The LNA said its strike in Misrata targeted vehicles delivered from Turkey that arrived in Misrata’s port on Monday, as well as weapons and munitions.
Turkey’s foreign ministry said it had no information on the matter. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told parliament on Monday that Turkey supported international efforts to bring peace to Libya.
“We see the establishment of a lasting ceasefire in Libya and the continuation of efforts for a political resolution under the U.N.’s auspices as a topic of priority,” he said.
East Libyan officials had also warned of escalation after saying on Sunday that Misrata had seized a Libyan Airlines passenger jet that operates from the eastern city of Benghazi.
Misrata is home to the only functioning civilian airport in western Libya. Tripoli’s Mitiga airport was shut following air strikes and shelling.
The strike on the biscuit factory in Tripoli was part of an escalating air campaign, and killed at least 10 workers and wounded 35, U.N. Libya envoy Ghassan Salame told the Security Council in New York on Monday.
Two of those killed were Libyan and the rest appeared to be migrant workers, according to local emergency services.
An official at Bangladesh’s embassy in Tripoli said one of its nationals had been killed and 15 wounded, and that hundreds of workers were inside the factory when it was hit.
Additional reporting by Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli, Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara, and Ruma Paul in Dhaka; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise
| Armed Conflict | November 2019 | ['(LNA)', '(Reuters)'] |
A passenger bus collides with a truck near Mashkovo in Russia's Tambov Oblast with at least 5 people dead and 17 injured. | MASHKOVO, Russia, July 17 (UPI) -- A passenger bus collided with a heavy duty truck in Russia Sunday, killing five people and injuring at least 17 others, an official said.
ITAR-Tass said the accident occurred near Mashkovo in the Tambov region.
A spokesman for the regional emergencies administration there were 35 to 38 people aboard the bus.
RIA Novosti reported 10 people had been admitted to a hospital, with six of them in grave condition.
The Russian news agency said the bus was en route from Tomsk to Semipalatinsk when the accident happened about 2 a.m. | Road Crash | July 2011 | ['(UPI)'] |
The United Nations states that at least 400 children have already died in the Zamfara State lead poisoning epidemic, double the amount that had been previously reported; the incident is described as "far from over". | At least 400 children have died from lead poisoning in northern Nigeria this year, twice as many as previously reported, the UN says.
It has sent an environmental team to investigate the poisoning in Zamfara state, caused by illegal gold mining in areas contaminated with lead.
"The lead pollution and intoxication crisis in Zamfara state is far from over," a UN spokeswoman said.
Thousands more people are believed to still be at risk.
"An urgent and co-ordinated response is needed," Reuters news agency quotes Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), as saying at a news briefing in Geneva.
Last month, Ocha said it believed 200 children had died and 18,000 people were affected.
Ms Byrs said the increase in the number of deaths was based on reports from the humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres. The international humanitarian organisation is treating a further 500 children in its four clinics, she said.
El-Shafii Muhammad Ahmad, project director for MSF, told AFP news agency the death toll was even higher than records show.
"[It] is an under-estimation because many lead-related deaths are never reported and in many cases, these communities attribute them to other factors or deny them altogether," he said.
To extract gold, deadly amounts of lead were released and soil containing lead deposits was dumped in water sources and in places where children played. The contamination was discovered earlier this year during the country's annual immunisation programme, when visiting doctors realised children in the region were dying in unusually large numbers. In several villages they saw there were virtually no children.
Villagers said the children had died of malaria and it was only when an MSF took blood tests from local people that the high concentrations of lead were discovered.
| Mass Poisoning | October 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(AFP via The Sydney Morning Herald)', '(Reuters via News24)'] |
The opening of the Afghan parliament is delayed by a month amid allegations of fraud in the parliamentary election. | The inauguration of Afghanistan's new parliament has been delayed by a month amid allegations of fraud by losing candidates.
The announcement by the office of President Hamid Karzai came hours after the head of a special tribunal charged with ruling on fraud claims called for a delay of at least a month since the court may throw out some winners or order recounts.
The inauguration had been expected to take place on January 23.
"The president's office, respecting the demand by the court, delays the inauguration of the parliament until (February 22) of the current year," Mr Karzai's office said in a statement.
It insisted that the inauguration would take place on this date "without any further delay".
In an apparent reference to the court's work, the statement said that Mr Karzai's office "demands that all required actions be taken in this period", adding "All the government institutions have been instructed to fully cooperate in this regard."
September's parliamentary elections were hit by fraud and violence and resulted in a weak showing for the Pashtuns, Afghanistan's biggest single ethnic group and President Karzai's traditional powerbase.
Electoral authorities disqualified 24 early winners, including allies of the president, and threw out around a quarter of about five million votes cast.
The attorney general's office later called for the results to be annulled, saying the vote had been marred by massive fraud
- AFP
| Government Job change - Election | January 2011 | ['(AFP via ABC Online)'] |
An Islamic State suicide bomber kills at least 20 people in the city of Hasakeh. | Beirut (AFP) - An Islamic State group suicide bomber killed at least 20 regime troops in Hasakeh city in northeast Syria on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
"The attack by a booby-trapped car targeted the criminal security service headquarters in the south of the city" where deadly clashes have been under way since Thursday, the Britain-based monitor said.
| Armed Conflict | June 2015 | ['(AFP via Yahoo! News)'] |
The death toll rises to 109 following a fire in the centre of Dhaka, Bangladesh. At least 50 injured victims struggle for life at the state–run Dhaka Medical College Hospital. | Local residents and fire fighters work at the scene of a devastating fire in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, early June 4, 2010. [Xinhua]
A devastating fire that raced through a number of residential complexes on Thursday night in Bangladesh' s capital Dhaka killed 109 people, mostly women and children, and injured at least 40 others.
The fire is said to break out in a chemical factory in the old Dhaka city at about 9:20 p.m. Thursday local time. The fire soon spread to at least five houses in the congested residential area, trapping hundreds of residents in the densely populated area.
The fire was started by an explosion in an electrical transformer and then spread to residential and commercial buildings, witnesses said.
The firefighters rushed to the spot soon and managed to bring the fire under control after it raged for more than three hours.
Shahidullah said rescue operation is still on and they are hopeful to call off the operation within half an hour.
This was the second deadly disaster to strike the capital in 72 hours after a five-story building collapsed on Tuesday night, killing 25 people.
Increasing attention to heath and rising disappointment with the current medical system are causing millions of health-conscious Chinese to be easily tricked by profiteers. | Fire | June 2010 | ['(China Daily)', '(Rediff)', '(The Times of India)'] |
A shootout during joint exercises with U.S. and Afghan soldiers in Nangarhar Province leaves between four and six Americans, and six Afghans dead. It is unknown if the Taliban or rogue Afghan forces were responsible. | KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. and Afghan forces came under attack in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said in Kabul, as they launched investigations into what the New York Times described as a deadly shootout between Afghan and American soldiers during a joint exercise.
The Times, quoting two Afghan officials, reported that five or six American soldiers and six Afghan soldiers were killed. The newspaper quoted a U.S. military official saying there were at least six American casualties and confirmed that there were fatalities without saying how many.
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters, that based on initial information, there were multiple American casualties in the incident.
Mubariz Khadem, a senior security official in Nangarhar province, where the incident occurred, told Reuters on Saturday that clashes took place between U.S. and Afghan forces and casualties were feared.
Insider attacks, often known as “green-on-blue” attacks, have been a regular feature of the conflict in Afghanistan, although their frequency has diminished in recent years.
Still, details around the incident on Saturday remain confused with a senior Afghan defense official also telling Reuters that it was not clear whether the incident was a result of clashes between Afghan and foreign forces or whether hardline Islamist militants were responsible for the attack.
“We are not ruling any possibility out but we are not calling it an insider attack, Taliban attack, or ‘green-on-blue’ at this stage,” said the official who requested anonymity.
Colonel Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said a combined U.S. and Afghan force conducting an operation in Nangarhar was engaged by direct fire.
“We are assessing the situation and will provide further updates as they become available,” he said.
Taliban sources were not immediately available to comment.
Sohrab Qaderi, a provincial council member in Nangarhar, said clashes happened between the Afghan army and foreign forces in Shirzad district on Saturday afternoon.
He said members of the Afghan forces had been operating in the area since last month, and foreign forces were also in the district to defend against Taliban attacks.
“It seems that clashes happened between Afghan and foreign forces during a raid or maybe there was a tactical mistake,” said Qaderi.
Investigations of past rogue attacks had uncovered many reasons for “green-on-blue” shootings, including frustration with the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan against the Taliban and other hardline Islamist groups.
About 14,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Afghanistan as part of the U.S.-led NATO mission to train, assist and advise Afghan forces and to carry out counter-terrorism operations.
U.S. diplomats have been talking with the Taliban for months to agree a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces in exchange for security guarantees.
Despite talks between the United States and the Taliban to end the war, violence in the country has not ebbed.
. | Riot | February 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The President of the United States, Barack Obama, addresses the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt. | President Obama calls for a "new beginning" between the US and Muslims
President Barack Obama has said the "cycle of suspicion and discord" between the United States and the Muslim world must end.
In a keynote speech in Cairo, Mr Obama called for a "new beginning" in ties. He admitted there had been "years of distrust" and said both sides needed to make a "sustained effort... to respect one another and seek common ground". Mr Obama said the US bond with Israel was unbreakable but described the Palestinians' plight as "intolerable". The president made a number of references to the Koran and called on all faiths to live together in peace. He received a standing ovation at the end of his speech at Cairo University. White House officials had said the speech was intended to start a process to "re-energise the dialogue with the Muslim world". 'Not so unique'
Mr Obama said: "I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect." Take these two sentences: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements" and "It is time for these settlements to stop". It is the same language that Hillary Clinton has recently used. But what does it actually mean?
Does it mean that settlement expansion should stop? Or, in fact, for existing settlements to be disbanded? Could the first sentence even mean that the US is beginning to revisit its studied ambiguity, for the past 30 years, over whether it views all Israeli settlements on occupied territory as illegal? Given the amount of time and effort that goes into working and re-working the text of a presidential speech, the apparent veiling of these two sentences is fascinating.
He said "violent extremists" had bred fear and that this "cycle of suspicion and discord must end". Mr Obama accepted that "no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust" but urged both sides to "say openly the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors". He cited the Koran as saying: "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." Mr Obama said Islam had "always been a part of America's story". He added that much had been made of the fact an African-American named Barack Hussein Obama had become US president, but he insisted his personal story was "not so unique". "The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, but its promise exists for all who come to our shores - that includes nearly seven million American Muslims." 'Intolerable'
The president also said Muslim perceptions of the US must change. "Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire." Mr Obama said America was not at war with Islam, but would confront violent extremists who threatened its security. On the key issues of Iraq and Afghanistan, the president said the US sought no permanent bases in either country. He said: "We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case." On the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Mr Obama said the bond with Israel was "unbreakable". He said: "Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong." But he also said the "situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable". "Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's," Mr Obama said. On the key issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Mr Obama said "there can be no progress towards peace without a halt to such construction". Israel is resisting calls to freeze building activity but Palestinian leaders have said there can be no progress towards peace without a halt. After the speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned ministers to a special meeting and ordered aides and officials not to comment until a government statement was released. The statement said the Israeli government hoped the speech "will indeed lead to a new era of reconciliation between the Arab and Muslim world and Israel". BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says Mr Obama was tough on both sides - perhaps tougher on Israel than we are used to hearing from an American president. Our correspondent says Mr Obama made it clear there was no justification for Holocaust denial but he seemed to associate the state of the Palestinians with that of slaves in America. A spokesman for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the speech was a "good start and an important step towards a new American policy". The AFP news agency quoted Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, as saying the speech showed "tangible change" but also contained contradictions. On the Iranian nuclear issue, Mr Obama said: "No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons" and said Iran had the right to peaceful nuclear power. But he said there should be no nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Before Mr Obama spoke, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had delivered his own speech,
saying the US was still "deeply hated" in the Middle East. On democracy, Mr Obama said that "America does not presume to know what is best for everyone". "No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other." The president also touched on women's rights, saying: "Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons." Mr Obama arrived in Egypt from a visit to Saudi Arabia. Later on Thursday he visited the pyramids before leaving for Germany and France. | Famous Person - Give a speech | June 2009 | ['(BBC)', '(Washington Post)'] |
Voters in Okinawa, Japan, go to the polls to elect the members of the next Okinawa Prefectural Assembly. The election results give the camp supporting Governor Takeshi Onaga a clear majority in the assembly. Onaga is opposed to the central government's plan to relocate MCAS Futenma to Henoko Bay in Nago. | NAHA, Japan (Kyodo) -- Candidates opposed to a plan to relocate a key U.S. military base within Okinawa Prefecture gained a majority in the prefectural assembly election Sunday, according to Kyodo News projections and early returns.
At least 21 candidates against the relocation plan, including two who won by default, are projected to secure seats, paving the way for the anti-relocation camp's victory.
The win by the bloc in the quadrennial election reflects an intensifying anti-U.S. base sentiment among residents of Okinawa, home to the bulk of U.S. military facilities in Japan, in the wake of a U.S. base worker's alleged involvement in the death of a local woman last month.
Such sentiment was further fueled as a U.S. Navy officer was arrested early on the voting day on suspicion of drunk driving and injuring two people in the prefecture.
Depending on its outcome, the election could have an impact on the future of the planned relocation of the Marine's Air Station Futenma from the densely populated city of Ginowan to a less densely populated coastal area in Nago.
Another focus of the poll has been whether the bloc supporting Gov. Takeshi Onaga, who is a strong opponent of the Japan-U.S. relocation plan, could keep control of the assembly.
If the pro-governor bloc wins a simple majority in the election, it will give the governor more strength to take a hard-line stance against the central government over the relocation plan as well as the overall U.S. base issue in the prefecture.
The anti-relocation bloc includes candidates who take a neutral stance over the governor's prefectural administration such as those of the Komeito party, the coalition partner of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the national politics.
Seventy-one people filed their candidacy to contest for the assembly's 48 seats up for grabs. But because only two people filed their candidacy in the Nago electoral district, to which two seats are allotted, they won by default, according to the prefectural election board.
The winners of all 48 seats will be finalized by the early hours of Monday.
Voter turnout stood at 53.31 percent, slightly up from the record low of 52.49 percent in the previous election.
Before the election, the bloc backing Onaga, such as the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, had 23 seats, while the groups not allied with the governor, such as the LDP and the Komeito party, held 23 seats. Two seats were unoccupied.
The pro-governor camp has been zeroing in on the base issue. Arguing that the latest incidents could not have happened if it were not for U.S. bases, the camp has opposed allowing the Futenma base to be relocated to the Henoko coastal area and continuing to host the bases.
The anti-Onaga camp has tried to emphasize its economic policies in making its appeal to voters but has recently been forced to grapple with the heightened interest in base issues among the electorate.
| Government Job change - Election | June 2016 | ['(Kyodo)', '(Japan Times)', '(Nikkei Asian Review)'] |
The death toll from the floods rises to at least 205 in Pakistan and 200 in India. | Raging monsoon floods sweeping across India and Pakistan have killed more than 440 people, authorities said Tuesday, warning hundreds of thousands more to be prepared to flee their homes as helicopters and boats raced to save marooned victims.
Authorities in Pakistan say the floods, which began Sept. 3, are the worst since massive flooding killed 1,700 people in 2010. Pakistan's minister for water and power, Khwaja Mohammad Asif, warned parliament that some 700,000 people have been told to leave their homes, which could be inundated in the next four days.
Pakistani and Indian troops have been using boats and helicopters to drop food supplies for stranded families and evacuate victims. However, the challenge of the situation grows as more than 1.5 million people are now affected as the rushing waters have destroyed the homes of thousands of families.
"This is a sad moment for all of us," Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said, addressing flood victims in the country's Hafiz district. "These floods came suddenly and no one knew that such a large flood was coming."
The floods have triggered landslides in the divided Kashmir region, split between the two arch rivals, and caused much devastation in northern and eastern Pakistan.
The rains washed away houses, bridges, communication equipment and crops. Pakistani and Indian troops say they have evacuated more than 60,000 people.
Others have waded through waist-deep water to escape the floods, as women carried household items and children on their shoulders as others dragged their livestock along. On roadsides, families set up makeshift camps. Hundreds of others remain stranded on the rooftops, waving for help to every passing helicopter.
On a road near the village of Jamia Abad in the eastern Pakistani district of Jhang, Naseem Akhtar, 41, said she had gone from one government office to another, trying to get someone to help her husband and other family members who had stayed back in their now-submerged village.
Last time she talked to her husband by phone was on Monday night, when he told her that they were sitting on the roof waiting to be rescued, she said.
"I went to the police, I tried to find a private boat, but nothing, there is no help," she said.
So far, 241 have died in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, including 10 worshippers killed Tuesday when the roof of a mosque collapsed on them in the eastern city of Lahore, authorities said. At least 200 people have been killed in India, officials say.
In Pakistan, the floods are now moving south, said Ahmad Kamal, a spokesman for the country's National Disaster Management Authority.
The inundated Kashmir region in the northern Himalayas is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both. Two of the three wars the countries have fought since their independence from Britain in 1947 have been over controlling it.
The Indian army late Monday airlifted communication equipment to restore telephone and mobile phone links damaged by flood water. Army engineers worked Tuesday to restore communication links.
Both nation's armies airdropped relief packages to victims that included blankets, food supplies, medicine and drinking water.
Although the rains have stopped, the flood waters are likely to submerge hundreds of more villages. Pakistani authorities braced for worsening conditions as water levels in the Chenab and Indus rivers rose, Kamal said.
Meanwhile, environmental experts in India said extensive deforestation of Kashmir's mountains has aggravated the damage from the floods.
With the Himalayan hills in Kashmir stripped off their green cover, fast flowing streams were causing soil erosion and flash floods, said Krishnaswamy Srinivas of the Vasudha Foundation, a New Delhi-based environmental advocacy group.
———
Shahzad reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Nirmala George in New Delhi and Zaheer Babar in Lahore, Pakistan, contributed to this report. | Floods | September 2014 | ['(AP via ABC News America)'] |
New Zealand environmental activist Peter Bethune is given a two year suspended sentence in a Tokyo District Court for his role in boarding a Japanese whaling ship. | (CNN) -- Anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and five years' probation Wednesday by a Tokyo district court judge for his role in boarding a Japanese whaling ship.
Bethune was found guilty on five charges, ranging from assault against whalers to trespassing into a whaling vessel. Bethune had previously pleaded guilty to all charges but assault. He could have received up to 15 years behind bars on charges.
Bethune testified during his trial in May that he had no intention of hurting anyone when he protested Japan's whale hunt.
The New Zealand activist from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said that he believed the bottles of butyric acid he threw at the Shonan Maru 2 whaling ship were non-toxic and would not harm anyone.
Prosecutors said the butyric acid burned two crew members of the Japanese whaling fleet, but Sea Shepherd called it a harmless, albeit rancid, liquid. Butyric acid is found in rancid butter and vomit.
At the May hearing, he tearfully described the January collision between the Shonan Maru 2 and the Sea Shepherd's multi-million-dollar speedboat, the Ady Gil. The crash sunk the Ady Gil, which Bethune captained.
Weeks later, Bethune jumped aboard the Shonan Maru 2 and attempted to make a citizen's arrest of the captain. He was arrested and brought back to Japan to face criminal charges.
"I admit that I boarded the Shonan Maru, but I believe that I have good reason to do so," he said. "I admit that I fired the butyric acid."
Bethune's case is the first time a Sea Shepherd activist has been tried in a Japanese criminal court in the group's long-running battle with Japan's whalers in the icy waters of the Antarctic.
"It's encouraged us. It's certainly motivated us, and we're going back to the Southern Ocean with far more support than ever," said Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd founder. "I hope that we'll be much more effective because of it."
"Pete Bethune is a hero in New Zealand," Watson added. "He's a hero worldwide to people who want to see the end of whaling."
Japan annually hunts whales in the Antarctic, despite a worldwide moratorium on whaling, under the loophole that a country may legally do so if its purpose is scientific research.
Sea Shepherd has claimed the science argument is a sham, noting that the whale meat then gets sold in Japanese markets and served in restaurants.
"They're targeting endangered whales in an established international whale sanctuary in violation of the Antarctic treaty," Watson said. "They're criminals." | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | July 2010 | ['(The Sydney Morning Herald)', '(The Guardian)', '(BBC)', '(CNN)'] |
A total lunar eclipse occurs, popularly dubbed a Super Blood Wolf Moon, due to the timing and orbital perigee, and a meteor impact is observed during the event. | This weekend's stunning lunar eclipse seems to have come with a little extra flash, thanks to a brilliant coincidence — a burst of light at about the time totality began, marking the end of a meteorite's journey to the moon.
The meteor strike takes place in the region darkened by Earth's shadow, as you can see in videos of the eclipse.
There's no reason to worry. The moon regularly suffers impacts; the collisions are how the lunar surface acquires an average of 140 new craters a year — and that tally only includes those more than 32.8 feet (10 meters) across. [Amazing Photos of the Super Blood Wolf Moon!]
Scientists are sometimes lucky enough to have instruments in the right place at the right time to catch the flash of light accompanying the high-speed impact. (A Spanish telescope caught sight of two such impacts in quick succession in July 2018.) But this impact came as people around the world looked to the sky — and livestreamed telescope broadcasts — to watch the total lunar eclipse, the last until 2021.
Meteorite impacts aren't just flashy, there's also real scientific knowledge to be learned from them. NASA has a team dedicated to monitoring these flashes because they can teach us about the debris cluttering our solar system.
There's value to looking back in time as well. The moon's surface offers a detailed historical record of impacts, since there aren't nearly as many forces there as on Earth that wipe away craters — no rain, no plate tectonics. And unlike Earth, the moon doesn't carry a thick protective atmosphere that burns up smaller pieces of debris. That means the lunar surface can act as a stand-in for scientists who want to understand how many impacts have hit Earth over the eons.
The eclipse impact will be one more crater for scientists to pore over. | New wonders in nature | January 2019 | ['(Space.com)'] |
Xi Jinping is appointed the new CPC Shanghai Committee Secretary, thus becoming the number one figure in Shanghai, replacing acting party chief Han Zheng. He leaves his post as Party chief in Zhejiang. | HONG KONG, March 24 The ruling Communist Party appointed Xi Jinping as the top leader of Shanghai, the east coast urban center whose previous leadership was purged in one of the most sweeping corruption crackdowns in the country’s recent history.
Mr. Xi, 53, was the party boss of neighboring Zhejiang Province and is regarded by political analysts in China as favoring deeper market-oriented reforms. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | March 2007 | ['(Xinhua)', '(New York Times)'] |
The world's oldest person, American Susannah Mushatt Jones, dies at the age of 116. | NEW YORK (AP) - Susannah Mushatt Jones, the world's oldest person, has died in New York at age 116.
Robert Young, a senior consultant for the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group, said Jones died Thursday night at a public housing facility for seniors in Brooklyn where she had lived for more than three decades. He said she had been ill for the past 10 days.
Jones was born in a small farm town near Montgomery, Alabama, in 1899. She was one of 11 siblings and attended a special school for young black girls. When she graduated from high school in 1922, Jones worked full time helping family members pick crops. She left after a year to begin working as a nanny, heading north to New Jersey and eventually making her way to New York.
"She adored kids," Lois Judge said of her aunt in a 2015 interview with The Associated Press. Jones never had any children of her own and was married for only a few years.
Family members said last year that they credited her long life to love of family and generosity to others. Judge said at the time that she believed it helped that her aunt grew up on a rural farm, where she ate fresh fruits and vegetables that she picked herself.
After she moved to New York, Jones worked with a group of her fellow high school graduates to start a scholarship fund for young African-American women to go to college. She also was active in her public housing building's tenant patrol until she was 106.
Jones became Guinness World Records' official oldest person when 117-year-old Misao Okawa died in Tokyo last year.
"Ms. Jones was the very last American from the 1800s," said Young, whose group tracks and maintains a database of the world's longest-living people.
Young said 116-year-old Emma Morano, of Verbania, Italy, just a few months younger than Jones, is now the unofficial world's oldest person. | Famous Person - Death | May 2016 | ['(Wave 3)'] |
The northernmost radiation detection station of the South Korean Institute of Nuclear Safety claims to have detected an eightfold increase in the radioactive substance xenon. | June 21, 2010 11:56 Right after North Korea claimed a successful nuclear fusion test on May 12, the northernmost radiation detection station of the [South] Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety detected an eightfold increase in the radioactive substance xenon, it emerged Sunday.
Since nuclear fusion is the core process in hydrogen bombs, there is speculation that the North actually ran a small-scale nuclear test to develop the technology at the time. On May 14, two days after the North's announcement, air analysis of KINS's radiation detection station in Geojin, Gangwon Province showed about eight times as much xenon as in ordinary times, a government official said. "Authorities concerned have concentrated on analyzing this," he added. Like krypton, xenon is a gaseous radioactive matter that is produced as a result of nuclear fission. It is regarded as the surest proof of a nuclear test because it does not interact chemically with other matters. Seoul detected increased concentrations of xenon a few days after Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test in North Hamgyong Province in 2006. A nuclear expert said fusion technology normally uses magnetic fields or laser beams to compress tritium. "But an atomic bomb is used to compress the tritium in hydrogen bombs. If xenon was detected, it must have been produced in such a process." But Seoul is skeptical about the veracity of Pyongyang's announcement, saying the North doesn't have the expensive test reactor needed for nuclear fusion, and the claim that it has succeeded in creating a nuclear fusion reaction for power generation is implausible since no country has yet managed to put fusion-based power generation to commercial use. But the government has kept the lid on the KINS's detection of xenon or the result of its analysis. "Xenon can be detected as a result of a nuclear test as well as of the operation of a power plant," the official said. The North's official Rodong Sinmun daily on May 12 claimed scientists "succeeded in a nuclear fusion test with the country's own technology." Hwang Jang-yop (87), a former secretary of the North Korean Workers' Party who defected to the South in 1997, said, "The North has studied making hydrogen bombs from the beginning. A successful nuclear fusion test is a possibility." | Environment Pollution | June 2010 | ['(AP)', '(Chosun Ilbo)'] |
A fault discovered in Idaho could produce an earthquake of 7.5 magnitude. | Scientists at Idaho State University have mapped a new, active seismic fault in the Rocky Mountains in the US state of Idaho capable of unleashing a 7.5 magnitude earthquake.
A university official has warned the fault could release a damaging earthquake within the next few decades.
The 40-mile fracture runs close to the small town of Stanley, a community with roughly 100 year-round residents.
A 7.5 tremor is capable of devastating areas along a fault.
Researchers and scientists found the fault using remote sensing techniques that rely on laser-equipped planes.
They then analysed sediment cores taken from Redfish Lake in Idaho, which helped them uncover data about the history of the fracture in the Earth's crust.
Disaster potential
Glenn Thackray, chairman of the university's geosciences department, said the fault at the base of the Sawtooth Mountains was of some concern, adding that if a quake did occur, shaking would extend to the state capital of Boise.
"There's a chance in the next few decades there will be an earthquake on this fault, and if it does happen, it will be a rather large earthquake," he told Reuters news agency.
Scientists believe two earthquakes have taken place along the fault in the past 10,000 years, with one occurring 7,000 years ago and the other 4,000 years ago.
This information has led researchers to believe significant seismic activity takes place in the region every several thousand years.
But John Ebel, a professor of geophysics at Boston College, says uncovering a fault of this magnitude should not necessarily serve as an "alarm that something is imminent".
The Northern Rocky Mountain region in Idaho, Wyoming and Western Montana is a seismically-heavy area capable of producing some very large earthquakes, Mr Ebel said.
"Since we don't know when the next earthquake will occur, we simply need to prepare for it," Mr Ebel told the BBC.
Mr Ebel said people in communities that lie along the newly discovered fault, like Stanley, should start educating themselves about quakes and begin earthquake drills in schools, if they are already not carrying out such procedures.
Emergency responders in the region should also have detailed plans on what to do if an earthquake occurs, and residents of the town should make sure any new structures in the area are brought up to modern earthquake codes, Mr Ebel said.
History of deadly earthquakes
How earthquakes happen
US Geological Earthquake Center | Earthquakes | November 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
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