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Police in Stuttgart, Germany, arrest at least 400 leftwing demonstrators after they attempted to stop a conference by the Alternative for Germany from being held. The protest grew violent when they began to throw stones and use fireworks against the police. | Riot police use pepper spray to disperse activists blocking entrance to Alternative für Deutschland conference in Stuttgart
Last modified on Wed 29 May 2019 16.01 BST
Hundreds of protesters have been arrested outside a conference of the far-right German political party Alternative für Deutschland in Stuttgart after attempting to block the entrance to the event.
Around 400 people were detained outside the venue where up to 2,000 AfD members are expected to pass an explicitly anti-Islam manifesto, according to Agence France-Presse. The party wants to ban the burqa and minarets in Germany.
Riot police reportedly fired pepper spray at several hundred leftwing protesters who had temporarily blocked a nearby highway and burned tyres on the road leading to the venue. Around 1,000 officers are said to have been deployed. Protesters chanted “refugees can stay, Nazis must go”, according to local media. Placards at the demonstration reportedly included one that read: “Your hate campaign pisses us off.” The protests delayed the start of the conference on Saturday.
“Police detained around 400 violent protesters who threw stones at officers and attacked them with fireworks,” said a police spokesman, Lambert Maute. “There were no injuries reported, only some minor incidents of eye irritation due to the pepper spray.” Police said most of the demonstrators wore black clothes and some had masks.
AfD made substantial gains in German regional elections last month, entering state parliaments for the first time in three regions. It won 24.4% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, in former east Germany. Following the results, the party’s deputy leader, Alexander Gauland, told supporters at a rally that his party would “chase the old parties to hell”.
AfD’s gains came on the back of its opposition to the German government’s refugee policy, The party advocates the reinstatement of border checks and has said Angela Merkel’s decision to accept more than 1 million refugees over the last year was “catastrophic”. Other party policies include a referendum on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the immediate suspension of sanctions on Russia.
In Austria this week the far-right Freedom party’s candidate won the first round of a presidential election, with 36% of the vote. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | April 2016 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
At least 40 people have died in a bus crash in Comilla, Bangladesh. | The bus veered off the road and caught fire after it tried to overtake another vehicle, about 100km (62 miles) outside the capital, Dhaka.
The vehicle's fuel cylinder containing compressed natural gas exploded after the crash, engulfing it in flames.
Police say the intensity of the fire has made it difficult to identify remains but there were seven survivors.
The BBC's John Sudworth in Dhaka says the bus was travelling from Dhaka to the port city of Chittagong, ahead of a transport blockade in the capital due to start on Sunday.
Police have so far recovered 41 sets of remains from the charred wreckage.
"They're burnt into ashes, so it is difficult to determine how many dead bodies were in the bus," Comilla's Deputy Commissioner, Mohibul Hussein, told the BBC.
Local television reported that 50 to 70 people were on the bus when the accident occurred. | Road Crash | January 2007 | ['(BBC News)', '(The Telegraph)'] |
At least 10 people die and dozens disappear after a passenger boat sinks off the coast of Indonesia. | At least 10 people have been killed and dozens are missing after a passenger boat sank in waters off eastern Indonesia, police say.
Eight of the ferry's estimated 50 passengers were found alive, police chief Abdul Rahma Aba in Adonara Timur district told an Indonesian TV channel.
The incident happened at 0900 local time (0100 GMT) just off the shore of Adonara Timur on Flores island.
Mr Aba said high waves caused the boat to capsize.
He said the boat was going from the island of Adonara to Lembata, both located just east of Flores island in East Nusa Tenggara province.
"We have found 11 bodies and are still looking for about 32 missing people," said National Search and Rescue Agency spokesman Gagah Prakoso.
"We cannot say now whether the chance to find any survivor is very slim. We'll do our best," he said.
He added that local fishermen were helping in the search.
Indonesia is made up of more than 17,000 islands and inter-island ferries are a key form of transportation.
Accidents are usually the result of overcrowding or high seas, or both.
| Shipwreck | August 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(France24)', '(The News International)', '(The Age)'] |
At least twenty-nine are killed in a "Day of Rage" protesting against economic problems and corruption in the country. | BAGHDAD - Iraqi security forces detained hundreds of people, including prominent journalists, artists and intellectuals, witnesses said Saturday, a day after nationwide demonstrations brought tens of thousands of Iraqis into the streets and ended with soldiers shooting into crowds.
Four journalists who had been released described being rounded up well after they had left a protest at Baghdad's Tahrir Square. They said they were handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with execution by soldiers from an army intelligence unit.
"It was like they were dealing with a bunch of al-Qaeda operatives, not a group of journalists," said Hussam al-Ssairi, a journalist and poet, who was among a group and described seeing hundreds of protesters in black hoods at the detention facility. "Yesterday was like a test, like a picture of the new democracy in Iraq."
Protesters mostly stayed home Saturday, following more than a dozen demonstrations across the country Friday that killed at least 29 people, as crowds stormed provincial buildings, forced local officials to resign, freed prisoners and otherwise demanded more from a government they only recently had a chance to elect.
"I have demands!" Salma Mikahil, 48, cried out from Tahrir Square on Friday, as military helicopters and snipers looked down on thousands of people bearing handmade signs and olive branches signifying peace. "I want to see if Maliki can accept that I live on this," Mikahil said, waving a 1,000-dinar note, worth less than a dollar, toward Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's offices. "I want to see if his conscience accepts it."
The protests - billed as Iraq's "Day of Rage" - were intended to call for reform of Maliki's government, not revolution. From the southern city of Basra to northern cities of Kurdistan, protesters demanded the simple dignities of adequate electricity, clean water and a decent job.
As the day wore on, however, the demonstrations grew violent when security forces deployed water cannons and sound bombs to disperse crowds. Iraqi military helicopters swooped toward the demonstrators in Baghdad, and soldiers fired into angry crowds in the protest here and in at least seven others across the country.
And in that way, the day introduced a new sort of conflict to a population that has been targeted by sectarian militias and suicide bombers. Now, many wondered whether they would have to add to the list of enemies their government.
Ssairi and his three colleagues, one of whom had been on the radio speaking in support of protesters, said about a dozen soldiers stormed into a restaurant where they were eating dinner Friday afternoon and began beating them as other diners looked on in silence. They drove them to a side street and beat them again.
Then, blindfolded, they were driven to the former Ministry of Defense building, which houses an intelligence unit of the Iraqi army's 11th Division, they said. Hadi al-Mahdi, a theater director and radio anchor who has been calling for reform, said he was blindfolded and beaten repeatedly with sticks, boots and fists. One soldier put a stick into Hadi's handcuffed hands and threatened to rape him with it, he said.
The soldiers accused him of being a tool of outsiders wishing to topple Maliki's government; they demanded that he confess to being a member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Hadi told them that he blamed Baathists for killing two of his brothers and that until recently he had been a member of Maliki's Dawa Party.
Hadi said he was then taken to a detention cell, his blindfold off, where he said there were at least 300 people with black hoods over their heads, many groaning in bloody shirts. Several told him they had been detained during or after the protests. | Protest_Online Condemnation | February 2011 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(CP via Google News)', '(Washington Post)'] |
A delegation from the United States arrives in the North Korean capital Pyongyang to assess the food shortage in the country. | (CNN) -- A U.S. delegation will travel to North Korea on Tuesday for a four-day trip to assess the food situation in the reclusive nation.
The special envoy for North Korean human rights, Robert King, and the Deputy Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, Jon Brause, will make the trip, the State Department said.
The trip comes as some are concerned that floods and harsh weather have devastated North Korea's crops.
"It's had a big impact on the winter crop, and there are big concerns now for the levels of food available through the public distribution system," said Marcus Prior of the World Food Programme.
Tensions between North Korea and the West have spiked in recent years due in part to concerns over Pyongyang's nuclear development program.
The United States and South Korea held joint military drills in February, despite North Korea's warning to the South not to carry them out -- calling the exercises a provocation.
South Korea accuses the North of torpedoing and sinking one of its warships in March 2010, killing 46 sailors.
In November, North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong Island, killing two South Korean marines and two civilians.
The U.S. suspended aid two years ago to North Korea because it suspected the donated food was being diverted to the military or not reaching those most in need.
But in recent weeks, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and American televangelist Franklin Graham visited North Korea and warned of a food crisis.
"I don't think the U.S. needs a crisis in Asia right now, a crisis with the country that has the second largest army in Asia, a country that has nuclear weapons," Graham said. "Are you going to starve them into a corner to where they have no choice but to try to act to survive?" | Diplomatic Visit | May 2011 | ['(CNN)', '(Radio Television Hong Kong)'] |
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says Iran is "ready to facilitate talks between the Syrian government and opposition". | President Hassan Rouhani has signalled his intention to lead a new Iran on to the international stage at the United Nations next week, laying out a manifesto for personal freedom at home and compromise abroad.
"We want the people in their private life to be completely free," the newly elected president told NBC News, after a string of prisoner releases. He also pledged to create a citizens' rights commission "in the near future".
"In today's world, having access to information and the right of free dialogue and the right to think freely is the right of all people, including the people of Iran," Rouhani said.
Rouhani also vowed that Iran would never seek nuclear weapons and insisted his government had "complete authority" to resolve the 11-year international impasse over Iran's nuclear aspirations.
The bold rhetoric, backed up by a series of concrete steps taken with the apparent backing of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has raised hopes of major diplomatic breakthroughs in the coming months, affecting the long-stalled nuclear negotiations and perhaps the Syrian conflict too.
Optimism before Rouhani's debut on the world stage at the UN general assembly on Tuesday is tempered among western diplomats by uncertainty over the readiness of Khamenei to accept significant limits on the nuclear programme, long cherished by the regime as central to national prestige and dignity.
Observers of the long deadlock between Iran and international community over Iran's uranium enrichment voiced concern over the west's ability to respond to Rouhani's overtures quickly enough to bolster his still-fragile control over the machinery of government
"I think he has significant leeway to reach a deal, but that this window of opportunity is limited. The approach must be step-by-step, but we need to see tangible progress in the months to come, otherwise hardliners will undercut Rouhani," said Mohammad Ali Shabani, a Tehran-based analyst.
Rouhani, a Glasgow-educated pragmatist and former nuclear negotiator who decisively won presidential elections in June, has orchestrated a charm offensive before the general assembly, which his government clearly views as a critical moment for escaping the isolation exacerbated by his mercurial predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, is due to meet the British foreign secretary, William Hague, and the EU foreign policy chief, Lady Ashton, on Monday, to lay the groundwork for Rouhani's general assembly speech the next day.
But Zarif arrived in New York five days early to network with diplomatic contacts largely made when he was ambassador to the UN a decade ago, under Iran's last moderate government. At a banquet on Wednesday, the deputy UN secretary general, Jan Eliason, reportedly hailed his quarter-century friendship with Zarif and welcomed Iranian willingness to cooperate.
Over the past few weeks, Iranian officials have sent signals that they would be open to significant compromises on the nuclear programme that could pave the way to a deal.
The head of the Iranian atomic organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, suggested recently the country could accept the "additional protocol" of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which allows inspectors to visit sites other than those declared by the government as nuclear-related. That step is seen as essential by the IAEA in strengthened international confidence that there is no covert weapons programme running in parallel with the civil nuclear project.
Diplomats and observers said the contours of a potential breakthrough nuclear deal were increasingly clear. Iran would agree to limit enrichment of uranium to 5% purity (good enough for nuclear power stations, but far short of weapons grade), get rid of its stockpile of 20%-enriched uranium, and agree to the additional protocol.
In return, the west would lift a significant part of its sanctions regime and recognise Iran's right to enrich uranium as part of a complete nuclear fuel cycle.
Shabani said he thought such a package would be acceptable to Tehran. However, it could still be extremely difficult to reach a deal given a long history of mutual distrust. The sequencing of mutual concessions would be subject of delicate negotiations as would be their irreversibility.
In such talks, the White House would be hamstrung by the fact that most US sanctions are in the gift of Congress over which President Obama has limited sway.
"In Washington there is a question of who is in charge of Iran policy," said Jim Walsh, an expert on the Iranian nuclear programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Obama could use presidential waivers to suspend sanctions, but those waivers could subsequently be overridden by Congress, and would be consequently be of limited value to Tehran.
"This is going to question worth watching. If we go down this path and we can't deliver we are going to confirm all of Iran's worst suspicions about double-dealing," Walsh said.For the time being, Rouhani appears to have the supreme leader's backing. Earlier this week, Khamenei, talked about the virtues of "heroic leniency" in diplomacy in a speech to the revolutionary guard that was widely seen as providing Rouhani the political space to make a nuclear deal.
Rouhani stressed the point in his NBC interview, saying: "In its nuclear programme, this government enters with full power and has complete authority. We have sufficient political latitude to solve this problem."Observers fear that backing could evaporate if Rouhani is unable to deliver swift economic improvements in the form of loosening the sanctions which straitjacket on Iran. There are clear signs on the domestic stage at least that the supreme leader has delegated real power to the new president which Rouhani is rapidly putting into effect.
Iranians have seen an almost daily series of changes that add up to a steady transformation of society since Rouhani's inauguration last month. A new pro-reform and pragmatic cabinet has restructured the senior management levels of major ministries, especially in the oil ministry, an important lever of power in a hydrocarbon-dependent economy.
Last week, the ministry for culture and Islamic guidance ordered the re-opening of House of Cinema, home of the country's independent film industry, which was shut down under Ahmadinejad.
Web users in Iran report a significant improvement in the internet speeds and availability as several new ministers like Zarif have embraced Facebook and Twitter, triggering speculation that the authorities will lift the filtering of social media.
The release this week of a number of prominent activists – including the human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh – has followed Rouhani's appointment of Seyed Mahmoud Alavi as intelligence minister. He has pledged to stay out Iranians private lives, and invited Iranians who left the country after the 2009 disputed elections to return provided they had not committed a criminal offence.
Restrictions on local news agencies and newspapers seem to have eased recently with a few going as far as breaking the taboo on reporting the plight of political prisoners or the house arrests of opposition leaders.
Thursday's headline in Tehran reflected the current feel-good atmosphere in Tehran. Etemaad, a reformist newspaper, carried a headline saying: "Dismissal, freedom and championship," referring accordingly to the dismissal of the hardline head of Iran's Azad University, the release of prisoners and a victory of Iran's national freestyle wrestlers in world championship.
Jafar Tofighi, the new acting minister of science, research and technology, has also replaced hardliners at the top of Iran's major universities and signalled that students previously ejected from universities as a result of political activism can now re-register.
Ali Alizadeh, an Iranian political analyst based in London, said the governments reform were rooted in a new spirit of pragmatism forged by sanctions, deep social and political discontent and the weakening of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria.
"The supreme leader … has implicitly restrained the Iranian hardliners and has given theological licence to retreat from what previously held the ideological edifice of the regime together: nuclear programme and lack of relations with the US," Alizadeh said.
"Unlike the last three governments, for the first time, the supreme leader, the government, major political factions of the regime and significant parts of the Iranian people are in temporary unison over a few important issues."
Mohammad-Taghi Karroubi, son of the opposition leader under house arrest, Mehdi Karroubi, said the prisoner releases would strengthen Rouhani's position at the UN and give him more credibility. He did not think his father or fellow opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, would be released immediately but thought the steps taken by the government so far paved the way for their freedom.
Softened diplomacy
He heralds improved diplomatic relations with the west by an exchange of letters with Barack Obama and David Cameron in early August. Both Iran's supreme leader and Rouhani subsequently strike a newly conciliatory tone, seeming to signal Iran's readiness for a fresh chapter in diplomacy.
Moderates promoted
Rouhani appoints a new cabinet consisting of pro-reform moderates and pragmatists, naming the veteran US-educated Iranian diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif as foreign minister. Several key officials belonging to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's era are dismissed from posts in major ministries.
Censorship eased
On 12 September Iran's independent House of Cinema – the main film guild, shut down under Ahmadinejad – is reopened. Students previously banned from universities because of political activity are allowed to continue their education. Formerly tight restrictions on the media are eased, with some journalists reporting on the situation of political prisoners.
Women's rights advanced
Following the appointment of Marzieh Afkham as Iran's first female foreign ministry spokesperson and two women as deputies to the prime minister, 24-year-old Shirin Gerami this week became the first Iranian woman to race in triathlon under the Islamic republic's flag.
Political prisoners released
On Wednesday leading human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh is released from jail, along with a number of other prominent political activists. This follows the easing of the terms of the house arrest of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, allowing them more frequent family visits. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | September 2013 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
David Hittner, U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of Texas, rules ExxonMobil Corporation should pay a $19.95 million penalty for pollution from its Baytown, Texas, refining and chemical plant complex for 16,386 days of violations and 10 million pounds of pollutants that were released in violation of operating permits between 2005 and 2013. | HOUSTON (Reuters) - A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that ExxonMobil Corp should pay a $19.95 million penalty for pollution from its Baytown, Texas, refining and chemical plant complex between 2005 and 2013.
U.S. District Court Judge David Hittner issued the ruling in a citizen lawsuit brought under the U.S. Clean Air Act by two environmental groups, Environment Texas and the Sierra Club.
Environment Texas welcomed the decision in the long-running suit, which was first filed in 2010.
“We think it might be the largest citizen suit penalty in U.S. history,” said Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas. “It definitely means it pays not to pollute.”
Exxon said it would consider its legal options and may appeal the ruling.
“We disagree with the court’s decision and the award of any penalty,” Exxon spokesman Todd Spitler said in an emailed statement. “As the court expressed in its decision, ExxonMobil’s full compliance history and good faith efforts to comply weigh against assessing any penalty.”
The suit was filed under a provision of the Clean Air Act that allows citizens to sue when regulators have failed to stop pollution. The two groups had contended the penalty could run as high as $573 million, but had only sought $41 million.
In a 101-page decision, Hittner ruled there had been 16,386 days of violations and 10 million pounds (4.5 million kg) of pollutants had been released in violation of operating permits issued to Exxon for the Baytown complex.
“The court finds given the number of days of violations and the quantitative amount of emissions released as a result, the seriousness factor weighs in favor of the assessment of a penalty,” he wrote.
The decision comes about a year after the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined Hittner had errored in a 2014 ruling assessing Exxon’s liability for pollution from the refinery, chemical plant and olefins plant in the Baytown complex in the eastern suburbs of Houston.
The Fifth Circuit Court sent the case back to Hittner to reassess Exxon’s liability.
The Baytown complex, which includes the second largest refinery in the United States, is regulated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which had fined Exxon $1.4 million for pollution. Hittner deducted that amount in determining the penalty.
The penalty will be paid to the federal government. Hittner said Exxon was liable for legal fees incurred by the two environmental groups.
| Organization Fine | April 2017 | ['(4.5 Gg)', '(Reuters)'] |
Supporters of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe stone delegates meeting in the capital Harare to create a new constitution, injuring five people. | Dozens of youths hurled stones into the meeting in the populous Mbare district, sending crowds fleeing in all directions, an AFP correspondent witnessed. Police stood by and watched as the violence broke out.
“We had mobilised people to contribute to the constitution-making meeting but Zanu PF supporters came and beat up people, throwing stones to disrupt the meeting,” said Piniel Denga, parliamentarian for Mbare.
“Five people were injured. The situation is still tense.” Douglas Mwonzora, a leader of the constitution committee, called off the meeting after the incident.
“We are looking at the cause of the violence, but we understand people who do not belong to the constituency were bussed in to attend the meeting,” he said.
Zimbabwe is creating a new constitution as part of a road map by the unity government to fresh elections.
Constitutional outreach teams are gathering public opinion on the new charter with talks this weekend in the capital Harare and second city Bulawayo.
In July last year Zanu PF supporters disrupted a major constitutional meeting in the capital.
Several meetings have been disrupted across the country after violence and clashes between supporters of long-ruling Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, both leaders in the strained unity government.
The outreach exercise is expected to end this month. Tsvangirai said last week a referendum on the charter could be held in mid-2011. | Riot | September 2010 | ['(Times Live)', '(NewsDay.zw)'] |
The driver of the lorry in which 39 Vietnamese migrants were found dead in Grays, Essex, England, pleads guilty to conspiring to assist unlawful immigration. | The lorry driver accused over the deaths of 39 migrants found dead in a trailer in Essex has pleaded guilty to plotting to assist illegal immigration.
Maurice Robinson, 25, who was allegedly part of a global smuggling ring, is charged with the manslaughter of a group of men, women and children found dead inside a refrigerated trailer.
The bodies of eight females and 31 males were discovered in the trailer attached to his cab in an industrial park in Grays, Essex, early on 23 October.
The victims were later identified as coming from various parts of Vietnam, with the youngest being two boys aged 15.
Mr Robinson appeared at the Old Bailey via video link from Belmarsh prison for a plea hearing on Monday.
During the hearing before Mr Justice Edis, he admitted conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration between 1 May, 2018, and 24 October, 2019.
The charge states that he plotted with others to do “an act or series of acts which facilitated the commission of a breach of immigration law by various persons”.
He also admitted acquiring criminal property namely money on the same dates.
The defendant, from Craigavon, Northern Ireland, was not asked to enter pleas to other charges, including 39 counts of manslaughter.
He is charged with conspiracy to commit human trafficking offences between 1 May, 2018 and 24 October, 2019.
The details of that charge state that he “arranged or facilitated the travel of other persons into the UK with a view to their being exploited”.
He is also charged with transferring criminal property.
The defendant was remanded into custody until a further hearing on 13 December.
Another suspect is due to appear at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court on Monday charged with human trafficking offences.
Irish national Christopher Kennedy, 23, was arrested in Buckinghamshire on Friday.
It came after it emerged a teenager who was among the 39 people found dead had gone missing from an asylum centre in the Netherlands.
Additional reporting by Press Association.
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | November 2019 | ['(The Independent)'] |
Israel launches another series of strikes in the Gaza Strip, killing eight people and wounding several others, thereby bringing the total death toll from the strikes to 32. The Hanadi Tower is also destroyed during the incident. Hamas responds to the attacks by launching rockets towards Israel, including several towards Tel Aviv, killing three people. | GAZA/JERUSALEM, May 11 (Reuters) - Hostilities between Israel and Hamas escalated on Tuesday, raising the death toll in two days to 32 Palestinians and three people in Israel, with Israel carrying out multiple air strikes in Gaza and the militant group firing rockets at Tel Aviv.
| Armed Conflict | May 2021 | ['(Reuters)'] |
In African football, the 2019 CAF Champions League Final between Morocco's Wydad Casablanca, and Tunisia's Espérance Sportive de Tunis, is abandoned after Wydad Casablanca players refused to play following a row over a goal ruled out by the video assistant referee . The referee subsequently awarded the victory to Espérance Sportive de Tunis for their fourth CAF title. | Last updated on 1 June 20191 June 2019.From the section African
The African Champions League final was abandoned due to a row over the Video Assisted Referee (VAR) system.
Play was halted for over an hour after Wydad Casablanca refused to play when VAR was unavailable to judge a disallowed equaliser.
VAR had been set up on the side of the pitch, but the players had not been told it was not working, although officials were aware.
The referee then awarded the victory to three-time former champions Esperance.
The Tunisian side were leading 1-0 (2-1 on aggregate) in Saturday's final, which was played over two legs. VAR had been used in last week's first leg.
But in the second leg, Walid El Karti's header for Wydad was disallowed for an infringement.
Wydad players protested to the Gambian referee, demanding VAR be used, and Confederation of African Football (Caf) president Ahmad Ahmad spent almost 30 minutes in discussions with officials in a bid to get the game restarted.
The 60,000 spectators inside the stadium waited for an update for 95 minutes, before the referee awarded the victory to the home team, who retained the title.
In a statement, Caf confirmed it will hold a meeting of their executive committee on Tuesday to discuss the incident.
It is the first time in the 55-year history of the elite African club competition that a match in the home-and-away final series has not been completed.
Last week's first leg in Morocco saw Caf hand Egyptian referee Gehad Grisha a six-month ban after complaints from the Moroccans.
Esperance were unbeaten all season, equalling the achievement of the 1994 squad, becoming the first club to win the competition twice without losing a match.
Wydad could now face a two-year ban from competing in continental club competition.
| Sports Competition | May 2019 | ['(VAR)', '(BBC)'] |
The centre–left alliance Italy Common Good led by the Democratic Party wins the Italian general election. However the number of seats will not guarantee the majority in the Senate, paving the way to instability. | Initial results point to Italy's center-left alliance as the largest group in the newly-elected parliament. Former Communist Pier Luigi Bersani could be the next premier.
The election campaign was fierce and personal. In one television program, 61-year-old Pier Luigi Bersani said that he has no problem with his own bald head with its halo of black hair around the sides - an allusion to his main rival, Silvio Berlusconi.
Bersani, who is not a man of grandiose gestures and likes to keep things simple, differs markedly from Berlusconi, who makes no effort to hide his repeated face-liftings and hair implants. Quite the contrary: the 76-year-old Berlusconi even makes fun of his age and the attempts to regain his youth. "I used to look younger. Who was it that got rid of all the mirrors that showed that?" he said with a wry smile during an election rally.
Pier Luigi takes a less light-hearted approach to his public appearances. During the campaign, he said that Italy's economic crisis could not be solved with magic tricks and "hackneyed sound bites."
Unlike Berlusconi, Bersani wants to continue the reform course of the technocratic government under outgoing premier Mario Monti, but also wants to soften some of the more draconian measures, such as the labor market reforms. "You cannot cost-cut Italy to death," he said. Bersani's role model is French President Francois Hollande, also a Socialist, who came to power last year. At the European level, Hollande is a natural ally for Bersani. Resistance to the German government's austerity course, which both men feel is too strict, would grow if Bersani leads Italy's government.
Unlike Berlusconi, Bersani is not a natural in the spotlight
From Communist to Social Democrat
As the son of a gas station attendant from a small northern Italian village near Piacenza, Bersani is a humble, even quiet, man. Statesman-like, he has stressed that his first priority is Italy, then his Social Democratic party, while the political maneuvering of selecting a cabinet and his personal life are much further down the list. Only when somebody makes fun of his simple background, as happened during the election campaign, does Bersani ever get upset. Not everybody can be a billionaire or his son, Bersani said venomously in the direction of Berlusconi, one of Italy's wealthiest men.
Until 1991, Bersani, who had studied to become a teacher, was a full-time official of Italy's Communist Party. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union, Bersani quickly changed his political stripes. The Communist Party morphed into the Socialist Party and later became a rather mainstream and conformist Social Democratic party.
Bersani, the apparatchik, adapted and continued his career. He won the local elections in the northern Emilia-Romagna region and, in the mid-1990s, ended up leading the regional government. He left the hard-line, left-wing course behind him and was named chairman of the frequently renamed Democratic Party after a referendum among the members.
Bersani has always emphasized his close relationship with the country's labor unions. Under Socialist Prime Minister Romano Prodi in 2006, he was appointed minister for economic development. At the time, he introduced the first efforts to deregulate Italy's torpid economy. During this election campaign, he said he wanted to continue those efforts.
No chance without the others
Pier Luigi Bersani: rolled-up sleeves and ready to work
Since no government in Italy is feasible without coalition partners, Bersani has already said that he is open to a partnership with Monti's mainstream supporters. Monti, however, has clearly said that he has no intention of working together with the former communists who belong to Bersani's center-left alliance. Bersani, for his part, has rejected a coalition with the anarchic Beppe Grillo, and with Berlusconi.
Many Italians view Bersani as too bland. "He actually only exists as a counterweight to Berlusconi. Bersani and Berlusconi are the two sides of the same moon," said one voter in Rome.
Privately, Bersani and Berlusconi are also different. The former has been married for more than 30 years to one and the same woman, while the latter has a dirty divorce behind him and continues to be the object of endless stories in the media due to his bacchanalian lifestyle.
Bersani's skimpy answer about his private life in television interviews during the campaign: "I don't have time for antics and theatrics." And as if to make a point of that, Bersani could often be seen during public appearances taking off his jacket and tie and rolling up his sleeves, as if to demonstrate he was ready to get to work. | Government Job change - Election | February 2013 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters)', '(The Telegraph)', '(Deutsche Welle)'] |
The Russian Federal Space Agency successfully launches a Soyuz TMA–02M carrying a Russian, American and Japanese astronaut towards the International Space Station. | BAIKONUR, KAZAKHSTAN (BNO NEWS) -- The Russian Federal Space Agency on Wednesday announced that Russia's Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft was successfully lifted off for the International Space Station (ISS) from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.
The crew vehicle was launched by a Soyuz-FG rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome's pad 1 (Gagarin’s Launch Pad) at about 2:12 a.m. local time. The spacecraft has already separated from its carrier rocket.
The vehicle is carrying a three- member crew, NASA astronaut Mike Fossum, Russian cosmonaut and Soyuz commander Sergei Volkov and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, to the ISS. The Soyuz TMA-02M is expected to dock at the ICC on June 10. The new space station crew members will join Expedition 28 commander Andrey Borisenko and flight engineer Alexander Samokutyaev of the Russian space agency and Ron Garan of NASA.
Since November 2, 2000, there has been an uninterrupted presence of humans on the ISS conducting expanded scientific research and station maintenance activities. Fossum and Garan will also retrieve a failed cooling system pump module that will be returned to Earth by the Atlantis' STS-135 mission.
Borisenko, Samokutyaev and Garan launched to the ISS on April 4. They will return to Earth in September. The Expedition 29 (NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin) will then join the station in September.
Soyuz TMA-02M is a vehicle of new series, equipped with digital control system. It undergoes the second stage of flight testing. The Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft was launched to the ISS on October 2010.
The TMA-01M carried NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka. The trio joined Expedition 25 crewmates Doug Wheelock, a NASA astronaut and ISS commander, NASA astronaut Shannon Walker and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, who had been aboard the station since June 17. | New achievements in aerospace | June 2011 | ['(Channel 6 News)'] |
Former Brazilian President Michel Temer surrenders to the federal police in response to Wednesday's arrest warrant regarding an investigation into an alleged corruption scheme involving an Eletrobras nuclear power plant. Temer's lawyer's appeal will be heard on Tuesday. | SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Former Brazilian President Michel Temer on Thursday surrendered himself to the country’s federal police, marking the second time he will be jailed on allegations that he participated in a vast corruption scheme for decades.
Television images showed Temer leaving his home in Sao Paulo and going into the offices of Brazil’s federal police there. On Wednesday, when the arrest warrant was issued, his attorney decried the decision and said it was an “injustice.”
His lawyers had filed an appeal before his arrest that will be heard on Tuesday.
Temer, 78, led Brazil between 2016 and the end of 2018 following the impeachment of left-wing President Dilma Rousseff, under whom he served as vice president for six years. He was first jailed in March and held in a Rio de Janeiro facility, but was released a few days later.
As part of Brazil’s sprawling ‘Car Wash’ anti-corruption probe, prosecutors allege that Temer led a “criminal organization” that took 1.8 billion reais ($455.52 million) in bribes, including kickbacks that were promised but have yet to be paid.
One of the schemes allegedly involved bribes that were from funds diverted from a nuclear power facility operated by a subsidiary of state-run Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA.
While those allegations have led to the current arrest warrant, Temer has been charged six times overall in connection with different corruption investigations.
More than 150 politicians and businessmen have been convicted in connection with the “Car Wash” investigation, including left-wing ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has been in prison since last year. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | May 2019 | ['(Reuters)', '(France 24)'] |
SpaceX launches the first Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station as part of the Crew Dragon Demo-1 mission, with the first stage of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle making a successful landing on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. | The Crew Dragon capsule carried no crew, but it sets up a near future with astronauts traveling to orbit from the United States again.
By Kenneth Chang
The first American spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts since the retirement of the space shuttles launched early Saturday. A successful mission could put NASA and the United States on the cusp of a renewed era of human spaceflight.
There were no people on this demonstration flight, a SpaceX vehicle called Crew Dragon. As lightning sparked in distant skies, the spacecraft lifted off at the appointed time, 2:49 a.m. Eastern Time, from in Florida. Within 10 minutes the capsule was in orbit, headed toward a Sunday morning rendezvous with the International Space Station.
| New achievements in aerospace | March 2019 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
John Letts, the father of the alleged British–Canadian Islamic State fighter Jack Letts who is being held by Kurdish forces in Syria, calls for the Canadian government to help secure his release. , | The father of a British-Canadian national detained in Kurdish-held northern Syria is asking Canadian officials to help secure his release. John Letts is also pleading for their assistance in the repatriation of other Canadians being held in the region. His son, Jack Letts, 23, dubbed "Jihadi Jack", travelled to Syria in 2014. He was later captured by the Kurdish-led YPG - the group fighting against the Islamic State - when he left IS territory. Mr Letts said his son has been detained for the past 18 months and that his health is failing. "I need your help to save my son's life," he told journalists in Ottawa, where he was meeting officials on Tuesday to discuss his son's case and those of other detained Canadians. John Letts and his wife are facing charges of funding terrorism after sending their son money two years ago, which they say was to fund their son's escape from Syria. They have pleaded not guilty. Mr Letts said they have not been able to speak openly about their son's case in the UK due to contempt of court rules. "In fact there's a very good chance I'll be sent to prison again when I fly back tomorrow," he said. "Unfortunately I don't have any choice but to speak out because I love my son and think he's innocent."
The couple, who along with their son have dual citizenship, have made repeated attempts to get the British and Canadian governments to intervene and bring their son home. Mr Letts said Canadian officials had been initially helpful when his son was first captured, but have since said it would be too dangerous to have him removed. He said his son was "naive and very religious" when he travelled to Syria at the age of 18 and denies he was there to fight with IS. Jack Letts converted to Islam while at Cherwell comprehensive school in Oxford, England. It is unclear how much evidence exists about the true nature of his activities in Syria. At the Ottawa press conference, Mr Letts appeared alongside Families Against Violent Extremism (Fave), which said there are currently nine Canadian adults and several children, including a number under the age of six, being held in Kurdish prison camps in Syria. Fave said it is concerned that the families are housed in tents and lack adequate clothing to handle the approaching winter. "These people need to be brought home to Canada and they need to be brought home now," said Fave director Alexandra Bain. Ms Bain said representatives from the UK-based legal Reprieve would travel to northern Syria to help facilitate their return if Canada agrees to supply the detainees with travel documents.
Canada says that there is no safe way to get these Canadians out of the region. There are also concerns they would be detained by authorities and face charges in neighbouring countries if they did manage to leave Syria. In a statement, Canada's Foreign Affairs department told the BBC that its ability to provide consular assistance is "extremely limited" but that it is engaged to the extent possible in the cases raised by Fave. "Canadian diplomats have established a communications channel with local Kurdish authorities in order to verify the whereabouts and well-being of Canadian citizens," it said. There has been significant debate in both Britain and Canada over what should happen to returning IS fighters who are still in Syria.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | October 2018 | ['(BBC)', '(CTV News)'] |
A suicide attack kills at least 38 people at a mosque in Upper Dir District, Pakistan. | A bomb has exploded at a mosque in north-western Pakistan during Friday prayers, killing at least 38 people and wounding dozens more.
Police said a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the mosque in Upper Dir district, although some witnesses said the bomb was already in the building. Nearby Swat Valley has been the scene of heavy fighting between the Pakistani military and Taliban militants. Upper Dir has also been the scene of sporadic clashes between the two. The bomb exploded at the mosque in the village of Hayagai Sharki, about 15km from the town of Upper Dir. The building was severely damaged and many worshippers were reported to have been trapped under the rubble. A resident of the village described the carnage at the scene of the blast. "A large number of body parts are scattered in the mosque. We don't know whether these are parts of the dead who have been identified or of others," Umer Rehman told the Reuters news agency. There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but the north-west region as a whole has witnessed a number of suicide attacks linked to the Taliban insurgency, as well as the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide. Condemnation
In March, about 50 people died in a suicide bomb attack at a mosque near Jamrud, on the Khyber Pass route to Afghanistan. There are fears of a militant backlash in response to the army's military campaign in Swat, analysts say. The bombing has been condemned by both the Pakistani president and the prime minister who have reiterated Pakistan's determination to establish full government control. Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, said in a statement last night that the army had "turned the tide" against the Taliban and reiterated that the army aimed to completely eradicate them from the neighbouring Swat valley. In recent days the army has captured a number of militant strongholds as it continues its offensive. More than two million people have been displaced by the fighting. What are these? | Armed Conflict | June 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
3 people are killed and others are injured as the regime shells Talkalakh, a city near the border with Lebanon; injured Syrians are taken to Lebanese hospitals with at least one man reported to have died. | (CNN) -- The two-month-long tumult across Syria echoed along the Lebanese border on Saturday as the regime's troops shelled a town and hundreds of refugees hustled to safety into Lebanon.
Syrian soldiers on Saturday shelled Tal Kalakh, a town near the Lebanese border, witnesses told CNN. Injured Syrians were taken to Lebanese hospitals. One man died and his body was returned to Syria in a funeral procession, residents said. At least four people were being treated in hospitals. One of the injured, a Syrian man in his 20s, was shot and severely wounded, Ayman Abdel Kader, emergency room doctor in Akkar-Rahal hospital in northern Lebanon told CNN.
Interrupted gunfire could be heard into the evening from the Lebanese northern border village of Wadi Khalid across the Syrian border villages.
Ambulances for the Red Cross stood by to transfer the injured to Lebanese hospitals.
About 700 people from Syria fled to the northern Lebanese village of Mkaybleh, the mayor of the village said Saturday. Those fleeing were mostly women and children, said Mahamoud Khazaal, the mayor.
Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said at present, the refugee flow into Lebanon has been "very small" -- about 1,000 people.
She told CNN Saturday that the Syrian refugees are being hosted by people they know in Lebanon, such as friends and relatives.
As such, she said, "there's been no request for humanitarian assistance," but there are contingency plans if needed.
She said the numbers of Syrians who have crossed the border into Turkey are also small, about 250.
Syria hosts about 300,000 refugees from Iraq, where people fled in droves during the Iraq war.
"But so far we have not seen they are trying to leave Syria," she said.
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has ordered government officials to assess the needs of the Syrians taking refuge in Lebanese villages.
Demonstrations have rippled across the country since mid-March, and protesters demanding political freedoms have been met by a powerful security crackdown. A U.N. official said on Friday that reports from non-government organizations suggest that somewhere between 700 and 850 people have been killed since the start of the protests" and "thousands of other people have reportedly been arrested."
Violent clashes after demonstrations on Friday left at least four people dead, a human rights advocate said.
According to Ammar Qurabi, chairman of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, three were killed by gunfire from security forces during those clashes.
The fighting, Qurabi said in a statement, also prevented many people from attending Friday prayers because mosques were surrounded by tanks.
The regime has blamed armed groups for the violence. Minister of Information Adnan Mahmoud said on Friday that 98 soldiers and security forces and 22 police have been killed, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency.
But the demonstrators, emboldened by the tough crackdown and the mass anti-government rallies in other Arab nations this year, have blamed killings on the government.
President Bashar al-Assad has responded to grievances by lifting the country's 48-year-old state of emergency and abolishing the state security court, both of which were key demands of the demonstrators.
The emergency law permitted the government to make preventive arrests and override constitutional and penal code statutes. The security court was a special body that prosecuted people regarded as challenging the government.
But protesters have said more needs to be done.
Quoted by SANA, Mahmoud confirmed that a comprehensive national dialogue will be held in various provinces, and that the government is considering the implementation of political, economic and social reforms.
Life has been slowly returning to normal, including the volatile cities of Banias and Daraa, Mahmoud said.
He said army units "began to gradually depart from Banias and surroundings while the army units deployed in Daraa and surroundings are completing the gradual depart to return to their main camps."
Mahmoud said the United Nations and other humanitarian groups want access in Syria to provide humanitarian aid to people in Daraa, but he argued there was no shortage of food and medicine.
"We have informed the U.N. that there was no need for any assistance to Daraa," the minister said.
The Syrian crackdown has drawn condemnation across the world. A demonstration in support of the protesters is planned on Saturday near the United Nations in New York. | Armed Conflict | May 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(Al Jazeera)', '(CNN)'] |
At least 36 people die after an overloaded boat capsizes on the Ganges River in the Buxar district of India's Bihar state. | Rescuers have retrieved 36 bodies from the Ganges river after an overloaded boat capsized in India's Bihar state.
The country boat, carrying about 70 passengers, got caught in a whirlpool and sank in Buxar district late on Sunday, reports say.
Rescuers are looking for the bodies of two more persons who are feared drowned. The rest of the passengers swam ashore, the police said.
Boats in India are often overloaded, which leads to frequent accidents.
The boat on the Ganges was carrying passengers from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state when Sunday's incident happened.
| Shipwreck | October 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
Cloning scientist Hwang WooSuk is indicted for fraud, embezzlement and violation of bioethics law in a scandal in South Korea over his faked stem cell research. | Hwang Woo-suk was also charged with using millions of dollars in grants for private purposes, as well as violating laws on bio-ethics.
Earlier this year Dr Hwang's apparently ground-breaking work, such as producing stem cell lines from cloned human embryos, was found to be fake. Prosecutors said that he would not be taken into custody at present.
Friday's announcement marks a new low in the career of the once-famed South Korean scientific superstar, who was feted by the nation for his claimed breakthroughs in a promising new medical field.
Prosecution official Lee In-kyu announced the indictment against Dr Hwang, as well as charges against five members of his research team, during a nationally televised news conference. Of the other scientists accused, one was indicted for obstruction of duty, three for fraud and one for violation of bio-ethics laws.
Personalised cures
Dr Hwang made news around the world, and became a national hero, when he claimed in the journal Science to have created a stem cell line from a cloned human embryo.
He then published another paper, saying his team had extracted material from cloned human embryos that identically matched the DNA of 11 patients. SCANDAL TIMELINE
Feb 2004 Hwang Woo-suk's team declare they have created 30 cloned human embryos and extracted stem cells
May 2005 Team says it has made stem cell lines from skin cells of 11 people
Nov 2005 Hwang apologises for using eggs from his own researchers
15 Dec 2005 A colleague claims stem cell research was faked
23 Dec 2005 Academic panel finds results of May 2005 research were fabricated
10 Jan 2006 Panel finds 2004 work was also faked
20 March 2006 Hwang sacked from SNU
12 May 2006 Charged with fraud and embezzlement
Fall of scientific 'rock star'
Importance of peer review
Profile: Hwang Woo-suk
This research appeared to bring researchers closer to the point where they could offer personalised cures, using tissue grown from embryonic stem cells to repair damaged organs or treat diseases like Alzheimer's.
But Dr Hwang suffered a spectacular fall from grace when he was found to have faked key points in both research papers.
A Seoul National University panel found in December that the research was "intentionally fabricated", and Dr Hwang stepped down from his post as professor at the university shortly afterwards.
Prosecutors have been investigating Dr Hwang's team ever since. In their statement on Friday, they said their probe confirmed that the scientists' claims regarding stem cells were fraudulent.
They said Dr Hwang had himself been cheated by one of his assistants who claimed to have cloned embryonic cells, but that he then compounded the fraud by fabricating further research. He is also accused of embezzling research money. At the end of last year, he had received 41.7bn won ($42.2m) in government funds for his research, as well as 4.3bn won ($4.35m) from private foundations, state auditors said. But the Board of Audit and Inspection has been unable to account for 2.5 billion won ($2.6m) of that money.
Prosecutors claim he bought a car and paid contributions to politicians and company officials who helped to arrange his grants.
He is also accused of using part of the money to purchase human eggs from donors, which is against South Korean law on bio-ethics.
The misuse of state funds carries a jail term of up to 10 years, while a violation of bio-ethics laws can mean up to three years in prison. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | May 2006 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters)', '(CNN)'] |
2013 Brisbane train crash: A train overshoots the end of the tracks and crashes into a railway station's ladies bathroom in Brisbane, Australia, leaving 14 people injured. | Queensland Rail still has no answers to why a six car commuter train crashed into the Cleveland Station just after 9.40am on Thursday.
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Acting QR CEO Jim Benstead said it was still too early to speculate about why the train failed to stop.
But he said the investigation would be wide reaching and would include reports about other trains were rumoured to have braking issues on Thursday morning and the stricken train failed to stop at some stations earlier on its route.
Emergency services have been called to Cleveland Train Station, where a Queensland Rail train has derailed.Credit:Bayside Bulletin
The investigation will also look at reports of a bomb hoax at the station on Wednesday, the afternoon before the derailment and will take into consideration the placement of the station, directly at the end of the track.
"It's an investigation which will take everything into consideration, so it will be looking at the black box which is on board all of our trains, which will include information which is contained in the data logger
"It will take into consideration the communications between the train driver and our train control centre, it will take into consideration witness statements, it will take into consideration everything (of importance) to this comprehensive investigation."
But Mr Benstead said he would not offer any theories or explanations on what happened until the final report, expected to take three months, was complete.
Aerial shot of the train crash in Cleveland.
Instead he said he was confident Queensland Rail's commuter trains and rolling stock were safe.
"I want to assure everybody that we have a regular maintenance of our rolling stock, regular maintenance of our trains...and that every morning we do a pre inspection check before our trains leave the depot," he said.
"There were no red flags, in particular, this train behind us, was last maintained about three weeks ago and that's in line with how regular our maintenance is."
Later, after repeated questioning on the safety of the organisation's trains, Mr Benstead reiterated his stance.
"If I had any concern on the safety of our rolling stock, naturally they would not be in service," he said.
"I have full confidence that we have a regular maintenance inspection, regular maintenance service that takes place on all our stock...if I had any concern there was a systemic problem with our rolling stock I would remove them from service."
Mr Benstead said he was unable to say how fast the train was travelling when it crashed through a concrete bollard, travelling 10 metres into the station, demolishing the men's toilets and badly damaging the women's.
The Cleveland service only resumed this morning after the weekend's storms caused it to close.
Services had only been running for a few hours when the incident happened and Mr Benstead said it was unlikely they would resume before mid next week.
Thirteen passengers were on board the train when it derailed, as well as the driver and a guard.
Earlier Thursday, emergency services said in addition to the people on the train, two people were standing on the platform, two Queensland Rail staff were inside the station working in an office and another young woman was inside the ladies bathroom when the incident occurred.
Some passengers were taken to Redlands Hospital, but all are believed to have been released.
Mr Benstead said while he had not spoken to the driver himself, his staff had been in touch with him and he had ensured he was receiving support.
"Naturally he is very shaken up and he has some minor injuries and we are giving all the support and care that we possibly can," he said.
"And I believe one of our customers on board has some very minor injuries as well.
"So we are very lucky in this particular case that there are no major injuries and very thankful that is the case.
Redlands Hospital director of medical services Doctor Rosalind Crawford said nurses and doctors were put on stand-by and patients were moved as the hospital heard news of the Cleveland line crash.
The hospital treated 10 people for minor injuries such as cuts, bruises, back and shoulder pain and all of them had been discharged by 12.30pm.
“It is our standard practice to prepare for a worst case scenario,” Dr Crawford said.
“In the initial stages of the emergency, we did not know how many people were involved, and what their injuries would be.
“Staff from across the hospital worked together smoothly and swiftly to prepare for a serious event involving multiple casualties and I’d like to acknowledge their professionalism."
There were 13 passengers in the train's six carriages and five people on the platform at the time of the crash.
Police Superintendent Jim Keogh said the male bathrooms bore the brunt of the damage if a person had been in the male toilets "he certainly would have died".
Queensland Rail issued a statement reporting all customers and staff had safely left the train and station building by 11.30am.
But the crash has sent shock waves through the local community.
Brian Scott, from Redlands Realty, ran to the station after he heard a “really loud noise” and saw a “huge cloud of smoke and dust”.
“It was like a big roar, and then a thud - it was pretty frightening,” Mr Scott said.
“We saw the train in the air and inside the platform it was unbelievable. Not much exciting happens this end of the world. I think we’ll be talking about this for a while.”
Another local man, who did not wish to be named, said he and his friend helped pull the young woman found in the bathroom to safety.
"The force had pushed her up against the other wall - she was inside the cubicle," he said. "My mate pulled of the door he grabbed her - she said nothing, she was clearly in shock.
"She had her earphones in she hadn’t heard anything."
He said there was an elderly woman at the station "just screaming" in the wake of the incident.
"I've never seen anything like it," he said.
Meanwhile Acting Station Officer for Cleveland Station Rob Hawxwell said he arrived on scene to discover that his 16- year-old-son was but seconds away from entering the men's bathroom when the train crashed through.
"He was just feet away," Mr Hawxkwell said. "He’s gone home very shaken."
Mr Hawxwell said it took emergency crews between five to 10 minutes to remove people from the back end of the first carriage.
He said they appeared to have suffered only scrapes and bumps.
Queensland Rail cut power to the station after the crash caused damage to overhead powerlines.
Passengers should check the TransLink website before traveling or phone 13 12 30 to get the latest update. | Train collisions | January 2013 | ['(ABC News Australia)', '(Brisbane Times)', '(The Australian)'] |
Two men are arrested in Paris for stealing Pablo Picasso paintings from the apartment of his granddaughter. | Two men arrested for stealing Picasso masterpieces from the Paris flat of the artist's granddaughter were planning to sell the works for a fraction of their value, police say.
Police surveillance teams arrested the suspected thieves on Tuesday morning as they prepared to strike a deal with a would-be buyer - himself a convicted burglar - in the upmarket 16th arrondissement of Paris.
The trio, aged 45 to 60, are expected to be brought before a judge later on Wednesday (local time) to face possible charges.
Two paintings and a drawing by the Spanish master Pablo Picasso, together worth more than 50 million euros ($80 million), were taken from the Left Bank apartment of Diana Widmaier-Picasso as she lay sleeping on February 26.
The thieves made off with the 1961 Portrait of Jacqueline, depicting Picasso's second wife and Maya with Doll, a painting of the artist's daughter from 1938. The stolen drawing was called Marie-Therese at age 21.
The suspects, described by police as "professional dealers in stolen goods," are thought to have been planning to sell the Picassos along with other stolen works on the European art market.
"They hoped to sell the works at a price well below their true value," said Loic Garnier of the BRB, an elite police unit that deals with serious crime.
"Two of the three stolen pieces are major Picasso works, and very easily recognisable. They would be extremely difficult to sell through official channels.
"This wasn't an amateurs' job, but I can tell these people were not art lovers."
Officers recovered the paintings - apparently in good condition - after a contact in the art world tipped off the OCBC, the French police unit dealing in stolen art.
The dealer said a Frenchman had offered to sell him a well-known bronze sculpture, stolen in Paris last month, according to the OCBC.
Together with the BRB, they mounted the surveillance operation that led to the arrests in western Paris.
The suspects were carrying the Picassos rolled up inside cardboard tubes at the time.
"We didn't want to turn the risk of seeing the works vanish. So as soon as we were sure they had them, we carried out the arrests," said Mr Garnier.
"The works are in good overall condition," he said, although they suffered slight damage from being rolled up the wrong way, with the paint on the inside, and too tightly.
The Portrait of Jacqueline has been slightly marked, but should be easy to restore.
Maya with Doll, however, suffered some cracks and shows signs of being roughly removed from its frame.
Maya with Doll is one of Picasso's classic oil paintings in bright shades of green, blue and red and depicting young Maya in pigtails holding a doll and a small wooden horse.
Maya was Widmaier-Picasso's mother, who was the daughter of Picasso and Marie-Therese Walter, one of Picasso's many female companions.
"It is a sign of ignorance and stupidity to do such damage to works of art - these are unique pieces," said the OCBC's deputy head Bernard Darties.
Widmaier-Picasso's lawyer Olivier Baraterie said the Picasso family were grateful for the police's work, and expected to recover the works within a fortnight.
According to one source close to the investigation, the paintings were not insured because of the prohibitive sums demanded to cover them.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | August 2007 | ['(AFP via ABC News Australia)'] |
Eight people aged 19 die from carbon monoxide poisoning in a cottage in Tribistovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, during a New Year's celebration, after carbon monoxide leaks from a generator used to power the heater. | SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Eight young men and women have died in a cottage in southwest Bosnia, apparently from carbon monoxide poisoning during a New Year’s Eve celebration, police said Friday. Local police spokeswoman Martina Medic told The Associated Press that police responded to a call around 10 a.m. and went to a house in Tribistovo where several people were found dead. The village is 150 kilometers (90) southwest of Sarajevo, the capital.
Regional police Commissioner Milan Galic later told N1 broadcaster that the victims were local residents, four men and four women, aged 18-20.
“They most probably suffocated but more information will be available after the investigation,” said Galic. The Posusje municipality, where the village is located, in a Facebook post mourned “eight young lives lost,” and urged local cafes and restaurants to close down to honor the victims. Top officials from Bosnia and Croatia offered condolences to their families. Bosnian and Croatian media said the eight were high school and university students who died from carbon monoxide leaking from a generator they used for heating as they celebrated New Year’s Eve in a holiday cottage. Carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless and tasteless gas that can cause sudden illness and death. | Mass Poisoning | January 2021 | ['(AP)'] |
Former Republic of the Congo rebel leader Pastor Ntumi returns to Brazzaville to take up a post as a junior minister. | The ex-fighters, who call themselves the Ninjas, are a semi-religious group led by the guitar-playing Pastor Ntumi, whose real name is Frederick Bintsamou.
He is expected to return to Brazzaville for the first time since he left 10 years ago to launch a guerrilla war.
He signed a peace agreement in April which gives him a government position.
He will serve as junior minister responsible for peace and reparations in return for disbanding his militia.
Pastor Ntumi signed a peace deal in April
The arrival of the Ninjas in Brazzaville was a surprise for the government which quickly sought to prevent more coming in from the forested Pool region to the west of the capital. The Ninjas have left their guns behind but have still caused concern in Brazzaville because of their reputation for banditry and rape. Pastor Ntumi transformed his rebel movement into a political party at the beginning of the year. The party contested parliamentary elections in June and August, but without success. If as expected Pastor Ntumi takes up his position as a junior minister on Monday, it could start of the final stage in ending Congo's most recent civil war. He'll be responsible for the World Bank-funded programme to disarm and reintegrate his 5,000 fighters. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | September 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
A 5.8 magnitude earthquake strikes Puerto Rico, causing small landslides, power outages, and severely cracking some homes. | GUÁNICA, Puerto Rico (AP) — A 5.8-magnitude quake hit Puerto Rico before dawn Monday, unleashing small landslides, causing power outages and severely cracking some homes. It was one of the strongest quakes yet to hit the U.S. territory that has been shaking for the past week.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.<iframe src="http://sinclairstoryline.com/resources/embeds/jw8-embed.html?client=googima&file=https://content.uplynk.com/735c4b36597540f2b1b4c9193ab50f21.m3u8&autostart=false" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" loading="lazy"></iframe>CopiedLive00:0000:0000:00 5.7-magnitude quake strikes Puerto Rico, damage reported (CJ Viruet via Storyful)
The quake was followed by a string of smaller temblors, including another quake measured at magnitude 5 that struck later Monday, at 10:51 a.m. (1451 GMT), shaking power lines and frightening residents of southern Puerto Rico who had been waiting outside their homes due to fears the buildings were damaged and unstable.
The first quake struck at 6:32 a.m. (1032 GMT) just south of the island at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles), according to the U.S. Geological Service. There was no tsunami threat, officials said.
In the southern town of Guánica, Mayor Santos Seda told the AP that five homes collapsed, but only one of them was inhabited. No injuries had been reported.
Another 29 homes were heavily damaged, he said.
A girl cycles past a home that partially collapsed after an earthquake hit Guanica, Puerto Rico, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)
Helicopters buzzed overhead and terrified residents jumped up from their folding chairs every time the earth shook, yelling at others to stay away from power lines.
Few people dared go back inside their homes, but José Quiñones, 54, had no choice. His 80-year-old mother had heart problems and was lying in bed.
Dozens of people in a neighborhood called Hope in Guánica walked around with their phones and yelled out the magnitude of the latest earthquakes as they tried to calm children who were forced to open their presents on Three Kings Day, a religious holiday, on streets and sidewalks.
"This is hell," said Alberto Rodríguez, 43, whose home collapsed on its side as the smell of gas filled the air. "We haven't slept... you can't remain calm here. Guánica is no longer a safe place."
Less than a block away, Silvestre Alicea surveyed his home whose foundation collapsed on his bright blue 1977 Toyota Corolla, a prized possession.
He jumped from his balcony as the home collapsed.
Alicea had lived in New York for years until he retired to Guánica two years ago to live in the home he spent 15 years building. He doesn't have insurance.
5.8-magnitude quake strikes Puerto Rico, damage reported (United States Geological Survey)
In this working class neighborhood, people shared soda and snacks as they sought shelter from a harsh sun, careful to stay away from homes whose columns and foundations were heavily cracked.
Many already had bags packed in their cars with a change of clothes, food, water and medicine.
Some like Noelia De Jesús, 69, and her husband, who uses a wheelchair, didn't know where they would spend the night. Government officials who inspected their home earlier in the morning said it was unsafe to live in and advised them to stay elsewhere.
"Everything broke, including the TV," she said. "This is horrible."
Puerto Rico doesn't have a public earthquake warning system, except for sirens that are supposed to ring in case of a tsunami. Residents in this neighborhood criticized the government for what they believe is a lack of action.
Dr. Sindia Alvarado, who lives in the southern coastal town of Penuelas, said she was petrified.
"My entire family woke up screaming," she said. "I though the house was going to crack in half."
The flurry of quakes in Puerto Rico's southern region began the night of Dec. 28, with quakes ranging in magnitude from 4.7 to 5.1. Previous quakes of lesser magnitudes in recent days have cracked homes and led to goods falling off supermarket shelves.
Victor Huerfano, director of Puerto Rico's Seismic Network, told the AP that shallow quakes were occurring along three faults in Puerto Rico's southwest region: Lajas Valley, Montalva Point and the Guayanilla Canyon. He said the quakes overall come as the North American plate and the Caribbean plate squeezes Puerto Rico, and that it was unclear when they would stop or if bigger quakes would occur.
One of the largest and most damaging earthquakes to hit Puerto Rico occurred in October 1918, when a 7.3-magnitude quake struck near the island's northwest coast, unleashing a tsunami and killing 116 people. | Earthquakes | January 2020 | ['(Associated Press)'] |
At least 38 people are killed and 6 injured in a nursing home fire in Lushan County of China's Henan Province. | A fire at a care home for elderly people in China's Henan province has killed 38 people, state media report. Another six people were injured in the fire, which broke out at the privately run Kangleyuan home in Pingdingshan city on Monday night.
Two of the injured were in a serious condition, said the Xinhua news agency.
President Xi Jinping ordered "all-out efforts" to care for the injured and bereaved relatives and to find out what had gone wrong, Xinhua reported.
Fifty-one people were reported to be living at the home. One survivor, 82-year-old Zhao Yulan, said only two of the 11 people she shared a room with had escaped.
A search and rescue operation was still under way on Tuesday morning at the apartment building which housed the rest home. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
In 2013, a fire at a home for the elderly in Heilongjiang province left 11 people dead. It was determined to have been started by one of the residents, who was among the dead.
| Fire | May 2015 | ['(BBC)'] |
An Indian Air Force AN32 carrying 29 people on board has gone missing over the Bay of Bengal while en route to Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Indian Navy has launched a search and rescue operation. | An Indian military plane with more than 20 people on board has gone missing over the Bay of Bengal, the Indian air force (IAF) has confirmed to the BBC.
The Antonov-32 transporter aircraft took off from Chennai (Madras) at 08:30 local time (03:00 GMT), bound for Port Blair in the eastern archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar.
It was scheduled to land at 11:30.
Four aircraft, 12 ships and a submarine have been deployed to search for the plane, the ministry of defence said.
The IAF operates more than 100 Antonov-32 aircraft.
Are India's aging air force planes falling out of the sky?
The Indian Air Force has a relatively poor safety record and the Russian-made aircraft which form the backbone of the Indian fleet have been the most accident-prone. A navy spokesman told the Reuters news agency that surveillance planes and ships were looking for the missing aircraft, which was carrying service personnel to strategic islands near the Malacca Straits, where India has a military base. India's ministry of defence initially deployed two aeroplanes and four ships to look for the missing aircraft. Eight more warships and a submarine have now joined the search.
| Air crash | July 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
Manuel Baldizon drops out of the presidential race leaving Jimmy Morales and Sandra Torres in the runoff. | Guatemalan presidential candidate Manuel Baldizon quit his political party and dropped out of the race on Monday, leaving a television comedian and former first lady to vie in the runoff to be the country's next president.
Baldizon, of the Renewed Democratic Liberty party, told a local radio station that he couldn't endorse the results of the Sept. 6 vote that put him in third place, but also in a statistical tie with former first lady Sandra Torres, though she garnered about 6,000 votes more than he did. Election authorities hadn't officially announced who had placed second and Baldizon never asked for a recount before quitting.
That leaves Torres to face political neophyte Jimmy Morales in the Oct. 25 runoff. Morales placed first in the vote but only with 24 percent, and the winner needs 50 percent plus 1 to win. A former television comedian, he has never held office.
Baldizon told Radio Sonora that he could not endorse the electoral process and said the results "lacked legitimacy." He said he wouldn't throw his support behind either of the other two.
"I can't endorse anyone who would participate in a process marred by irregularities and corruption," he said, but without giving specifics.
Baldizon, who lost to former President Otto Perez Molina in 2011, was considered the front-runner and likely next president until a customs fraud scandal brought down the government of Perez Molina, who resigned and is now in jail facing graft charges.
Balidizon was considered the establishment candidate, and his dramatic loss was attributed to voter anger with the status quo. | Government Job change - Election | September 2015 | ['(ABC Go)'] |
The Chicago Cubs defeat the Los Angeles Dodgers and win the National League Championship Series 4–2, advancing to the World Series for the first time since 1945. , | "I'm sleeping with this thing tonight," the Chicago Cubs first baseman told the pulsating crowd moments later, kissing the prized souvenir. "Are you kidding me? We're going to the World Series."
Cubs ... World Series? Yes, the Cubbies!
Next up, Game 1 in Cleveland.
With fans chanting, singing and waving those Ws, shaking the century-old ballpark and jamming the streets of Wrigleyville, the Cubs celebrated a moment many of their faithful wondered whether they would ever see.
Kyle Hendricks outpitched Clayton Kershaw, Rizzo and Willson Contreras homered early and the Cubs took their first pennant since 1945, beating the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-0 Saturday night to win the NL Championship Series in six games.
"Listen to them. Outside before the game was crazy. Inside the game was crazy," Cubs pitcher Jon Lester said.
"These guys have done nothing but support us from Day One. It's been unbelievable to be here and be part of this. Words can't really describe where I'm at right now," he said.
Cursed by a Billy Goat, bedeviled by Bartman and crushed by decades of disappointment, those "Lovable Losers" now have a chance to win it all.
Trying to win their first crown since 1908, manager Joe Maddon's team opens the World Series against Cleveland on Tuesday night.
The Indians haven't won it all since 1948 -- Cleveland and Cubs have the two longest title waits in the majors.
"This city deserves it so much," Rizzo said. "We got four more big ones to go, but we're going to enjoy this. We're going to the World Series. I can't even believe that."
All-everything Javier Baez and Lester shared the NLCS MVP. Baez hit .318, drove in five runs and made several sharp plays at second base. Lester, a former World Series champion in Boston, was 1-0 with a 1.38 ERA in two starts against the Dodgers.
The drought ended when Aroldis Chapman got Yasiel Puig to ground into a double play , setting off a wild celebration. And if they bring home the elusive championship?
"I may make the `W' a tattoo," said chairman Tom Ricketts , who once lived across the street and met his wife in the bleachers.
Deemed World Series favorites since opening day, the Cubs topped the majors with 103 wins to win the NL Central, then beat the Giants and Dodgers in the playoffs.
The Cubs overcame a 2-1 deficit against the Dodgers and won their 17th pennant. They had not earned a World Series trip since winning a doubleheader opener 4-3 at Pittsburgh on Sept. 29, 1945, to clinch the pennant on the next-to-last day of the season.
The eternal "wait till next year" is over. No more dwelling on a history of failure -- the future is now.
"We're too young. We don't care about it," star slugger Kris Bryant said. "We don't look into it. This is a new team, this is a completely different time of our lives. We're enjoying it and our work's just getting started."
Hendricks pitched two-hit ball for 7 1/3 innings . Chapman took over and closed with hitless relief, then threw both arms in the air as he was mobbed by teammates and coaches.
The Dodgers sent the minimum 27 batters to the plate and no one got past first base.
The Cubs shook off back-to-back shutout losses earlier in this series by pounding the Dodgers for 23 runs to win the final three games.
And they were in no way overwhelmed by the moment on Saturday, putting aside previous frustration.
In the 1945 Series, the Billy Goat Curse supposedly began when a tavern owner wasn't allowed to bring his goat to Wrigley. In 2003, the Cubs lost the final three games of the NLCS to Florida, punctuated with a Game 6 defeat when fan Steve Bartman deflected a foul ball.
Even as recently as 2012, the Cubs lost 101 times.
This time, no such ill luck.
Bryant had an RBI single and scored in a two-run first . Dexter Fowler added two hits, drove in a run and scored one.
Contreras led off the fourth with a homer.Rizzo continued his resurgence with a solo drive in the fifth.
That was plenty for Hendricks, the major league ERA leader.
Hendricks left to a standing ovation after Josh Reddick singled with one out in the eighth. The only other hit Hendricks allowed was a single by Andrew Toles on the game's first pitch.
Kershaw, dominant in Game 2, gave up five runs and seven hits before being lifted for a pinch hitter in the sixth. He fell to 4-7 in the postseason.
"This day is never fun, the ending of a season," Kershaw said.
The Dodgers haven't been to the World Series since winning in 1988.
Pitching on five days' rest, Kershaw needed 30 pitches to get through the first. Fowler led off with a double against the three-time NL Cy Young Award winner, and Bryant's single had the crowd shaking the 102-year-old ballpark.
Fans had more to cheer when left fielder Andrew Toles dropped Rizzo's fly, putting runners on second and third, and Ben Zobrist made it 2-0 a sacrifice fly.
The Cubs added a run in the second when Addison Russell doubled to deep left and scored on a two-out single by Fowler.
LINEUP SHUFFLE
Maddon benched slumping right fielder Jason Heyward in favor of Albert Almora Jr.
"Kershaw's pitching, so I wanted to get one more right-handed bat in the lineup, and also with Albert I don't feel like we're losing anything on defense," Maddon said. "I know Jason's a Gold Glover, but I think Albert, given an opportunity to play often enough would be considered a Gold Glove-caliber outfielder, too."
Heyward was 2 for 28 in the playoffs -- 1 for 16 in the NLCS.
SEEN
Kerry Wood, wearing a Ron Santo jersey, threw out the first pitch and actor Jim Belushi delivered the "Play Ball!" call before the game. Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder and actor John Cusack were also in attendance. And Bulls great Scottie Pippen led the seventh-inning stretch.
Stay ahead of the game and optimize your fantasy baseball hitters with our forecaster, which provides a rolling 10-day outlook of every team's hitting matchups as well as the potential for stolen bases.
Keep up to date on who is pitching -- and how well they're expected to do -- with our forecaster, which provides a rolling 10-day outlook of every team's probable starting pitchers with game score projections.
Stephen A. Smith gives a message to all the dads out there about the importance of being a father.
The pace of coronavirus vaccinations in Major League Baseball has slowed.
The Orioles went with righty Thomas Eshelman for Friday night's game against Toronto after placing Bruce Zimmermann on the 10-day IL with left biceps tendinitis.
The Angels' two-way star is headed to the Home Run Derby. Here's our running list of his five best moments, both at the plate and on the mound. | Sports Competition | October 2016 | ['(AP via ESPN)', '(CNN)'] |
Three children and two staff members are killed during a mass stabbing at a nursery school in Saudades, Brazil. Another child is wounded. The attacker then stabs himself and is currently in critical condition. | Five people have died after an 18-year-old man launched a machete attack at a nursery school in southern Brazil, police say.
The victims include three children all reported to be under two years old and two staff members.
The attacker then turned the weapon on himself and is in critical condition in hospital, a police statement said.
It is not clear what was behind the attack in the small town of Saudades, in Santa Catarina state.
Several dozen children were in the building at the time of the incident and staff tried to hide them, officials said. A fourth child is said to have suffered minor injuries.
Military police say they received several calls at 10:35 local time (13:35 GMT) from neighbours who reported that a man armed with a machete had entered the nursery and was attacking staff and children. Police say the man - who has not been named - first attacked a teacher who was at the entrance to the nursery. He reportedly followed her into one of the rooms, where he also turned on the children. The nursery is located in the centre of Saudades, a town of about 9,000 people, and according to Globo news it cares for children under the age of 3.
"I heard screams [and] cries for help," one employee who was near the nursery at the time of the attack, Aline Biazebetti, told AFP news agency.
"I went outside and saw my colleagues calling for help: 'Please, call the police, an armed guy came in and is killing the children.'"
At a news conference later on Tuesday, one police officer described the attackers weapon as "samurai-style" and displayed it to reporters.
Three days of mourning have been declared in Santa Catarina state.
While there have been deadly attacks in schools before in Brazil, they have mainly targeted older pupils: Thousands attend Brazil school shooting wake
| Armed Conflict | May 2021 | ['(BBC)'] |
Israeli Minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky resigned from the government as a protest against Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan. , | Minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky announced his resignation from the government Monday to protest Israel's failure to condition the disengagement plan on democratic reforms in the Palestinian Authority."Waiving this condition will weaken the chances of building a free Palestinian society and support terror," Sharansky wrote his letter of resignation, which he submitted to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Monday morning.Sharansky warned that the plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and part of the northern West Bank was a mistake that would make it more difficult to achieve a genuine peace.
"I always saw the disengagement plan as a tragic error, which demands a heavy price from us and also encourages terror," said Sharansky in remarks broadcast on Army Radio."The only justification for the existence of the government in its current composition is the implementation of the disengagement plan," said Sharansky. "I don't think I can be a part of the government."Sharansky will remain a Knesset member from the Likud, Army Radio reported.He said he waited until now before resigning because there had been other possible obstacles to the pullout plan, including government votes and a proposed national referendum on the plan.Sharansky also addressed what he views as the failure of the government to take the necessary steps to prevent internal strife that may result from the pullout."We are standing before a terrible rift in the nation and to my regret I sense no effort by the government to prevent it," he wrote.Sharon opened the weekly cabinet meeting by praising Sharansky, who was not in attendance. Sharansky did "outstanding work in advancing the issue of dealing with anti-Semitism throughout the world," Sharon said, adding that he would have been happy to have Sharansky stay in the government. Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that while he doesn't agree with the reasons Sharansky quit, the resignation displays his commitment to his principles."It's characteristic of the integrity that has typified Natan Sharansky for his entire public life and his courage in following through all the way on his beliefs," Olmert said.Sharansky, whose Yisrael B'aliyah immigrants party merged with Likud when Sharon formed the government upon his election, has consistently expressed opposition to the prime minister's disengagement plan. He had hinted in the past he would not remain in a government responsible for evacuating Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and said in an interview Monday that he had told Sharon he planned to resign after Passover, which ended in Israel on Saturday night. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | May 2005 | ['(Haaretz)', '(BBC)'] |
Luxembourg's foreign minister Jean Asselborn calls for Hungary to be expelled from the European Union for its treatment of migrants. | Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn has called for Hungary to be suspended or even expelled from the European Union because of its "massive violation" of EU fundamental values.
He cited the Budapest government's treatment of refugees, independence of the judiciary and freedom of the press.
"Hungary is not far away from issuing orders to open fire on refugees," he suggested.
Hungary said Mr Asselborn "could not be taken seriously".
EU leaders meet in Slovakia on Friday to discuss the union's future.
Mr Asselborn's interview with German daily Die Welt is likely to inflame passions ahead of the summit.
The EU could not tolerate "such inappropriate behaviour", he said, and any state that violated such basic values "should be excluded temporarily, or if necessary for ever, from the EU''. It was "the only possibility to protect the cohesion and values of the European Union,'' he said.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto hit back, saying that his Luxembourg counterpart had "long left the ranks of politicians who could be taken seriously". Mr Asselborn was a "frivolous character", he said, adding that he was "patronising, arrogant and frustrated".
Mr Asselborn's remarks also drew condemnation from Latvia's foreign minister, who spoke of "megaphone diplomacy".
And German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a personal friend of the Luxembourg minister, said while he could understand some in Europe were "becoming impatient, it is not my personal approach to show a member state the door".
Hungary joined the EU in 2004 and while the European Union can reject or delay a candidate from joining, it is not thought to have the power to expel an existing member state.
When the far-right Freedom Party joined Austria's government in 2000, EU member states responded by freezing bilateral diplomatic relations with Austria. Later that year the EU ended Austria's diplomatic isolation.
Hungary was caught up in an enormous influx of migrants and refugees a year ago as more than a million people headed through central Europe from the shores of Greece towards Germany and other Western European countries.
Eventually, it sealed its borders with Serbia and Croatia and built a 175km (110-mile) razor-wire fence to stop people crossing on their way to Austria. Some 10,000 police and soldiers have been deployed to guard the frontier.
Hungary's Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has reacted with fury.
The head of Hungarian diplomacy described his Luxembourg counterpart as a "classic nihilist" who worked tirelessly to destroy Europe's security and culture. By way of contrast, Hungary was defending not only its own territory, but that of the EU as well, the foreign minister insisted. "Only Hungarians have the right to decide who they wish to live with."
The number of migrants trying to enter Hungary has fallen dramatically in recent weeks. At the Horgos Transit Zone on the Hungary-Serbian border, only 80 were waiting on Monday, down from 800 on some days in July.
Beside the Kelebia Transit Zone there were about 60, mostly from Syria and Iraq. Some had been living in atrocious conditions next to the razor wire fence for more than 10 weeks.
Approximately 4,500 migrants are currently in camps in Serbia. Most are now trying alternative routes to Europe through Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia. A referendum takes place on 2 October when Hungarians will be asked to decide on an EU quota to take in refugees. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has strongly criticised the EU's plans to relocate 160,000 refugees across the bloc and his government has campaigned vigorously for a No vote.
Mr Asselborn, whose country is a founder member of the EU, complained that Hungary's border fence was getting higher, longer and more dangerous. His remark that Hungary was not far from ordering live fire is likely to refer to a decision by police earlier this month to recruit 3,000 "border-hunters". The new force will carry pepper spray and pistols with live ammunition as part of their task to keep migrants out. In the Treaty on European Union (Article 2) EU values are spelt out as "human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities".
The EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights became legally binding on national governments as well as the EU's institutions, as part of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty.
Those rights and freedoms range from freedom of thought and expression to the right to asylum, a fair trial and fair working conditions.
As a condition of membership of the EU, a candidate country has to fulfil 35 separate chapters of requirements including an independent judiciary. Migrant vote sparks Hungarian poster war
Eastern leaders offer new menu at EU crisis talks
Hungary country profile
| Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | September 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
Boko Haram militants kidnap 80 people and kill three others from villages in north Cameroon. | It is thought around 30 adults and 50 children have been taken by the extremist Islamist group in north Cameroon
Suspected Boko Haram Islamist fighters from Nigeria kidnapped about 80 people and killed three others in north Cameroon.
A senior army officer said: “Around 30 adults and 50 girls and boys aged between 10 and 15 were abducted.”
Chad has deployed troops to support forces in Mabass, where soldiers exchanged fire with the raiders for about two hours.
The scale of the abduction is among the largest in Cameroon since the militants began cross-border attacks last year.
A senior army officer said: "According to our initial information, around 30 adults, most of them herders, and 50 young girls and boys aged between 10 and 15 years were abducted."
He said the early-morning attack had targeted the village of Mabass and several other villages along the porous border with Nigeria.
Soldiers intervened and exchanged fire with the raiders for around two hours, he added.
Government spokesman Issa Tchiroma confirmed the attack, in which he said three people had been killed, as well as the kidnappings, but was not able to say with certainty how many people had been taken in the raid.
Around 80 homes were destroyed, he said.
In April last year more than 270 schoolgirls were abducted from their school in Chibok.
While 53 escaped shortly after, and another four managed to break free in May, the fate of the other 219 remains unknown.
| Armed Conflict | January 2015 | ['(Daily Mirror)'] |
Tesla motors opens a 'Gigafactory' near Reno in the middle of the Nevada desert. | Does Elon Musk have more money than sense? Or could it actually be more sense than money?
The chief executive of Tesla is, in a post-Steve-Jobs world, the stand-out visionary voice in Silicon Valley. There's no question about that.
But with each product launch - or, in this case, a building launch - it seems he needs both more time and more money to realise his own ambitions. The more he achieves, the bigger the task, and budget, seems to get.
During a typically scorching Tuesday afternoon in the Nevada desert, near Reno, Mr Musk told a group of journalists about his global manufacturing ambitions.
We had just had a tour of the new Gigafactory, Tesla's $5bn (£3.8bn) 3,200-acre battery-manufacturing plant that has already begun production but will not be in full swing until about 2020. At that point, it will have the largest physical footprint of any building in the world.
By making battery cells here, Mr Musk hopes he will be able to innovate faster and cut out about 30% of the cost.
The factory is a tie-up with the company that already makes Tesla's cells, Panasonic. The Japanese company has invested just under $2bn in the plant (not, apparently, enough to get the company's name above the door, I noted).
Panasonic's equipment, covered in tarpaulin - and not allowed to be photographed, like much of the building - would be raring to go in a matter of weeks, our guide said. Other machinery was being moved in block-by-block, though the company was not prepared to give up many secrets. On entering one room on the factory's second floor, our guide told us he was not allowed to tell us "what this is or what it does".
In one section of the factory, Panasonic will work on its cells. When ready, they will be handed over to Tesla to continue the process. This will happen though a hole in the floor, as opposed to over the Pacific Ocean as it does today.
But even as we were standing in the Gigafactory, marvelling at its scale, Mr Musk was telling us it was still not enough. He was not content with one Gigafactory. No. What he really needed was one "in Europe, in India, in China... ultimately, wherever there is a huge amount of demand for the end product".
"Where the shipping costs start to become significant, the obvious way to combat that is to at least put a Gigafactory on the same continent."
It is part of Mr Musk's nature to throw out lavish, expensive ideas in the same way people in the real world might discuss buying a new shirt or ordering a pay-per-view movie. Granted, Mr Musk has invested a lot of his own money into Tesla's endeavours. But it is investors who will bankroll his brainwaves - although Tesla has been helped, a little, by government subsidies around renewable energy. Next up for Tesla, according to Mr Musk's "masterplan", published last week, are electric buses and trucks. Oh, and easily installed solar-roofing, and energy storage for the public.
Ah, and a fleet of self-driving Teslas in every city and town to compete with Uber.
Asked on Tuesday how much his masterplan might cost to implement, Mr Musk replied: "Tens of billions," with a shrug.
More money than sense, then?
Maybe. But it is perhaps unfair to say that, when you realise that a lot of what Mr Musk says makes perfect sense - he just needs more (and more) money to get there.
The Gigafactory is not some lavish vanity project - it is a solid vision of the future of manufacturing, a way of making batteries quicker, without lugging materials across the Pacific Ocean. If all goes to plan, it will be 100% sustainable and able to contribute to making 500,000 electric cars a year, as well as other energy-storage technology that might actually end up being Tesla's real impact on the world.
And the Gigafactory could bring perhaps as many as 10,000 jobs to the surrounding area. There are not many Silicon Valley companies doing that.
It is Mr Musk's big thinking that lures in the cash he so desperately needs.
But the sums need to add up quickly or his charm will wear off. When asked by the BBC if the masterplan publication and Gigafactory opening event had been timed to counteract potentially bad news coming from Tesla's financial results due next week, Mr Musk was unequivocal.
"The first time I thought about the earnings call is when you mentioned it," he said.
But he will know that his promise that Tesla would become profitable this year looks off the mark - and that even if Mr Musk's loyal investors have backed him to this point, they may be questioning when, or perhaps if, the returns will start coming in. And yet investors believe in Mr Musk because of the aura he has created. Imagine backing out now if he does end up changing the world.
We have already seen Mr Musk diversify the way he raises money. In March, 325,000 people paid $1,000 each to pre-order the upcoming Model 3 car. The scheme was meant to raise money for production but to also prove interest. Though now the pressure is on to meet that demand. The refreshing Tesla approach is the opposite to that of the super-secretive Apple, but Mr Musk maintains he does not worry about other people stealing his ideas. Referencing the SR-71 Blackbird jet, "probably the greatest plane ever", Mr Musk said as long as you were the quickest, you would never lose a fight. And he is right - no Blackbird was ever lost to combat. But the thrilling, ground-breaking jet was retired by the US Air Force in 1998 - after it was decided the vast sums of money needed to keep it in service could be better spent elsewhere.
| Organization Established | July 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
Voters in the US states of Arkansas and Kentucky go to the polls, with Mitt Romney winning the Republican primaries, and President Barack Obama winning but performing relatively poorly against token opposition in the Democratic primaries. | Mitt Romney's victories tonight in Arkansas and Kentucky may have been foregone conclusions, but besides two more batches of delegates on his way to the 1,144 he needs to clinch the Republican presidential nomination, they also gave him something else - bragging rights over President Obama.
In Kentucky, Romney, who is expected to clinch the nomination after the Texas primary on May 29, received a higher percentage of the vote in the Republican presidential primary than Obama received in the Democratic presidential primary. With 99.9 percent of precincts reporting, Romney had 67 percent of the vote, while Obama had 58 percent - compared to "uncommitted," which received 42 percent, according to The Associated Press.
Obama did receive more votes than Romney in Kentucky - 119,284 to 117,599, according to the unofficial results from the state board of elections.
In Arkansas, Obama has 61 percent of the vote with roughly 96 percent of precincts reporting. His Democratic challenger, John Wolfe, a lawyer from Tennessee, has 39 percent. Romney, comparatively, has received 68 percent of the vote, the AP reported.
Arkansas and Kentucky are not considered competitive states in the general election; ABC News rates both states as solid Republican. Nevertheless, the strong showing by "uncommitted" and a relatively unknown candidate in his own party's primary could be viewed as an embarrassment for Obama, particularly coming on the heels of the strong performance of federal inmate Keith Judd in West Virginia's primary earlier this month. | Government Job change - Election | May 2012 | ['(ABC News)'] |
A bomb explodes in downtown Palu, Indonesia, killing at least eight people and wounding 45 people. | Witnesses in the town of Palu reported seeing bodies lying on the ground after hearing a deafening blast.
The bomb exploded in the busy morning hours at a stall selling pork in a largely Christian part of the town.
The province's Christians have been repeatedly targeted in recent attacks blamed on Muslim militants.
'Bodies on the ground'
Police officials said the bomb was packed with nails and ball bearings.
"Most of the victims suffered injuries to their legs because of the shrapnel from the bomb," a police spokesman told the AFP news agency.
Another explosive device was reportedly discovered and defused near the site of the explosion.
A witness quoted by the Associated Press news agency said: "The explosion was so loud, I couldn't hear for a couple of seconds."
"I ran out of my house and saw bodies lying around," the witness said.
Bystanders carried bloodied shoppers from the makeshift market to a road, putting them in passing cars to be taken to hospital. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has condemned the attack.
Twelve people were reported to have been arrested in connection with the bomb blast.
Recent attacks
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation but the population in many parts of Central Sulawesi province is split equally between Muslims and Christians.
Security was tightened in the province recently amid fears of fresh violence between the two communities.
Three Christian schoolgirls were beheaded by masked assailants in Poso district in October.
Twenty people were killed in May this year when two bombs exploded in the largely Christian town of Tentena.
Almost 1,000 people died when inter-religious clashes flared in Central Sulawesi province in 2000 and 2001. | Armed Conflict | December 2005 | ['(BBC)'] |
John Earnest, a 19-year-old student at California State University, San Marcos, is arrested after Poway synagogue shooting. | A 19-year-old college student has been arrested in the synagogue shooting in Poway, California, accused of killing one person and injuring three more.
Authorities said John Earnest, an honor roll student at California State University, San Marcos, fled the synagogue Saturday, the last day of Passover, after the shooting, but called the 911 emergency number to report the shooting and his whereabouts. He surrendered minutes later without incident.
A person identifying himself as John Earnest posted an anti-Jewish diatribe online about an hour before the shooting unfolded at the Chabad of Poway synagogue. The person described himself as a nursing student and praised the suspects accused of the deadly attacks on Muslims at mosques in New Zealand last month and Jews at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue last October.
San Diego County Sheriff William Gore said hate crime charges are being considered against Earnest.
"Any time somebody goes into a house of worship and shoots the congregants, in my book, that's a hate crime," Poway Mayor Steve Vaus said.
A 60-year-old woman, Lori Kayne, was killed in the attack, with Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, and two Israelis, an eight-year-old girl, Noya Dahan, and her uncle, Almog Peretz, 31, sustaining wounds.
"I was with my back to the shooter," Peretz told the Israeli YNet news site. "I heard a shot or two and then turned around to face him and that's when he fired at me. I ran quickly, picking up a small girl in my hands. He hit me once in the leg and I kept running. I didn't feel it much since there were so many bullets flying by. I heard them and I saw them right next to me."
Sheriff Gore said a white male entered the synagogue shortly before 11:30 a.m. PDT and opened fire with an AR-type assault weapon that may have malfunctioned after the first several rounds.
Gore said an off-duty border patrol agent working as a security guard who saw the man fleeing the scene fired on the suspect. The suspect was not hit but his car was struck.
President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said, "My deepest sympathies go to the families who were affected."
He added that the attack "looks like a hate crime."
Trump also said on Twitter, "Sincerest THANK YOU to our great Border Patrol Agent who stopped the shooter at the Synagogue in Poway, California. He may have been off duty but his talents for Law Enforcement weren’t!"
Sincerest THANK YOU to our great Border Patrol Agent who stopped the shooter at the Synagogue in Poway, California. He may have been off duty but his talents for Law Enforcement weren’t!
Kevin McAleenan, the chief of the U.S. Homeland Security agency, said his agency “will take every appropriate action to assist the investigation and ensure that those affected by this tragedy receive the closure and justice they deserve.” | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | April 2019 | ['(VOA News)'] |
President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai alleges that the U.S. armed forces are collaborating in some way with the Afghan Taliban in an effort to ensure that some troops remain after the scheduled 2014 pullout. | Hamid Karzai said the US-led military coalition was working with the Taliban to create instability in Afghanistan and convince Afghani citizens that violence will increase once foreign troops leave the country.
KABUL, Afghanistan Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday accused the Taliban and the United Statesof working in concert to convince Afghans that violence will worsen if most foreign troops leave as planned by the end of next year.
Karzai said two suicide bombings that killed 19 people Saturday one outside the Afghan Defense Ministry and the other near a police checkpoint in eastern Khost province show the insurgent group is conducting attacks to help show that international forces will still be needed to keep the peace after their current combat mission ends in 2014.
"The explosions in Kabul and Khost yesterday showed that they are at the service of America and at the service of this phrase: 2014. They are trying to frighten us into thinking that if the foreigners are not in Afghanistan, we would be facing these sorts of incidents," he said during a nationally televised speech about the state of Afghan women.
There was no immediate response from the U.S.-led military coalition, which is gradually handing over responsibility for securing the country to Afghan forces.
Karzai is known for making incendiary comments in his public speeches, a move that is often attributed to his trying to appeal to those who sympathize with the Taliban or as a way to gain leverage when he believes his international allies are ignoring his country's sovereignty. In previous speeches, he has threatened to join the Taliban and called his NATO allies occupiers who want to plunder Afghanistan's resources.
His latest remarks come as his government is negotiating a pact with the United States for the long-term presence of American forces in Afghanistan and just days after an agreement to transfer the U.S. prison outside of Kabul to Afghan authority fell through. His comments also came while Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is making his first visit to Afghanistan since becoming the Pentagon chief.
Karzai said in his speech that any foreign powers that want to keep troops in Afghanistan need to do so under conditions set forward by Afghanistan.
"We will tell them where we need them, and under which conditions. They must respect our laws. They must respect the national sovereignty of our country and must respect all our customs," Karzai said.
Karzai offered no proof of coordination, but said the Taliban and the United States were in "daily negotiations" in various foreign countries and noted that the United States has said that it no longer considers the insurgent group its enemy. The United Statescontinues to fight against the Taliban and other militant groups, but has expressed its backing for formal peace talks with the Taliban to find a political resolution to the war.
Karzai said he did not believe the Taliban's claim that they started Saturday's attacks to show they are still a potent force fighting the United States. "Yesterday's explosions, which the Taliban claimed, show that in reality they are saying they want the presence of foreigners in Afghanistan," Karzai said. | Armed Conflict | March 2013 | ['(AP via MSN News)'] |
Racing Point's Sergio Pérez wins the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix at the Bahrain International Circuit, claiming his first Formula One win, and becoming the first Mexican Formula One driver to win a race since Pedro Rodríguez won the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix. | The exultation and heartbreak could not surely have been as stark or delivered in more riveting fashion than the high drama on show at the Sakhir Grand Prix. For Racing Point’s Sergio Pérez, there were tears of joy as he took his first win in Formula One, while George Russell put in the drive of his F1 career only for victory to be snatched from his grasp through no fault of his own. He, too, admitted that the tears briefly flowed, but his were tainted by bitter disappointment.
The flag belonged to Pérez – who has no drive for 2021 – and he was a hugely popular winner, the first Mexican to win an F1 race since Pedro Rodríguez did so in Belgium in 1970. Esteban Ocon was second for Renault and Pérez’s teammate Lance Stroll third.
Pérez is being replaced at Racing Point by Sebastian Vettel but he may yet be given a drive for Red Bull next season. He delivered notice here why his absence from the sport would be a travesty. Yet the day was so nearly Russell’s as the wheels came off the usually metronomic Mercedes machine – inducing some frank language from the team principal, Toto Wolff, about a “colossal” error.
Lewis Hamilton would surely have recognised the hallmark’s of Russell’s controlled, composed and dominant drive in Bahrain. The 22-year-old, who had replaced the Covid19-stricken world champion at Mercedes, certainly gave notice that he is the genuine article, unintimidated and ready to inherit the mantle of the driver he grew up admiring but was denied the moment of crowning glory. “Sometimes you feel like everything is against you,” he said. “In a situation like this, at some points it felt too good to be true.” And unfortunately so it proved.
Having taken the lead from his teammate Valtteri Bottas through turn one off the start line, Russell went on to exert a grip on the race that looked unshakeable. He opened a gap and held it; he was on a flawless run when it fell apart. Late in the race an exceptionally rare Mercedes pit-stop error cost Russell what was a highly likely win. While leading the team pitted him under the safety car on lap 63 but put on mixed tyres, with one belonging to Bottas. Russell was forced to come in again a lap later to take his full set and emerged in fifth behind Bottas, while Pérez had the lead. Mercedes have been fined €20,000 (£18,000).
When racing resumed Russell had 18 laps to make up the difference. The British driver made a magnificent charge, starting with a bravura move past Bottas round the outside of turn six. Stroll fell one lap later and Ocon in one further still. He was three seconds down on Pérez with 13 laps remaining and pumping in fastest laps when his luck deserted him a second time, a rear-left puncture forcing another stop. The fairytale was over. His first Formula One points finish in ninth place was cold comfort; there will surely be another chance but this was heartbreaking stuff.
“I am gutted, I am absolutely gutted,” he said. “I can’t put it into words, it was not a nice feeling jumping out of the car. I gave it everything I had, I felt confident, comfortable, then we had the muddle up in the pit stop, but I could still have caught Sergio, then there was the puncture. I am gutted.”
Wolff nonetheless recognised his achievement, describing him as driving a “monumental race” and saying that a “new star is born today”.
Pérez had nonetheless fully earned his plaudits after a long career. His first win comes in his 10th season in the sport. He made his debut for Sauber in 2011, did one season with McLaren in 2013 and then joined Racing Point, then known as Force India in 2014. He has been with the team ever since. It could not be more poignant – it is the first win the Silverstone-based team have scored since they were Jordan in 2003, but they have already bid him farewell for 2021.
“I am speechless,” he said. “I hope I am not dreaming because I dream for so many years being in this moment. Ten years it took me. I don’t know what to say. After the first lap, the race it was gone. It was all about not giving up.”
Pérez had tangled with Charles Leclerc on lap one and taken a big hit to the rear of the car dropping him to the back of the field. Yet he fought back with typical gusto, came through the field and when Mercedes dropped the ball he had the chance and seized it. Cruel, celebratory and simply unmissable, Sakhir had it all.
Earlier in the day Michael Schumacher’s son Mick, who has been signed to drive for Haas in F1 next year, won the F2 championship, securing the title by 14 points from Britain’s Callum Illot.
Haas have confirmed that Romain Grosjean, who was involved in a huge accident at the previous round, will not risk his recovery from the burns to his hands and so will not take part in the final GP of the season next week in Abu Dhabi.
Carlos Sainz was fourth for McLaren with his teammate Lance Norris in 10th. Daniel Ricciardo was in fifth for Renault with Red Bull’s Alexander Albon in sixth. Daniil Kvyat was in seventh for AlphaTauri with Bottas eighth. | Sports Competition | December 2020 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
A news publisher is allegedly killed in the Philippine province of Catanduanes after publishing a story about the controversial drug purge campaign. | Bangkok, December 21, 2016–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on authorities in the Philippines to establish the motive behind the murder of newspaper publisher Larry Que and bring the perpetrators swiftly to justice.
Que was shot in the head at close range at around 10:00 a.m. on December 19 while entering an office building in Catanduanes province’s town of Virac, according to news reports. A gunman wearing a helmet, bonnet, and raincoat escaped on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice, reports said. Que died early yesterday morning while receiving treatment for his injury at the Eastern Bicol Medical Center.
Que was publisher and columnist at the local Catanduanes News Now, a weekly community newspaper established this year, according to local reports. He was also the owner of a local insurance company and ran for mayor of Virac in an election he lost in May, reports said. Teresa Reyes, an off-duty police officer who witnessed the crime, said Que was returning from the local Land Transportation Office when he was shot in front of his company’s office building, reports said.
“Philippine authorities should quickly apprehend the assailants and determine the motive behind publisher Larry Que’s murder,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “President Rodrigo Duterte has sent mixed messages on his government’s commitment to protecting journalists and upholding press freedom. He should set the record straight by quickly solving Que’s killing through legal means.”
In October, Duterte created by executive order a new multi-agency government task force to probe unresolved media murder cases and prevent violence against journalists, according to press reports.
Que was shot soon after his newspaper published a column he wrote alleging “official negligence” over an illegal methamphetamine laboratory recently raided by police in the island province, news reports said. The article also speculated that the illegal plant, reportedly the largest ever discovered in the Philippines, may have been established by Chinese nationals working with ethnic Chinese residents of the province, reports said.
Jinky Tabor, a broadcast journalist who also reports for the local Manila Bulletin newspaper, said that she received anonymous death threats after reporting on the police raid of the alleged drug-making facility, according to news reports. The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, a local press group, said in a statement that Que’s murder had sowed fear among local journalists that they could be targeted next for reporting on the laboratory.
The Philippines ranks fourth on CPJ’s Impunity Index, a global measure of countries where journalists are slain and the killers go free. More journalists have been killed in direct relation to their work in the Philippines than anywhere apart from Iraq and Syria since CPJ began keeping detailed records in 1992.
| Famous Person - Death | December 2016 | ['(Committee to Protect Journalists)'] |
The Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, reshuffles his Ministry with Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull promoted to Cabinet and Amanda Vanstone losing her position. | Amanda Vanstone has been sacked as Immigration Minister. (ABC) Prime Minister John Howard has announced sweeping changes to his Ministry, including dropping Amanda Vanstone from his frontbench.
Mr Howard says Kevin Andrews will move from Workplace Relations to the Immigration portfolio. The Prime Minister is also promoting Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull to Cabinet.
Mr Hockey will take on the Workplace Relations portfolio, while Mr Turnbull will be Minister for Environment and Water.
Mr Howard said he had made some difficult decisions and thanked Senator Vanstone for her contribution. "I record my very deep appreciation to her," he said. He also praised new faces Mr Hockey and Mr Turnbull.
"I want to pay tribute to both Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull for the excellent work that they have done in their respective positions to now, in relation to Joe as Minister for Human Services and assistant to Kevin Andrews in workplace relations and Malcolm Turnbull as my parliamentary secretary," he said. In other changes, Rod Kemp has retired from the Ministry because he is leaving Parliament at the next election.
Queensland Liberal Gary Hardgrave has been dropped from the frontbench, while the Nationals' John Cobb has also left. Victorian Liberal Andrew Robb, Queensland Liberal Senator George Brandis and Northern Territory Senator Nigel Scullion have all been promoted to Cabinet.
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | January 2007 | ['(ABC News Australia)'] |
In Australia, at least seven emergency warnings have been issued for bushfires in New South Wales resulting in one death at Lake Munmorah, significant property damage and closure of airports and highways. |
• Almost 1,500 firefighters are battling scores of bushfires across New South Wales in what has been described as the most serious fire risk to hit the state in more than a decade. Hundreds of homes are feared to have been destroyed. Many firefighters - particularly in the Winmalee area - were told that their homes were destroyed while they were out fighting fires. At least two firefighters were injured, with one man sent to Sydney's Concord Hospital with burns to his face. • The NSW premier, Barry O'Farrell, said it would be a miracle if there was no loss of life. He said were facing treacherous conditions and that it would be days before all the fires could be extinguished. "This is as bad as it gets," he said. • There were around 100 fires blazing at midnight on Thursday, with more than 30 described as "out of control"| and four designated as emergencies. One of the emergencies was in the Blue Mountains area that began in Lithgow ran more than 25km and had burned 20,000 hectares of bushland. • Evacuation centres were set up across the state. In the Blue Mountains students from St Columba's school were kept in the building but St Thomas Aquinas School was evacuated. About 600 children from several schools were bussed to the Springwood Sports Club on Thursday evening. At its peak, 28,000 homes supplied by Endeavour Energy in the Blue Mountains and Southern Highlands regions were without electricity. The fires created traffic chaos around Sydney, with a 20km queue on the Hume Highway for city-bound traffic. Updated at 2.46pm BST
1.58pm BST The fire that started in Lithgow area and is heading in the direction of Bilpin and Mountain Lagoon in the Blue Mountains has now burnt more than 20,000 hectares of bushland, the fire service says. An emergency warning remains in place for the blaze. View of the Blue Mountains from Glenmore Park earlier this afternoon #NSWRFS #nswfires http://t.co/Mg4m3oa5bg
1.26pm BST Having been downgraded to a "watch and act" the Hank Street fire, in Heatherbrae, has been upgraded back up to an emergency. The NSW rural fire service said:
The Hank Street Fire has been burning under difficult weather conditions and has burnt around 3,500 hectares of bush land. More than 100 firefighters are working to protect properties in the area. An emergency remains in place in Springwood, in the Blue Mountains. The NSW RFS said:
Students from St Columba's Springwood, St Thomas Aquinas Primary and Ellison Primary are safe and accounted for. NSW Police escorted students on buses to Springwood Sports Club and were available for pick up after 8pm. With multiple fires in the area, please postpone non-essential travel to keep the roads clear for firefighters. 1.22pm BST Here's an excerpt from the latest AAP report:
Hundreds of homes are feared destroyed and the NSW premier believes it will be a miracle if no lives are lost in the most grave bushfire crisis to hit the state in a decade. While the extent of the devastation was unclear on Thursday night, one of the worst-hit areas was Springwood, in the Blue Mountains, where up to 30 homes were known to be lost. But when the ashes settle, the number of destroyed or damaged properties across the state is expected to be much worse. Elsewhere, thousands of firefighters were struggling against around 100 blazes across the state - on the Central Coast and further north, the Southern Highlands and the south coast. It was too soon to estimate how many properties had been lost, but Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons predicted: "we'll be counting properties in the dozens, if not the hundreds." 1.11pm BST @9NewsSyd #bushfires #redsun #NSWRFS #nswfires pic.twitter.com/8wVobFGo0x
1.05pm BST The fire in Lithgow has run more than 25km today and burnt over 12,000 hectares of bush land. Latest Lithgow fire linescan as at 8:30pm #nswfires pic.twitter.com/LBInOVEjf0
1.03pm BST Another bushfire, in Hungerford Creek, has been downgraded from an "emergency" to a "watch and act" but it continues to be out of control, according to the fire service. That means three emergency warnings remain in place, I believe. 12.49pm BST After briefing, State MP for Swansea Garry Edwards says "10 homes lost" from Lake Munmorah to Catherine Hill Bay @nbnnews
12.46pm BST UPDATE: There are currently 95 fires burning across #NSW. 34 of those are out of control. 12.45pm BST 4 emergency #bushfire warnings remain in place in #NSW and several other #nswfires alerts - stay up to date: http://t.co/eHfjgjk64R
12.43pm BST The NSW rural fire service has posted a list of evacuation centres, which have been set up across the state to help people who have been forced to leave their homes. There are currently 11 centres listed. 12.39pm BST Another fire, a scrub fire burning near the villages of Balmoral, Yanderra and Bargo in the Southern Highlands and Wollondilly has been downgraded from "emergency" to "watch and act". 12.30pm BST The fire at Doyalson North (near Wyong) has been downgraded from "emergency" to "watch and act", as have fires in Heatherbrae and Shoalhaven. But an emergency remains in place in the Hungerford Creek area of Muswellbrook, where a fire has burnt more than 2,000 hectares of bushland. 12.24pm BST Professor David Bowman, professor of environmental change biology at the University of Tasmania said:
To my mind a significant feature of the NSW fires are the short time a hint of trouble spiralled into serious trouble all within 24 hours. A key factor is high wind speeds and hot conditions - again difficult to predict accurately - that drive fires and quickly dry fuels out. I am of course worried about the significance of the early start of the NSW fire season for southern Australia. It must be understood more widely that predicting fires’ start, duration and intensity of fire seasons is beyond our current scientific capacities. I see the burst of fires in NSW (on the back of some extremely severe fires last year) as a very worrying sign for Tasmania, a community still recovering from the extreme 4 January fires. 12.08pm BST Justin Leonard, research leader for Bushfire urban design, at Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, has warned that several people could lose their lives based on historical precedent. He said:
History has shown us that on average one life is lost for every 17 houses. The majority of these lives are lost within a few hundred metres of homes. When fires are near, use the home as a refuge rather than fleeing at the last minute. Monitor the home’s condition while you shelter in case you need to exit the house on to burnt ground. The NSW rural fire service commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons, has said that the number of homes lost will “at least be in the hundreds”. 11.57am BST Power still out to about 700 homes in Chain Valley Bay. Crews trying to patrol, make safe and restore. @bretkero
11.48am BST The Salvation Army has launched an appeal for contributions to its disaster relief fund, AAP reports. Money donated will be used to support those affected during the bushfire crisis and for the long-term recovery of communities. Salvation Army officers and volunteers are helping in evacuations centres and delivering meals to evacuated residents and emergency services personnel, spokesman Major Peter Sutcliffe said. He added:
Long after the fires have gone down and the smoke has cleared, The Salvation Army will still be in these communities, standing side-by-side with those affected, to help them pick up the pieces and begin the long process of healing and rebuilding. Salvo volunteers in Raymond Terrace work from a special vehicle to assist those in need with food & drinks #nswfires pic.twitter.com/s7oZkwZbwf
Hawkesbury #Salvos Emergency Services volunteers are at the Bilpin Evacuation Centre feeding rural fire-fighters pic.twitter.com/24oUQz2jP0
11.43am BST VIEWER PHOTO: Incredible shot from Bernice at #StMarys #9NEWSat6 #nswfires pic.twitter.com/AyGkimIRO0
Photo Don Grogan: Central Coast fires taken from #Budgewoi #nswfires eerily beautiful! pic.twitter.com/81RTN3sG4E
11.30am BST This map shows the areas currently affected by the bushfires. 11.27am BST A fire in Heatherbrae has been upgraded from "watch and act" to emergency. It has burnt around 3,500 hectares of bush land, the NSW rural fire service says. Some better news elsewhere. The Blackjack mountain fire in Muswellbrook, where the rural fire service says "weather conditions are easing and the threat to properties is subsiding", has been downgraded from "emergency" to "advice" . And the scrub fire burning near the villages of Balmoral, Yanderra and Bargo in the Southern Highlands has been downgraded from "emergency" to "watch and Act". The fire service said its firefighters there are "getting the upper hand". 11.13am BST At 8.30pm Sydney time, there were 1,477 firefighters battling blazes across NSW in 470 vehicles. There were 98 fires burning, 34 of them uncontained, and seven at emergency warning level, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. 11.08am BST The Lithgow fire is heading in the direction of Bilpin in the Blue Mountains and has burnt more than 12,000 hectares of bush, the NSW rural fire service says. It adds:
The fire is reportedly impacting properties and where possible, fire fighters are commencing property protection. It remains an emergency level blaze. 11.04am BST Looking North toward Lake Munmorah (Ruttley's Rd Fire) on NSW, Central Coast. 6.10pm. Sent via Guardian Witness
By hayd_williams 17 October 2013, 10:45 The NSW Liberal Government is taking away $64 million in funding from the fire service over the next 4 years. Sent via Guardian Witness
By alicebot 17 October 2013, 10:42 11.03am BST Latest linescan image for Lithgow fire. More than 25km fire run today. It is a huge fire #nswfires
Latest linescan for Port Stephens fire. #nswfires pic.twitter.com/cY9U7smO1t
11.01am BST A fire in the Hungerford Creek area has burnt more than 2,000 hectares of bushland and continues to be out of control, the NSW rural fire service says. It adds that firefighters are "undertaking property protection under difficult, dangerous and erratic weather conditions". The emergency warning remains in place for Hugerford Creek. 10.56am BST Sent via Guardian Witness
By ID6264889 17 October 2013, 8:32 Sent via Guardian Witness
By stevo 17 October 2013, 9:30 10.49am BST NSW Health has warned people that air quality in many areas is likely to be reduced "due to smoke particles becoming airborne and travelling great distances from the location of the bushfires". Professor Wayne Smith, director of the environmental health branch, warned those with lung disease and heart disease to closely monitor their symptoms. He said:
Already smoke from bushfires burning in the Blue Mountains region and Muswellbrook areas has been blown east to Sydney city and coastal suburbs. Particle levels are likely to be higher outdoors than indoors, so people sensitive to fine particles should limit the time they spend outside. Bushfires can result in a large amount of smoke particles in the air, even great distances from the fires. The best way to avoid breathing in the smoke is to remain inside with the windows and doors closed, preferably in an air-conditioned building. NSW Health says the particles can cause a variety of health problems, such as itchy or burning eyes, throat irritation or runny nose and aggravate existing illnesses including bronchitis, emphysema and asthma. 10.42am BST The view North from Newcastle this evening. Bushfires on the horizon. pic.twitter.com/RjYkYrO3Z0
10.37am BST Wow!!! Scary #nswfires pic.twitter.com/Mv3ikaKv5C
10.28am BST Wyong shire council says a council community centre has been destroyed by fire in Scaysbrook Ave. A number of roads are closed in the area. 10.15am BST ABC News has put together a compilation video, which starkly illustrates the extent of the fires. 10.11am BST It's still very busy across the state with 95 fires currently burning, 34 of which remain out of control. http://t.co/oMSJ7vP3Lj #nswfires
10.01am BST The NSW rural fire service says explosions have been reported after a large fuel storage area was ignited by fire near Wyong, which is about 90km from Sydney. It is one of seven areas that currently have fires at emergency levels. Seven fires remaine at emergency levels:Springwood, Lithgow, Wyong, Lake Munmorah Balmoral Village, Port Stephens and Muswellbrook. #nswfire
9.45am BST People need to understand that the danger is not over for people on any of the active firegrounds. Many hours to go. #nswfires
9.38am BST Here is the press conference from earlier this evening with premier Barry O'Farrell and RFS Commissioner Shane FitzSimmons. 9.36am BST The Heatherbrae fire appears to have crossed the Pacific Highway and an emergency alertphone message has been sent to residents between Medowie Road, Medowie and Raymond Terrace. 9.32am BST The fire at Lake Munmorah from Budgewoi. #nswfires pic.twitter.com/DioGNSiJnY
9.19am BST We are hearing of dozens of reports of homes lost in the Blue Mountains. 9.12am BST Lithgow resident Roderick Heath has told the Guardian of his experiences with the bushfire which began yesterday and continues to burn out of control today. He sent us these photos below, and you can see how close the fire came to his home. “I was never too concerned because I know pretty well how the weather around here tends to work and how the geography tends to shield us. And we’ve had prior experience with this sort of thing in the 1997/8 fires," he told Guardian Australia over the phone, as helicopters buzzed above his home. The RFS and police called a community meeting on Wednesday after becoming concerned that the fire, which had moved up the ridge away from the community, looked like it would double back with a predicted wind change. “Everyone around here was quite alarmed after that meeting. Quite a lot of people left.”
Flames creeping close to Brisbane St, Oaky Park. The wind changed direction and blew the fire back into the bush just as this picture were taken. Sent via Guardian Witness
By Jack_Falstaff 17 October 2013, 17:37 Heath decided that they wouldn’t leave, although they were prepared to if the situation changed. The wind did the expected, and turned the fire back on the area. “All these fires sprang up and were burning up the mountain side away from us, essentially working as a sory of natural backburn,” said Heath. “It was quite dramatic.”
“At the moment it seems to be gone, more or less.”
Heath also told us that friends of his reported hearing explosions in the State Mine Gulley shortly before the fire began there, near the Marrangaroo Army Base on Wednesday. The mountain directly abutting my street on fire. Sent via Guardian Witness
By Jack_Falstaff 17 October 2013, 17:34 9.01am BST A new fire has broken out in Muswellbrook. "An emergency warning is in place for the Hungerford Creek area due to a fast moving bush fire burning," read the RFS statement. "The fire is currently 2,000 hectares in size and is out of control, moving in a south-easterly direction." The previous emergency warning for a blaze near Blackjack mountain has been revised to a "watch and act" alert. Updated at 9.13am BST
8.53am BST One firefighter is in hospital after being injured near Camden. Many firefighters - particularly in the Winmalee area - have been told that their homes were destroyed while they were out fighting fires today. | Fire | October 2013 | ['(The Guardian)', '(The Guardian)'] |
The first round of voting in the Presidential election in Finland was held with no conclusive victor. Tarja Halonen and Sauli Niinistö will continue to the second round which is held 29 January. | Conservative Sauli Niinisto came second with 24.1%, and will face her in a run-off ballot in two weeks time.
The election campaign was dominated by foreign policy issues, particularly traditionally neutral Finland's relationship with Nato.
Centrist Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen was third with 18.6% of the vote.
Foreign policy
"It's a pity... but it's no use to complain," Ms Halonen said of the result. "I'm still in pole position."
Mr Niinisto, a former finance minister, was optimistic about his prospects in the next vote, which will be held on 29 January.
"It's not bad to start from second position," he said.
An estimated 4.2 million people are registered to vote in Finland.
Ms Halonen, a 62-year-old former lawyer and foreign minister, became the country's first woman president in the year 2000.
The powers of the Finnish head of state are largely focused on foreign policy - an area where there has been broad agreement between the president and government.
Both Ms Halonen and her main rival, Mr Niinisto, support Finland's EU membership, its co-operation with Nato and its close ties to former foe, Russia. | Government Job change - Election | January 2006 | ['(BBC)'] |
North Korea fires three short–range guided missiles into its eastern waters. | SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea launched three short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast on Saturday, the South Korean Defense Ministry said. The tests broke the recent relative silence from the North, but the move was much less provocative than what had been feared in the tense weeks after the country’s nuclear test in February.
Short-range tests from North Korea are fairly routine, and as it often has, the North fired the missiles away from South Korea and toward the northeast. Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.
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This is an offer for a Basic Digital Access Subscription. The Basic Digital Access Subscription does not include e-reader editions (Kindle, Nook, etc.), NYT Games (the Crossword) or NYT Cooking. Mobile apps are not supported on all devices. These offers are not available for current subscribers. Other restrictions and taxes may apply. Offers and pricing are subject to change without notice. | Military Exercise | May 2013 | ['(New York Times)'] |
Robert Abela wins the Partit Laburista leadership election, succeeding Joseph Muscat as Prime Minister after Muscat's resignation. | Malta's governing party has elected a new leader and prime minister to replace Joseph Muscat, who resigned over the murder of a journalist. Robert Abela won the Labour Party leadership contest with 57.9% of the vote, reports say.
His predecessor Mr Muscat said he would quit last month over the scandal surrounding the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. She was killed by a car bomb in 2017 as she investigated corruption in Malta.
Mr Muscat's handling of the murder inquiry caused widespread anger. He was accused of protecting allies implicated in the investigation, which he denies.
His replacement - the son of Malta's former President George Abela - will be sworn in on Monday.
Early counts suggest Mr Abela beat his closest rival Chris Fearne, a 56-year-old surgeon, by more than 2,500 votes.
Around 17,500 Labour Party members were expected to cast their ballots in the leadership contest.
In his victory speech, Mr Abela, a 42-year-old lawyer, called on his party to "work together for unity", Malta Today reported.
Seen as a continuity candidate, Mr Abela avoided criticising Mr Muscat or his handling of the inquiry into Caruana Galizia's death during the campaign.
Mr Muscat announced his resignation in December last year, as the scandal over the inquiry into Caruana Galizia's murder reached fever pitch.
Fury over the scandal grew when businessman Yorgen Fenech was charged with complicity in the murder, an allegation he denies.
Mr Muscat's chief of staff, Keith Schembri, was then arrested and questioned in connection with the killing of Caruana Galizia. Mr Schembri was later released but is still under investigation.
Caruana Galizia, known as the "one woman WikiLeaks", exposed corruption at the highest levels of government and business circles in Malta.
The journalist's family argued that as long as Mr Muscat remained PM, a full investigation into Caruana Galizia's death was not possible.
Three men have been charged with triggering the bomb which killed Caruana Galizia near her home in October 2017. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | January 2020 | ['(BBC News)', '(CNN International)'] |
Over 31,000 teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians in Los Angeles, who have been without a contract for more than a year, go on a strike to demand higher pay after negotiations for improved compensation and work conditions failed. | About 31,000 teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians took to picket lines on a rainy Monday in Los Angeles, where the nation's second-biggest school system is using substitutes and staff to keep school doors open.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom last Thursday unveiled a proposed budget that includes additional funding for public education, with the Los Angeles United School District sweetening its contract proposal to the teachers union the next day. The union, however, rejected the offer as insufficient.
With no bargaining done during the weekend, the union called the strike for Monday, its first walkout in nearly 30 years. LAUSD officials said classrooms would remain open for the 480,000 children impacted by the walkout.
About 400 substitutes and 2,000 credentialed district staff are trying to cover for the union members, with a district guide informing parents that "students are expected to attend school every day." The school district has financial incentive to encourage students to come to school, as the bulk of its funding is based on attendance.
Roughly 81 percent of L.A.'s public school students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals, and LAUSD said it continues to serve meals during the walkout.
Negotiations between the union United Teachers Los Angeles and the LAUSD began in early 2017, and union members have been working without a contract for more than a year.
In addition to higher pay and improved benefits, UTLA is demanding smaller classroom sizes and schools that are "fully staffed" with nurses, counselors and librarians. It wants a full-time nurse in every school, along with more counselors and librarians.
The union is also looking to cap the growth of privately operated charter schools, which competes for resources with public schools.
"Even with $1.86 billion [in] reserves, LAUSD says it does not have the money to improve our schools to include lower class sizes, accountability for charter schools and a real reinvestment in school safety, vital staffing and educational programs. Since 2008, the cost of living in L.A. has increased 27 percent yet the district offers stagnant wages and healthcare," the union said in a news release.
LAUSD's latest offer builds on previous proposals and would reduce classroom sizes, but not to the extent the union is demanding. It also contends that budget restraints means it must any limit new hiring to one year. It's offering a 6 percent raise over the first two years of a three-year contract, while teachers want 6.5 percent retroactive to a year earlier.
The district, which has sought to limit the negotiations to wages, contends that it already faces possible insolvency in two to three years, even before meeting much of what the union is demanding.
"We did not want a strike, we tried our best to avoid it, and will continue to work around the clock to find a solution to end the strike," LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner said in a video posted on the district's website.
The teachers' demands echo those made by educators in four states that staged mass walkouts in the spring of 2018. Beginning in West Virginia in February and followed soon after by walkouts in Oklahoma, Arizona and North Carolina, teachers were able to rally public support, with lawmakers in some states partially reversing course on years of cutbacks to education. | Strike | January 2019 | ['(CBS News)', '(Al Jazeera)'] |
US Army kills 40 and wounds 117 others during an attack in Iraq near the border with Syria. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq, tells Reuters the attack was within the military's rules of engagement, denying reports that the victims were members of a wedding party. He says a large amount of money, Syrian passports and satellite communications equipment was found at the site after the attack. | The wedding feast was finished and the women had just led the young bride and groom away to their marriage tent for the night when Haleema Shihab heard the first sounds of the fighter jets screeching through the sky above. "Bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men"
General James Mattis
commander of the 1st Marine Division
Iraqi Mahdi Nawaf shows photographs of dead family members during a funeral ceremony in Ramadi, 68 miles, 110 kms west of Baghdad, Iraq , Thursday, May 20, 2004. Mahdi said they were were killed Wednesday, when a U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party in the remote desert near the border with Syria killing more than 40 people. The photographs show: Iraqi father Mohammed Al-Rikad, right, his wife Morifa, left, and their children Saad, 10, Fasila, 7, Faisal, 5, Anoud, 6, Kholood, 4 and three year-old Inad. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
It was 10.30pm in the remote village of Mukaradeeb by the Syrian border and the guests hurried back to their homes as the party ended. As sister-in-law of the groom, Mrs Shihab, 30, was to sleep with her husband and children in the house of the wedding party, the Rakat family villa. She was one of the few in the house who survived the night. "Bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men"
General James Mattis
commander of the 1st Marine Division
"The bombing started at 3am," she said yesterday from her bed in the emergency ward at Ramadi general hospital, 60 miles west of Baghdad. "We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one," she said. She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza, close behind. As she crossed the fields a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground. She lay there and a second round hit her on the right arm. By then her two boys lay dead. "I left them because they were dead," she said. One, she saw, had been decapitated by a shell. "I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me." Mrs Shibab's description, backed by other witnesses, of an attack on a sleeping village is at odds with the American claim that they came under fire while targeting a suspected foreign fighter safe house. She described how in the hours before dawn she watched as American troops destroyed the Rakat villa and the house next door, reducing the buildings to rubble. Another relative carried Mrs Shihab and her surviving child to hospital. There she was told her husband Mohammed, the eldest of the Rakat sons, had also died. As Mrs Shihab spoke she gestured with hands still daubed red-brown with the henna the women had used to decorate themselves for the wedding. Alongside her in the ward yesterday were three badly injured girls from the Rakat family: Khalood Mohammed, aged just a year and struggling for breath, Moaza Rakat, 12, and Iqbal Rakat, 15, whose right foot doctors had already amputated. By the time the sun rose on Wednesday over the Rakat family house, the raid had claimed 42 lives, according to Hamdi Noor al-Alusi, manager of the al-Qaim general hospital, the nearest to the village. Among the dead were 27 members of the extended Rakat family, their wedding guests and even the band of musicians hired to play at the ceremony, among them Hussein al-Ali from Ramadi, one of the most popular singers in western Iraq. A video image shows a wounded child laying in a hospital in Ramadi, May 20, 2004, after having her leg amputated. The girl claimed she was the sister of the bridegroom at a wedding in Western Iraq which witnesses claimed was attacked by U.S. forces. Grieving Iraqis said U.S. forces killed dozens of guests at the desert wedding but an American general insisted Thursday that the air strike had killed foreign guerrilla fighters and said 'bad things happen in wars.' (Reuters TV ) Dr Alusi said 11 of the dead were women and 14 were children. "I want to know why the Americans targeted this small village," he said by telephone. "These people are my patients. I know each one of them. What has caused this disaster?" Despite the compelling testimony of Mrs Shihab, Dr Alusi and other wedding guests, the US military, faced with appar ent evidence of yet another scandal in Iraq, offered an inexplicably different account of the operation. The military admitted there had been a raid on the village at 3am on Wednesday but said it had targeted a "suspected foreign fighter safe house". "During the operation, coalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was provided," it said in a statement. Soldiers at the scene then recovered weapons, Iraqi dinar and Syrian pounds (worth approximately 800), foreign passports and a "Satcom radio", presumably a satellite telephone. "We took ground fire and we returned fire," said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq. "We estimate that around 40 were killed. But we operated within our rules of engagement." Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, was scathing of those who suggested a wedding party had been hit. "How many people go to the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding 80 miles (130km) from the nearest civilization? These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive." When reporters asked him about footage on Arabic television of a child's body being lowered into a grave, he replied: "I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men." The celebration at Mukaradeeb was to be one of the biggest events of the year for a small village of just 25 houses. Haji Rakat, the father, had finally arranged a long-negotiated tribal union that would bring together two halves of one large extended family, the Rakats and the Sabahs. Haji Rakat's second son, Ashad, would marry Rutba, a cousin from the Sabahs. In a second ceremony one of Ashad's female cousins, Sharifa, would marry a young Sabah boy, Munawar. A large canvas awning had been set up in the garden of the Rakat villa to host the party. A band of musicians was called in, led by Hamid Abdullah, who runs the Music of Arts recording studio in Ramadi, the nearest major town. He brought his friend Hussein al-Ali, a popular Iraqi singer who performs on Ramadi's own television channel. A handful of other musicians including the singer's brother Mohaned, played the drums and the keyboards. The ceremonies began on Tuesday morning and stretched through until the late evening. "We were happy because of the wedding. People were dancing and making speeches," said Ma'athi Nawaf, 55, one of the neighbours. Late in the evening the guests heard the sound of jets overhead. Then in the distance they saw the headlights of what appeared to be a military convoy heading their way across the desert. The party ended at around 10.30pm and the neighbours left for their homes. At 3am the bombing began. "The first thing they bombed was the tent for the ceremony," said Mr Nawaf. "We saw the family running out of the house. The bombs were falling, destroying the whole area." Armored military vehicles then drove into the village, firing machine guns and supported by attack helicopters. "They started to shoot at the house and the people outside the house," he said. Before dawn two large Chinook helicopters descended and offloaded dozens of troops. They appeared to set explosives in the Rakat house and the building next door and minutes later, just after the Chinooks left again, they exploded into rubble. "I saw something that nobody ever saw in this world," said Mr Nawaf. "There were children's bodies cut into pieces, women cut into pieces, men cut into pieces." Among the dead was his daughter Fatima Ma'athi, 25, and her two young boys, Raad, four, and Raed, six. "I found Raad dead in her arms. The other boy was lying beside her. I found only his head," he said. His sister Simoya, the wife of Haji Rakat, was also killed with her two daughters. "The Americans call these people foreign fighters. It is a lie. I just want one piece of evidence of what they are saying." Remarkably among the survivors were the two married couples, who had been staying in tents away from the main house, and Haji Rakat himself, an elderly man who had gone to bed early in a nearby house. From the mosques of Ramadi volunteers had been called to dig at the graveyard of the tribe, on the southern outskirts of the city. There lay 27 graves: mounds of dirt each marked with a single square of crudely cut marble, a name scribbled in black paint. Some gave more than one name, and one, belonging to a woman Hamda Suleman, the briefest of explanations: "The American bombing." | Armed Conflict | May 2004 | ['(Guardian)', '(Reuters)', '(NYT)'] |
Brazilian legislator and LGBT rights activist Jean Wyllys announces he will leave his office and his country after death threats against him increase in number and intensity. Wyllys will be replaced by fellow PSOL politician David Miranda. | Jean Wyllys said he was currently outside of the country and had no plans to return after a growing number of threats in past year
First published on Thu 24 Jan 2019 20.42 GMT
Brazil’s first and only openly gay congressman has announced that he is leaving his job – and the country – after receiving death threats.
In a newspaper interview on Thursday, Jean Wyllys said he was currently outside of Brazil and had no plans to return after a growing number of threats over the past year.
Wyllys, who was re-elected in October and had been set to begin a third term in February, was a close friend of Marielle Franco, the gay Rio councilwoman who was shot and killed along with her driver in March.
His departure is likely to add to fears among Brazil’s LGBT community that homophobia is set to rise even further under the government of president Jair Bolsonaro, who has won notoriety for his overt homophobia.
In the interview, Wyllys said his decision to leave wasn’t because of Bolsonaro’s rise, but rather the climate of heated rhetoric and intensifying violence toward members of the LGBT community in the wake of last year’s heated election campaign.
Bolsonaro made no explicit comment on Wyllys’s announcement, but soon after posted a thumbs-up emoji on his twitter feed. Bolsonaro’s son Carlos – also a Rio city councilman – greeted the news with a tweet saying: “Go with God and be happy.”
Wyllys told the Folha de São Paulo newspaper that the decision had been a painful one, but he asked: “Why would I want to live four years of my life in an armoured car with bodyguards? Four years of my life when I can’t just go where I want to go?”
Wyllys first found national fame when he won Brazil’s version of Big Brother, and went on to become one of the country’s most high-profile advocates for gay rights – a role which led to frequent attacks from the religious right.
“It is a difficult battle to fight. Sometimes I feel like Don Quixote, you know?” he told the Guardian in 2012. “But this is my vocation. My calling. I feel that I need to be here.”
Wyllys said that the former Uruguayan president Pepe Mújica had advised him to take the death threats seriously. “He told me: ‘Take care, man. Martyrs are not heroes.’ And he’s right: I don’t want to sacrifice myself,” Wyllys said.
In Congress, Wyllys was frequently at odds with Bolsonaro, a congressman for 28 years with a long history of homophobic, racist and sexist comments.
In their most notorious public clash, Wyllys spit towards Bolsonaro on the floor of the lower House of Deputies after Bolsonaro dedicated his vote to impeach then-president Dilma Rousseff to a dictatorship-era torturer.
In a tweet on Thursday, Wyllys said: “Preserving a threatened life is also a strategy to fight for better days. We did a lot for the common good. And we will do much more when new times come.”
Preservar a vida ameaçada é também uma estratégia da luta por dias melhores. Fizemos muito pelo bem comum. E faremos muito mais quando chegar o novo tempo, não importa que façamos por outros meios! Obrigado a todas e todos vocês, de todo coração. Axé! ✊ https://t.co/Xy6SyDNXDy pic.twitter.com/Tf6SGmZFHq
Despite Brazil’s image as an inclusive nation that is home to the world’s largest gay parade, homophobia is rampant, and often violent. In 2017, at least 445 LGBT Brazilians died as victims of homophobia – a 30% increase from 2016 | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | January 2019 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The UN International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director General Mohamed ElBaradei share the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to limit the spread of atomic weapons. | OSLO, Norway -- Following is the text of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005, as published on its Web site on Friday:
"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei, for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way.
"At a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to underline that this threat must be met through the broadest possible international cooperation. "This principle finds its clearest expression today in the work of the IAEA and its Director General. In the nuclear non-proliferation regime, it is the IAEA which controls that nuclear energy is not misused for military purposes, and the Director General has stood out as an unafraid advocate of new measures to strengthen that regime. "At a time when disarmament efforts appear deadlocked, when there is a danger that nuclear arms will spread both to states and to terrorist groups, and when nuclear power again appears to be playing an increasingly significant role, IAEA's work is of incalculable importance.
"In his will, Alfred Nobel wrote that the Peace Prize should, among other criteria, be awarded to whoever had done most for the 'abolition or reduction of standing armies.'
"In its application of this criterion in recent decades, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has concentrated on the struggle to diminish the significance of nuclear arms in international politics, with a view to their abolition. That the world has achieved little in this respect makes active opposition to nuclear arms all the more important today." | Awards ceremony | October 2005 | ['(CNN)', '(Aftenposten)', '(Nobel Prize)'] |
International campaigners against the drone attacks, carried out by the United States in Pakistan, launch their attempt to have former CIA legal chief John A. Rizzo arrested and charged with the murders of hundreds of people after his admission in Newsweek that he approved attacks each month since 2004. | Campaigners against US drone strikes in Pakistan are calling for the CIA's former legal chief to be arrested and charged with murder for approving attacks that killed hundreds of people.
Amid growing concern around the world over the use of drones, lawyers and relatives of some of those killed are seeking an international arrest warrant for John Rizzo, until recently acting general counsel for the American intelligence agency.
Opponents of drones say the unmanned aircraft are responsible for the deaths of up to 2,500 Pakistanis in 260 attacks since 2004. US officials say the vast majority of those killed are "militants". Earlier this week 48 people were killed in two strikes on tribal regions of Pakistan. The American definition of "militant" has been disputed by relatives and campaigners.
The attempt to seek an international arrest warrant for Rizzo is being led by the British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith of the campaign group Reprieve, and lawyers in Pakistan. The lawyers are also building cases against other individuals, including drone operators interviewed or photographed during organised press facilities.
A first information report, the first step in seeking a prosecution of Rizzo in Pakistan, will be formally lodged early next week at a police station in the capital, Islamabad, on behalf of relatives of two people killed in drone strikes in 2009. The report will also allege Rizzo should be charged with conspiracy to murder a large number of Pakistani citizens.
Now retired, Rizzo, 63, is being pursued after admitting in an interview with the magazine Newsweek that since 2004 he had approved one drone attack order a month on targets in Pakistan, even though the US is not at war with the country.
Rizzo, who was by his own admission "up to my eyeballs" in approving CIA use of "enhanced interrogation techniques", said in the interview that the CIA operated "a hit list". He also asked: "How many law professors have signed off on a death warrant?"
Rizzo has also admitted being present while civilian operators conducted drone strikes from their terminals at the CIA headquarters in Virginia.
Although US government lawyers have tried to argue that drone strikes are conducted on a "solid legal basis", some believe the civilians who operate the drones could be classified as "unlawful combatants".
US drone strikes were first launched on Pakistan by George Bush and have been accelerated by Barack Obama.
Much of the intelligence for the attacks is supplied either by the Pakistani military or the ISI, the country's controversial intelligence agency.
Both have blocked journalists and human rights investigators from visiting the tribal areas targeted, preventing independent verification of the numbers killed and their status.
While Stafford Smith of Reprieve estimates around 2,500 civilian deaths, others say the number is closer to 1,000. US sources deny large numbers of civilian deaths and say only a few dozen "non-combatants" have been killed.
While killing civilians in military operations is not illegal under international law unless it is proved to be deliberate, disproportionate or reckless, Stafford Smith believes the nature of the US drone campaign puts it on a different legal footing.
"The US has to follow the laws of war," he said. "The issue here is that this is not a war. There is zero chance, given the current political situation in Pakistan, that we will not get a warrant for Rizzo. The question is what happens next. We can try for extradition and the US will refuse.
"Interpol, I believe, will have to issue a warrant because there is no question that it is a legitimate complaint."
The warrant will be sought on the basis of two test cases. The first centres on an incident on 7 September 2009 when a drone strike hit a compound during Ramadan, brought by a man named Sadaullah who lost both his legs and three relatives in the attack.
The second complaint was brought by Kareem Khan over a strike on 31 December 2009 in the village of Machi Khel in North Waziristan which killed his son and brother.
Both men allege Rizzo was involved in authorising the attack. The CIA refused to comment on the allegations.
The pursuit of Rizzo will further damage US-Pakistani relations, which are already under severe strain following years of drone attacks and the killing of Osama bin Laden in May. Last week the US suspended $800m (£495m) in military aid to Pakistan.
The US launched its first drone strike against a target in Pakistan in 2004, the only one for that year. Last year there were 118 attacks after Obama expanded their use in 2009, while 2011 has so far seen 42.
The use of drones has been sharply criticised both by Pakistani officials as well as international investigators including the UN's special rapporteur Philip Alston who demanded in late 2009 that the US demonstrate that it was not simply running a programme with no accountability that is killing innocent people. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | July 2011 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Sources from the Brazilian government reveal that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro suggested U.S. President Donald Trump visit Argentina in order to back the re-election of President Mauricio Macri. (La Nación) | SAN PABLO.- Según revelaron hoy fuentes gubernamentales brasileñas citadas por el diario Folha de S. Paulo, el presidente Jair Bolsonaro le sugirió en una conversación a su par estadounidense, Donald Trump , visitar la Argentina antes de los comicios de octubre próximo para respaldar la reelección de Mauricio Macri .
Las elecciones en la Argentina y el rechazo de Bolsonaro a un pedido de Trump para intervenir militarmente en Venezuela fueron parte de la conversación que el brasileño y el estadounidense tuvieron el 28 de junio pasado en Japón, en el marco del G-20, informó Folha.
Citando a testigos de la reunión entre Trump y Bolsonaro, Folha contó que ambos mandatarios discutieron el proceso electoral argentino "con tono de preocupación ante una eventual derrota" de Macri.
"El brasileño -publicó Folha- propuso que Trump visitara la Argentina antes de las elecciones, en octubre, como una señal de apoyo a Macri. También sugirió una reunión con otros líderes latinoamericanos de derecha y la presentación de un paquete de soluciones para evitar lo que llamó el 'surgimiento de una nueva Venezuela en América del Sur'".
En otro tramo, según las fuentes, Trump sondeó a Bolsonaro sobre una acción militar conjunta para derrocar al presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, algo descartado por el brasileño.
Bolsonaro argumentó, según el diario, que las Fuerzas Armadas de Brasil fueron debilitadas en las últimas dos décadas, que la topografía venezolana favorecía a la acción de guerrillas chavistas y que una acción militar de este tipo le causaría problemas en la región sudamericana. | Diplomatic Visit | August 2019 | [] |
The House of Lords, the upper house of the United Kingdom, approves the Marriage Bill, meaning it will become law, enabling gay marriage in England and Wales to take place from 2014. | Same-sex marriage in England and Wales is a step closer to becoming law after the House of Lords approved the change. Peers backed a government bill paving the way for gay couples to marry. It is set to become law by the end of the week, with the first weddings in 2014.
Labour's Lord Alli said its passage meant "my life and many others will be better today than it was yesterday".
But Tory peer Lord Framlingham said the "ill-thought through" change had been "bulldozed" through Parliament.
Peers approved the principle of same-sex marriage last month, despite efforts by opponents to "wreck" the legislation.
MPs had earlier done the same, in the face of opposition from many Conservatives, the Church of England and other faith groups. Supporters of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill wore pink carnations during Monday's proceedings in the Lords, during which a series of minor amendments - including one relating to pension benefits for same-sex couples - were proposed.
Government minister Lady Stowell said the bill "puts right something which is wrong" and had been improved by detailed scrutiny in the Upper House. "I can't claim to be a gay rights campaigner, but I am a firm believer in justice and fairness," she said.
But the Gay Marriage No Thanks group claimed it had been prevented from mounting an advertising campaign around Parliament after its truck was vandalised and its driver threatened.
After clearing the Lords, the bill will return to the Commons for a short debate on government amendments before the Commons begins its summer recess on Thursday. The bill must then receive Royal Assent before it becomes law. | Government Policy Changes | July 2013 | ['(Same Sex Couples)', '(BBC)'] |
Kim Jong Un is named as the First Secretary of the North Korean Workers Party with his late father Kim Jong Il declared as its "eternal" General Secretary. | PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea fueled up a rocket Wednesday in preparation for what appeared to be an imminent liftoff while the country's young leader strengthened his power with a new title making him the nation's top political official.
Kim Jong Un was named first secretary of the ruling Workers' Party, a new post, while his late father, longtime leader Kim Jong Il, was given the posthumous title of "eternal general secretary" at a special Workers' Party conference, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.
Kim Jong Un's formal ascension, nearly four months after the death of his father, comes during a week of events leading up to celebrations Sunday marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of his grandfather, late President Kim Il Sung.
The centennial is a major milestone in the nation Kim Il Sung founded in 1948, and the streets were awash with new posters, banners and the national flag. Outside the city's war museum and the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium, women in traditional Korean dress gathered in clusters, practicing for this week's events.
North Korea has thrown open its doors to dozens of journalists from around the world to report on the events this week designed not only to honor Kim Il Sung but also to demonstrate unity as Kim Jong Un takes power.
One of the marquee events is a satellite launch poised to take place as early as Thursday that has raised international concern.
Space officials call the launch of the Unha-3 rocket, mounted with an Earth observation satellite, a "gift" to Kim Il Sung. They said Wednesday that the final step of injecting fuel into the three-stage rocket was under way in the coastal hamlet of Tongchang-ri.
"The launch of the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite is the pride of our nation and of our people," Rim Kwang Myong, a mathematics major at Kim Il Sung University, told The Associated Press.
A live feed at the General Command Center in the outskirts of Pyongyang showed the rocket on the launch pad covered with a tarp to protect the satellite from the wind.
Paek Chang Ho, chief of the command center, said the rocket is ready for liftoff as soon as engineers are given the green light. North Korea has informed international aviation, maritime and telecommunications authorities that the launch would take place between Thursday and Monday.
"We are injecting fuel as we speak," Paek told reporters from a viewing platform in front of a large screen showing the live feed. Sixteen scientists in white lab coats worked at computers below him.
Because liquid rocket fuel is highly volatile and corrosive, its injection into the rocket is usually one of the final steps in the pre-launch process, experts say. But the weather, and particularly the wind, could force delays.
The United States, Japan, Britain and others say the launch would constitute a provocation and would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions banning North Korea from developing its nuclear and missile programs.
Experts say the Unha-3 carrier is similar to the type of rocket that could be used to fire a missile mounted with a nuclear warhead to strike the U.S. or other targets.
Paek denied Wednesday that the launch was anything but a peaceful civilian bid to send a satellite into space. He said the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite is designed to send back images and data that will be used for weather forecasts and agricultural surveys.
"Some parties insist our peaceful space program is a missile test," he told foreign reporters given an exclusive tour of the nation's main satellite command center. "We don't really care what the outside world thinks. This launch is critical to developing our space program and improving our economy."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that the launch would be a direct threat to regional security and that the U.S. would pursue "appropriate action" at the Security Council if North Korea goes ahead with it.
This launch would be the country's third attempt since 1998. Two previous rockets, also named Unha, were mounted with experimental communications satellites and sent from the east coast.
North Korean officials say the 2009 satellite reached orbit, but the U.S. and other outside observers say they have seen no evidence that it did.
The new title Kim Jong Un received Wednesday is among several political appointments and promotions expected this week. He was unveiled as father Kim Jong Il's choice as successor at a similar party conference in September 2010.
Kim Jong Um already has been declared supreme commander of the armed forces, and is expected to gain other new titles formalizing his position as "supreme leader" of North Korea's people and party.
Delegates also approved a reshuffle of party leadership, electing a new generation of officials to key posts.
Party member Choe Ryong Hae emerged a rising figure. He was named to the powerful Presidium of the Central Committee's Political Bureau, joining three high-ranking officials already serving on the executive body.
Choe, who is in his early 60sh and recently was promoted to vice marshal, also was named a vice chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, KCNA said.
Six others were named to the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, including Jang Song Thaek, who is married to Kim Jong Il's sister, Kim Kyong Hui.
The immortalization of Kim Jong Il has provided a glimpse into how North Korea will treat the nation's second hereditary succession. After Kim Il Sung died in 1994, he was declared the country's "eternal president," and Kim Jong Il ruled as chairman of the National Defense Commission.
Kim Jong Un could be promoted to chairman of the National Defense Commission, said Peter Beck, a Korea specialist at the Asia Foundation.
However, even after his new titles are revealed, much about North Korea's leadership may remain murky, analysts said.
"North Korea is less monolithic than it looks from the outside, and, particularly as a new top leadership establishes itself in the wake of Kim Jong Il's death, there will be as many questions raised as answers provided by the political choreography," said John Delury, an assistant professor at Yonsei University in Seoul who has made several trips to North Korea in recent years.
k
. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | April 2012 | ['(AP via Yahoo News)'] |
Governor Jay Nixon declares a state of emergency and curfew in the town of Ferguson, Missouri following nights of rioting. | FERGUSON, Mo. — Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew in Ferguson, Mo., on Saturday, following nights of protests after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer.
"If we're going to have justice, we must first have and maintain peace," Nixon said at a Saturday afternoon press conference. "The eyes of the world are watching."
Capt. Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol says the curfew will run from midnight to 5 a.m. local time Sunday and will be enforced through conversations, not tear gas and tanks.
"We will survive this and will make a change," Johnson says.
Malik Shabazz, a member of Black Lawyers for Justice, said he has been working with a coalition of groups to help disperse crowds and keep the peace in Ferguson for the past several days.
Now, he is worried the curfew will make it harder for him to help authorities. He thinks the curfew asks people to go home too early. The past few nights, Shabazz said, people went home around 1:30 a.m.
He asked Johnson to extend the curfew during the news conference, where it was announced. Johnson however said it would stand.
"I don't want our people to get hurt," he said. "It's Saturday night. Twelve midnight is an early time. ... I can't be responsible for his timeline so it is what it is."
Margaret Huang, deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA, disagrees with the curfew.
"It's clear that the community doesn't feel heard," Huang says. "It's hard to build trust when the governor won't meet with community members and restricts their movements with a curfew. The people of Ferguson should not have their rights further restricted."
Daniel Moore, 42, of Ferguson said he thought a curfew would only make things more tense among protesters and the police. Moore said he fears police will use the curfew as an excuse to harass people on foot and in cars.
"It's stupid," Moore said as he stood among fellow protesters at QuikTrip. "They just want to control everything. ... I guess they (want) us to obey — I can't tell if I will."
Derrick Brown, 25, said he was optimistic that people would abide by the curfew but wasn't sure whether he supported it.
"It'll be interesting to see the crowd move at midnight," Brown said. "I'm curious to see how that process will unfold."
FBI agents have joined local authorities in some witness interviews related to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer, after those witnesses expressed doubts about the integrity of the local inquiry, a federal law enforcement official said Saturday.
The official, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said the joint interviews have involved few witnesses so far. But the concerns echo themes from waves of protesters during the past week who have cited a broken trust with local police.
Local authorities are heading the investigation into last week's deadly shooting, while the FBI is conducting a parallel inquiry into possible federal civil rights violations.
In a statement issued Friday evening, William Woods, the FBI's special agent in charge, U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan and Molly Moran, acting chief of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division confirmed that federal authorities had already conducted "several'' witness interviews.
"Over the next several days, teams of FBI agents will be canvassing the neighborhood where the shooting took place to identify any individuals who may have information related to the shooting and have not yet come forward,'' the officials said.
The developments came after armored vehicles, riot gear, tear gas and looting returned to Ferguson early Saturday as a brief period of peaceful demonstrations gave way to a violent atmosphere of anarchy.
The intense night shattered a short-lived calm that had been hailed as a turning point after a week of protests following the fatal shooting of Brown, a black unarmed teenager killed by Darren Wilson one week ago.
Renita Lamkin, 43, is the pastor of St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church in St. Charles, Mo. Each day since the protests began Lamkin has been at the front of the protest line urging people to remain calm. The curfew is necessary, she said, to keep the focus on Brown's death rather than looting.
Angela Whitman, 44, of Berkeley, St. Louis, helped organize a moment of silence for Brown on Saturday afternoon. The group stood in silence for 30 minutes with their hands up across the street from the Ferguson Police Station. | Government Policy Changes | August 2014 | ['(USA Today)'] |
International campaigners against the drone attacks, carried out by the United States in Pakistan, launch their attempt to have former CIA legal chief John A. Rizzo arrested and charged with the murders of hundreds of people after his admission in Newsweek that he approved attacks each month since 2004. | Campaigners against US drone strikes in Pakistan are calling for the CIA's former legal chief to be arrested and charged with murder for approving attacks that killed hundreds of people.
Amid growing concern around the world over the use of drones, lawyers and relatives of some of those killed are seeking an international arrest warrant for John Rizzo, until recently acting general counsel for the American intelligence agency.
Opponents of drones say the unmanned aircraft are responsible for the deaths of up to 2,500 Pakistanis in 260 attacks since 2004. US officials say the vast majority of those killed are "militants". Earlier this week 48 people were killed in two strikes on tribal regions of Pakistan. The American definition of "militant" has been disputed by relatives and campaigners.
The attempt to seek an international arrest warrant for Rizzo is being led by the British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith of the campaign group Reprieve, and lawyers in Pakistan. The lawyers are also building cases against other individuals, including drone operators interviewed or photographed during organised press facilities.
A first information report, the first step in seeking a prosecution of Rizzo in Pakistan, will be formally lodged early next week at a police station in the capital, Islamabad, on behalf of relatives of two people killed in drone strikes in 2009. The report will also allege Rizzo should be charged with conspiracy to murder a large number of Pakistani citizens.
Now retired, Rizzo, 63, is being pursued after admitting in an interview with the magazine Newsweek that since 2004 he had approved one drone attack order a month on targets in Pakistan, even though the US is not at war with the country.
Rizzo, who was by his own admission "up to my eyeballs" in approving CIA use of "enhanced interrogation techniques", said in the interview that the CIA operated "a hit list". He also asked: "How many law professors have signed off on a death warrant?"
Rizzo has also admitted being present while civilian operators conducted drone strikes from their terminals at the CIA headquarters in Virginia.
Although US government lawyers have tried to argue that drone strikes are conducted on a "solid legal basis", some believe the civilians who operate the drones could be classified as "unlawful combatants".
US drone strikes were first launched on Pakistan by George Bush and have been accelerated by Barack Obama.
Much of the intelligence for the attacks is supplied either by the Pakistani military or the ISI, the country's controversial intelligence agency.
Both have blocked journalists and human rights investigators from visiting the tribal areas targeted, preventing independent verification of the numbers killed and their status.
While Stafford Smith of Reprieve estimates around 2,500 civilian deaths, others say the number is closer to 1,000. US sources deny large numbers of civilian deaths and say only a few dozen "non-combatants" have been killed.
While killing civilians in military operations is not illegal under international law unless it is proved to be deliberate, disproportionate or reckless, Stafford Smith believes the nature of the US drone campaign puts it on a different legal footing.
"The US has to follow the laws of war," he said. "The issue here is that this is not a war. There is zero chance, given the current political situation in Pakistan, that we will not get a warrant for Rizzo. The question is what happens next. We can try for extradition and the US will refuse.
"Interpol, I believe, will have to issue a warrant because there is no question that it is a legitimate complaint."
The warrant will be sought on the basis of two test cases. The first centres on an incident on 7 September 2009 when a drone strike hit a compound during Ramadan, brought by a man named Sadaullah who lost both his legs and three relatives in the attack.
The second complaint was brought by Kareem Khan over a strike on 31 December 2009 in the village of Machi Khel in North Waziristan which killed his son and brother.
Both men allege Rizzo was involved in authorising the attack. The CIA refused to comment on the allegations.
The pursuit of Rizzo will further damage US-Pakistani relations, which are already under severe strain following years of drone attacks and the killing of Osama bin Laden in May. Last week the US suspended $800m (495m) in military aid to Pakistan.
The US launched its first drone strike against a target in Pakistan in 2004, the only one for that year. Last year there were 118 attacks after Obama expanded their use in 2009, while 2011 has so far seen 42.
The use of drones has been sharply criticised both by Pakistani officials as well as international investigators including the UN's special rapporteur Philip Alston who demanded in late 2009 that the US demonstrate that it was not simply running a programme with no accountability that is killing innocent people. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2011 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Astronauts Yuri Malenchenko, Sunita Williams, and Akihiko Hoshide return from ISS to Earth with spacecraft Soyuz TMA–05M marked the end of Expedition 33 and the start of Expedition 34. | ALMATY, Nov 19 (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz capsule landed on the Kazakh steppe on Monday, safely delivering a trio of astronauts from a four-month stint aboard the International Space Station.
The Soyuz TMA-05M capsule, carrying Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams, parachuted through dark, cloudy skies and touched down at 7:56 a.m. local time (0156 GMT).
A round of applause greeted the landing at Russian mission control near Moscow, footage from NASA TV showed. A screen inside the building showed the message: “We have landing!”
The capsule blazed a red plasma trail across the dark sky after re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. It landed on its side on the snow-covered steppe 52 miles (83 km) northeast of the town of Arkalyk in northern Kazakhstan.
The astronauts were extracted quickly from the capsule and wrapped in blue thermal blankets. All three smiled and appeared relaxed as they chatted with the search-and-recovery team, NASA TV footage showed.
“Fresh air - very good!” Williams said, in Russian. The landing, after a three-and-a-half-hour descent from the orbital outpost, was the first pre-dawn touchdown since 2006.
The Expedition 33 crew had spent 125 days aboard the International Space Station, a $100 billion research complex involving 15 countries and orbiting 250 miles (410 km) above Earth.
The crew conducted a number of experiments, including tests on radiation levels at the space station and research into the effects of melting glaciers and seasonal changes on Earth’s ecosystems, NASA said in a statement.
They also managed several visits to the space station by international and commercial spacecraft and conducted several space walks to maintain the station.
A three-man crew remains aboard the space station. When NASA’s Kevin Ford and rookie cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin - both on their first space mission - docked on Oct. 25, they brought with them Japanese fish for a variety of experiments.
They are scheduled to be joined by another trio - Canadian Chris Hadfield, U.S. astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko - who are due to blast off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 19.
Monday’s smooth landing will help to ease concerns over Russia’s space programme following a string of recent mishaps.
The Soviet Union put the first satellite and the first man in space, but Moscow’s space programme has suffered a series of humiliating setbacks in recent months that industry veterans blame on a decade of crimped budgets and a brain drain.
While none of the mishaps have threatened crews, they have raised worries over Russia’s reliability, cost billions of dollars in satellite losses and dashed Moscow’s dreams of ending its more than two-decade absence from deep-space exploration.
Since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttles last year, the United States is dependent on Russia to fly astronauts at a cost to the nation of $60 million per person. | New achievements in aerospace | November 2012 | ['(Reuters)', '(AP)'] |
In Democratic Party congressional leadership elections, U.S. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi is re-elected, holding off the challenge by Tim Ryan. Democratic whip Steny Hoyer is also re-elected. Current caucus vice chair Joseph Crowley takes the caucus chairmanship. Linda Sánchez, in a three-way race, is elected the new vice chair. | — -- Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi held onto her job leading House Democrats today as her caucus re-elected her to the position -- despite rumblings from inside and outside the caucus that change and fresh ideas may be needed after a disappointing November election.
The Democratic caucus voted 134-63 in favor of Pelosi.
Pelosi was challenged by Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who has argued that younger members with a vision for expanding the party's economic message and geographical outreach is key to future electoral and legislative success. After the vote, Ryan said the Democratic caucus needs to come together.
The party's new leadership was chosen today in a private meeting using secret ballots. Current leaders decided to push back the voting amid the rumblings from some members that a pause, and possibly new leaders, could be good for their caucus.
Members elected a new Democratic leader, caucus chair, whip, and caucus vice chair, though only the leader and vice chair positions were currently contested.
Pelosi has led the House Democrats for 13 years. She was the first female speaker of the House, from 2007 to 2011, and she served as whip before then. In 2010, she defeated former Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) to keep her seat after a wave of Tea Party members elected cost her party the majority in the House.
Rep. Linda T. Sánchez (D-CA) won vice-chair of the caucus; she is the first minority woman elected to House leadership. Sánchez is also chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Reps. Linda Sánchez and Barbara Lee had faced off for caucus vice chair -- both women of color and from California.
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) ran unopposed to keep his position as Democratic whip and Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) was chosen as the caucus chair after having served as vice chair.
After the November 8 election, about two dozen members signed a letter asking Pelosi to bump back the caucus’s leadership election. Even more grumbled that rushing into it looked tone deaf. Pelosi conceded that point, but was quick to announce that she enjoyed two-thirds of the caucus support. She also rolled out endorsements from MoveOn and other progressive groups.
Ryan said repeatedly that he thought Pelosi was inflating her support. Eleven members came out publicly to back him.
Just this week, Pelosi announced that she would include a representative from the freshmen class to serve as part of the House Democratic leadership, but she also renamed Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) to serve as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee again, despite the fact that Democrats only picked up six seats this go-around and many in the party suggested it should be an elected position.
Several staff and members on the Hill rolled their eyes at the move, as the position could have been potentially an easy place for Pelosi to signal she is willing to make some changes.
Earlier this month, Ryan told ABC News, "Donald Trump is the president, that is how bad we are out of touch, that the backbone of our party went and voted for Donald Trump. And I say that’s our fault." He signaled a desire to reach out specifically to working class and blue collar voters in the Rust Belt.
"This election is not going to be won at fundraisers on the coasts," the Ohio Democrat told The Wall Street Journal last week. "It’s going to be won in union halls in the industrial Midwest and fish fries in the Midwest and the South."
His staff said he spent much of the Thanksgiving break making calls to his colleagues and they believed it would be a close race.
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who backed Ryan, wrote in a statement, "At this critical juncture, we face a choice –- will we preserve a broken status quo or will we set our party on a new course?"
After the vote, Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), one of the first to publicly back her Ohio colleague, said, "We did not lose today. We won. We have a caucus, we have leadership that has to listen to us."
Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR) expressed frustration over the selection of Pelosi.
"I am worried we just signed Democrats death certificate for next eight years," he said.
The White House has not formally weighed in. But, President Obama has praised Pelosi since the election, saying last week, "I cannot speak highly enough of Nancy Pelosi. She combines strong, progressive values with just extraordinary political skill." | Government Job change - Election | November 2016 | ['(ABC)'] |
Recently freed democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi criticizes the recent elections in Burma, but calls for dialogue with Myanmar government and pledges to keep working toward restoring democracy and improving human rights in Myanmar. | Yangon, Myanmar (CNN) -- Freed activist Aung San Suu Kyi pledged Monday to keep working toward restoring democracy and improving human rights in Myanmar, saying she is not concerned about being detained again in the future.
"Actually, I don't think about it," Suu Kyi, who was released from house arrest Saturday, said in her first comments to CNN. The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient has spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest for her dogged opposition to authoritarian rule in Myanmar -- which she calls by its former name, Burma.
"I may be detained again," Suu Kyi said, noting she's been in and out of house arrest over the last two decades. "I just do what I can do at the moment," she said.
"We have to work together," she said. "That is the main message. Those inside the country have to work together and also those supporters outside."
Suu Kyi had much the same message for her supporters Sunday, telling them in a speech, "I'm not going to be able to do it alone. You've got to do it with me. One person alone can't do anything as important as bringing change and democracy to a country."
"We would like to form a network of people working for democracy," she told CNN Monday, and said she would like to open a dialogue with "those who are in a position to do something, to change the situation in Burma for the better."
She said she has had no contact with Gen. Than Shwe, Myanmar's top military leader and head of state. Asked what she would say to him, she said, "I think what we are looking for is dialogue, so I'm not just thinking about what I have to say to him. I think what we have to think about is what we have to say to each other."
She said she does not know what issues Shwe might want to bring up, but said she would like to discuss issues "relevant to the interests of Burma's people."
On the country's recent elections, she said her National League for Democracy party, although it played no role in the vote, is going to look into allegations of vote-rigging and other activities. She said that report could be provided to countries such as Vietnam who endorsed the balloting, and "they can study the report and decide for themselves how free and fair those elections were."
The probe will be done because of the "rule of law" and not because the party has anything to gain or lose, she said.
Asked whether Myanmar's current ruling military junta should remain in place, Suu Kyi said, "This is something that we have to discuss." She said she wants to know more about how citizens feel regarding the elections, find out more about sanctions and hear from those who imposed the sanctions.
"We have to review the situation from time to time," she said. "This is something that we've done over the years, and we're going to do it again."
Suu Kyi has not seen her children in about a decade. Asked if that will change soon, she said she wasn't sure, adding that her youngest son is in Bangkok, Thailand, awaiting a visa but had not yet been given one. She said she recently spoke with him -- "My conversations with my sons are always nice."
She also has grandchildren. She told CNN she met her oldest grandson about 10 years ago, "when he was very small."
She said she has no current plans to travel outside Myanmar, though she hopes to travel within its borders. She said she likely will not leave the country before seeing "significant progress in the way of democratic practices and human rights."
On how she spent her time while under house arrest, she said she stayed busy. "There were lots of things I had to take care of," she said. Suu Kyi said she listened to the radio for hours every day to stay in touch with the outside world and did a lot of reading. She was able to meet people from the outside, such as her attorneys and her doctors, she said. "There were never really enough hours in the day," she said. "I know that sounds strange."
A Facebook page supporting Suu Kyi has more than 250,000 fans. Asked whether she plans to join Facebook or Twitter, Suu Kyi said, "I was discussing this with some of the young people," who told her that most youths like Facebook because it's easier for them. She said she has not yet decided whether to join Facebook, Twitter -- or both.
She said she would rather consider the Facebook support as just that, support for her work, rather than popularity.
She noted that a number of political prisoners remain detained in Myanmar, and pleaded with the outside world not to forget them, saying that what they have to go through is "much worse" than her experience on house arrest. She also thanked those across the globe for supporting her. | Famous Person - Give a speech | November 2010 | ['(CNN)', '(The Australian)'] |
Thousands of people gather in London for an open–top bus parade to celebrate Chelsea's UEFA Champions League victory over Munich in last night's final. | Tens of thousands of fans have been cheering Chelsea's Champions League-winning squad on a parade through the streets of west London.
The team, on two open-top buses, began the procession from its Stamford Bridge home up to Parsons Green.
The Blues secured victory in a clash with four-time cup winners Bayern Munich in Germany, on Saturday. Chelsea won 4-3 on penalties.
It is the first time a London football club has won the European cup.
Players, interim manager Roberto di Matteo and the club's owner Roman Abramovich were onboard the first bus as it made its way through the streets.
The bus stopped at Eel Brook Common where team members spoke to the thousands of waiting fans.
Captain John Terry, who did not play on Saturday after being suspended, took the microphone first and began chanting victory slogans, with fans joining in, as the players on the bus took turns to address them.
Fans sang "Happy Birthday" to goalkeeper Petr Cech and Didier Drogba, who scored two goals in the nail-biting final, sang back "We are the Champions".
Supporters then chanted "We want you to stay", at the prompt of club staff on the bus.
Speaking to the crowd Frank Lampard, who was the captain in the final, said: "We've been here a long time waiting to win this thing and it was the most amazing night of all of our careers. "And we're just so pleased to come back here and celebrate with all our fans. "You've been amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you. The best club in the world - easy."
Fans dressed in the Chelsea strip created a sea of blue all along the route of the parade. And as the cup was handed to di Matteo, a huge cheer went up in the crowd.
The team's bus, decked in club colours with Champions of Europe written in the front, stopped all the way along the route as players lift the trophy for their supporters.
Fans waved flags and threw celery at the players, as a mark of respect - a tradition that began in the late 1980s, when supporters started throwing sticks in the air, accompanied by a song.
David and Mary Fergus had travelled from Southampton, Hampshire, to be at the parade.
Mr Fergus, 40, an IT consultant, said: "I'm still blinking in disbelief that we actually won it.
"We definitely rode our luck but I think it was one of those things that was written in the stars.
"A great atmosphere here and I hope the lads on the bus enjoy today, they've earned it."
Close to 70,000 fans turned out for Chelsea's last victory parade in 2010 after the team won the Premier League and FA Cup.
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Police in Hong Kong arrest over 300 people on the previously banned 1 July march and after the passing of the new national security law. The new law punishes crimes considered as subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison. It also allows extradition to the Mainland for trial. | HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong police fired water cannon and tear gas and arrested more than 300 people on Wednesday as protesters took to the streets in defiance of sweeping security legislation introduced by China to snuff out dissent.
Beijing unveiled the details of the much-anticipated law late on Tuesday after weeks of uncertainty, pushing China’s freest city and one of the world’s most glittering financial hubs on to a more authoritarian path.
As thousands of protesters gathered for an annual rally marking the anniversary of the former British colony’s handover to China in 1997, riot police used pepper spray and fired pellets as they made arrests after crowds spilled into the streets chanting “resist till the end” and “Hong Kong independence”.
“I’m scared of going to jail but for justice I have to come out today, I have to stand up,” said one 35-year-old man who gave his name as Seth.
Police said they had made more than 300 arrests for illegal assembly and other offences, with nine involving violations of the new law.
The law punishes crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison, will see mainland security agencies in Hong Kong for the first time and allows extradition to the mainland for trial.
China’s parliament adopted the law in response to protests last year triggered by fears that Beijing was stifling the city’s freedoms, guaranteed by a “one country, two systems” formula agreed when it returned to Chinese rule. Beijing denies the accusation.
Hong Kong police cited the law in confronting protesters.
“You are displaying flags or banners/chanting slogans/or conducting yourselves with an intent such as secession or subversion, which may constitute offences under the ... national security law,” police said in a message displayed on a purple banner.
But critics fear it will end the pro-democracy opposition and crush freedoms, including an independent legal system and right to protest, that are seen as key to Hong Kong’s success as a financial centre.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the new law was an affront to all nations and Washington would continue to implement President Donald Trump’s directive to end the territory’s special status.
Britain said it would stand by its word and offer all those in Hong Kong with British National Overseas status a “bespoke” immigration route.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab described Wednesday’s protests as heartbreaking and reprimanded HSBC and other banks for supporting the new law, saying the rights of Hong Kong should not be sacrificed for bankers’ bonuses.
Britain and Canada also updated their travel advisories for Hong Kong, saying there was an increased risk of detention.
A former employee of the British consulate in Hong Kong, Simon Cheng, said he had been granted political asylum by the British government after being beaten by Chinese secret police last year in mainland China during 15 days of detention.
In a post on Facebook after the enactment of the national security law, he said he hoped other Hong Kong people would be offered protection by Britain.
Police fired water cannon to try to disperse the protesters. A game of cat and mouse reminiscent of last year’s often violent demonstrations followed, with protesters blocking roads before running away from riot police charging with batons, only to re-emerge elsewhere.
Police posted pictures on Twitter of an officer with a bleeding arm saying he was stabbed by “rioters holding sharp objects”. The suspects fled while bystanders offered no help, police said.
On July 1 last year, hundreds of protesters stormed and vandalised the city’s legislature to protest against a bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.
Those protests evolved into anti-China demonstrations and calls for democracy, paralysing parts of the city and paving the way for Beijing’s new law.
‘BIRTHDAY GIFT’
In Beijing, Zhang Xiaoming, executive deputy director of Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, told reporters suspects arrested by a new Beijing-run security office could be tried on the mainland.
He said the new office abided by Chinese law and that Hong Kong’s legal system could not be expected to implement the laws of the mainland. Article 55 of the law states that Beijing’s security office in Hong Kong could exercise jurisdiction over “complex” or “serious” cases.
“The law is a birthday gift to (Hong Kong) and will show its precious value in the future,” Zhang said, adding the law would not be applied retroactively.
Speaking at a flag-raising ceremony to mark the handover, the city’s Beijing-backed leader, Carrie Lam, said the law was the most important development since 1997.
“It is also an inevitable and prompt decision to restore stability,” Lam said at the harbour-front venue where the last colonial governor, Chris Patten, a staunch critic of the security law, tearfully handed back Hong Kong to China.
Some pro-Beijing officials and political commentators say the law is aimed at sealing Hong Kong’s “second return” to the motherland after the first failed to bring residents to heel.
Luo Huining, the head of Beijing’s top representative office in Hong Kong, said at the ceremony the law was a “common aspiration” of Hong Kong citizens.
Some pro-democracy activists gave up membership of their groups just before the law came into force on Tuesday, though they called for the campaign to carry on from abroad.
“I saw this morning there are celebrations for Hong Kong’s handover, but to me it is a funeral, a funeral for ‘one country two systems’,” said pro-democracy lawmaker Kwok Ka-ki.
Reporting by Yanni Chow, Twinnie Siu, Pak Yiu, Scott Murdoch, Joyce Zhou, Clare Jim, Jessie Pang, Tyrone Siu and James Pomfret in Hong Kong, Yew Lun Tian in Beijing, William James and Guy Faulconbridge in London and Denny Thomas in Toronto; Writing by Anne Marie Roantree and Marius Zaharia; Editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
United Kingdom Secretary of State for Work and Pensions James Purnell announces his resignation and requests that Prime Minister Gordon Brown also resign. | James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary, last night dealt a monumental blow to Gordon Brown's chances of holding onto office when he dramatically announced he was quitting the cabinet and asking Brown "to stand aside to give Labour a fighting chance of winning the next election".
His statement, in effect declaring Brown unelectable, will further weaken the prime minister's waning authority and takes the challenge to his leadership to a dangerous level.
Purnell made his sensational move after polls closed in the local and European elections - in which Labour was subsequently decimated across the board, informing Brown by phone last night. It prompted a furious reaction in Number 10 with ministers saying Purnell was profoundly mistaken.
Brown had no inkling that Purnell was going to quit, since the work and pensions secretary shrouded his move in secrecy in order to prevent No 10 mounting a pre-emptive strike against him, or seeking to challenge his motives.
A spokesperson for Purnell said: "He feels Gordon should now stand aside to give the party a fighting chance of winning the next election. He is not seeking the leadership nor acting with anyone else. This is not about jobs or careers."
The source added: "He [Purnell] has made the decision in the last few weeks – he's always been very loyal, but he now feels he can no longer go out and defend the prime minister. That is why he has taken the difficult decision to resign."
No 10 said it was disappointed Purnell had chosen to tell newspapers before telling the leader of the Labour party.
Liam Byrne, the cabinet office minister said Purnell was profoundly mistaken. He warned: "Let us remember one thing if there is a debate, if there is a leadership contest, if there is a change of leader is the British public really going to wear the Labour party carrying on in office, is it not going to ask for an immediate general election. Having just put on not our most united front, that election will not be good for the Labour party." David Miliband, the foreign secretary, told the BBC last night he would not be resigning from the cabinet and that he did not agree with Purnell's decision.
Despite that Purnell's move is a blow to Brown because No 10 believed it was succeeding in isolating the cabinet-level rebellion after Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, quit on Wednesday in a badly timed move that alienated many party activists since it was taken only 48 hours before yesterday's elections.
Purnell, a confirmed moderniser, decided, in contrast to Blears, that he would wait until polls closed last night before making his announcement so that he could not be accused of damaging Labour's chances in the elections.
Unlike Blears, Purnell criticised Brown's electability in his resignation. Purnell, seen as a possible future leadership candidate, said he would not be seeking the leadership if it became vacant.
Alan Johnson, the health secretary, remains favourite to succeed Brown if the prime minister is toppled, but Purnell gave no indication of his preference as to who should succeed Brown, or how that could be achieved. He emphasised he was acting wholly alone and not in concert with any other cabinet ministers. But his decision to resign means there is a serious likelihood that other members of the cabinet will break ranks.
Conservative leader David Cameron denounced the "appalling, shambolic" state of the Government and called for an election.
"In a deep recession and political crisis we need a strong Government. Instead we have a Government falling apart in front of our eyes. Britain deserves better than this,'' he said.
"With this resignation the argument for a general election has gone from being strong and powerful to completely unanswerable.
"For the sake of the country Gordon Brown must take the one final act of authority left open to him, go to the palace today and call the general election we have been demanding."
Brown's allies battled last night to limit the damage, portraying Purnell as misreading the public mood as one of opposition to Brown when it was really disenchantment with the political class.
Brown was given a boost when Caroline Flint, the Europe minister, said she was remaining loyal to Brown, despite her friendship with Blears.
Two senior backbenchers, Barry Sheerman, the chairman of the education select committee , and Graham Allen broke cover to demand Brown stand aside. Sheerman called on Brown to allow a secret ballot of Labour MPs on Monday while Allen said Brown "has a decision to make overnight and should take the honourable decision to quit." In a sign that something close to a civil war was breaking out another Labour backbencher, Geraldine Smith, said she was disgusted by Purnell's "self- indulgent disloyalty" and insisted most Labour MPs were sticking by the prime minister.
But Downing Street will be aware that other ministers will undoubtedly assess their personal positions as the poll results come in over the next three days, and could be emboldened to resist new cabinet posts or quit altogether. One former cabinet minister said the test would be whether Labour avoids third place in the polls, adding he would be expressing his views on Sunday night.
Brown's opponents in the party always said the reshuffle would be a crucial test of his authority, and that if he could not assemble a credible government, power would seep away from him.
Purnell's move is also likely to strengthen the secretive backbench revolt which is gathering steam and was reported to have about 75 members. Earlier in the week it is understood that Brown, in a sign of the respect he has for Purnell, offered him the post of children's secretary, the position currently held by Ed Balls.
The fact that he made the offer suggests that the prime minister has been planning to move his close ally, Balls, to the Treasury in a controversial move that would see the risky ousting of Alistair Darling.
Darling has been resisting being shifted from the Treasury, saying he had played a difficult hand over the recession as well as could be hoped.
Brown's allies had earlier disclosed that the prime minister would next week be putting forward a policy prospectus as "an alternative to a damaging leadership contest". They had also said his policies would extend New Labour's reforms.
But clearly Purnell, a former culture secretary, had lost confidence in Brown's ability to develop a sufficiently clear domestic policy. He had also become disenchanted with Brown's interest in constructing political dividing lines with the Tories, arguing that such politics alienate the electorate. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | June 2009 | ['(Guardian)'] |
Yemeni troops claim to have killed more than 100 Shia rebels in the past two weeks, including two leaders, but the rebels deny their leaders, Mohsen Saleh Gawd and Salah Jorman, are dead and no independent confirmation is made available. | Yemeni troops carrying out an offensive against Shia rebels in the north of the country claim to have killed more than 100 fighters, including two leaders.
The operation, involving air strikes, artillery and tanks, began two weeks ago, aimed at crushing the rebels and recapturing the town of Harf Sufyan. The rebels deny their leaders, Mohsen Saleh Gawd and Salah Jorman, have been killed and say civilians have died. There has been no independent confirmation of the numbers killed. A government statement said: "The bodies of more than 100 rebels have been recovered from the roadside outside the town of Harf Sufyan. "It seems that the bodies were those of rebels trying to flee the town during a mopping-up operation over the past two days." The statement added that security forces had succeeded in "totally purging the town of rebel elements in the past two days, forcing the rebels to surrender or flee". The rebels, from the Zaidi Shia sect, want the restoration of Shia rule in the north of Yemen, which is mainly Sunni. Yemen's president has accused the rebels of trying to overthrow the government. | Armed Conflict | August 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
Twenty–six people are killed during and 100 others remain missing after a landslide near Chongqing, China. | Chinese state TV carried footage of the rescue efforts
Rescue workers are searching for survivors feared buried in a landslide in south-western China that has left at least 72 people missing.
On Friday afternoon, millions of cubic metres of rock collapsed on an iron-ore mine and several homes in a valley near Chongqing city. Twenty-six people have died, state TV reported. Eight have been rescued. Recovery efforts were being hampered as heavy machinery cannot be used on the unstable terrain, officials said. Further rain is also expected in the region, slowing the work of some 500 rescuers who have been drafted to help. 'Spare no effort'
Rescuers told state news agency Xinhua that they were hopeful of finding 27 miners who were underground at the time, but that prospects for those buried on the surface were not good.
The debris covered an area 600m long (2,000ft) and 300m wide in a valley at Jiwei Mountain, Xinhua said. Some houses are buried 40m beneath the slide. Rescue workers are also digging a canal to drain a lake that was created when the landslide blocked a river. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have ordered the local authorities to "spare no effort", Xinhua reported. China's mining industry has a poor safety record, with thousands of deaths reported every year. A similar landslide in Shanxi province in northern China last year killed 254 people when a dam holding back waste from an illegal mine collapsed, flooding a community. It is not clear what caused the latest incident, but an official with the Chongqing work safety supervision bureau told Associated Press news agency that the landslide did not appear to have been caused by the work at the mine. | Mudslides | June 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge start a nine–day 2011 royal tour of Canada. | Canada's governor general has welcomed the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Ottawa at the start of the royal couple's first official overseas tour.
"Welcome to Canada - honeymoon capital of the Commonwealth," David Johnston said before crowds at Government House.
Prince William, who began his address in French, Canada's official language alongside English, said he and his wife had had a "longing" to visit together.
The duke and duchess earlier visited Canada's National War Memorial.
The couple will be staying at Government House - also known as Rideau Hall - while in Ottawa. Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke after the governor general, saying: "Your journey across our fair Dominion marks the beginning of your journey into the hearts of Canadians. We wish you all the best on both counts.
"We are both honoured and delighted that you have chosen us for your first official tour together."
Prince William responded: "Merci beaucoup, Votre Excellence et Monsieur le Premier Ministre, pour votre accueil chaleureux."
This was translated live on Canadian television as: "Thank you very much Your Excellency and Prime Minister for your warm welcome."
The duke continued: "Catherine and I are so delighted to be here in Canada.
"Instilled in us by our parents and grandparents, who love this country, we have been looking forward to this moment for a very long time - and before we were married, we both had a longing to come here together.
"The geography of Canada is unsurpassed and is famous for being matched only by the hospitality of its people."
Switching to French again, Prince William joked: "It will improve as we go along."
The royal couple later attended a barbecue hosted by Mr Johnston, who acts as the Queen's official representative in Canada.
Canada is a member of the Commonwealth and Queen Elizabeth II, Prince William's grandmother, is its head of state.
At the war memorial earlier, Prince William laid a wreath and his wife Kate placed a bouquet of flowers. They split up to greet some 3,000 well-wishers.
Before their walkabout fans could be heard chanting: "We love you Kate", but there were also screams for the duke.
Alexandra Anghel, 18, from Ottawa waited five hours to see the royal couple. She said the duchess seemed "down to earth".
"It was a surreal moment to meet her, someone I never thought I would ever meet and there she was in front of me. William's lineage is amazing, he's literally walking history - I can't believe I saw walking history."
The duke and duchess, who married in April, will visit seven Canadian cities on their nine-day visit, before heading to the US.
On Friday, they will celebrate Canada's national day. The pair will also visit Quebec, Prince Edward Island, where they are to participate in a dragon boat race, and Calgary.
In Calgary they will open the Calgary Stampede - an annual rodeo and festival dubbed the "greatest outdoor show on Earth".
Canada has created a new royal flag for the visit, which features three maple leaves, from Canada's national tree, at its base.
The flag flew from the cockpit of the jet carrying the royal couple when it touched down from the UK on Thursday afternoon local time. It will also fly from their cars and buildings they are visiting or staying in.
The visit will be closely followed by the media, with nearly 1,400 journalists - including about 100 from Britain - accredited to cover the visit.
The Duchess of Cambridge has reportedly packed up to 40 different outfits for the tour.
She left London wearing a dress by French designer Roland Mouret and a blazer by Canadian label Smythe les Vestes and changed into a navy lace dress by Erdem Moralioglu during the flight to Ottawa.
Mosha Lundstrom Halbert, associate fashion news editor at Canadian fashion magazine Flare, said Kate's choice of clothing was symbolic.
"It's very exciting," she said. "To me, Erdem really represents the crossover between British and Canada fashion. He's really established in the UK but Canada is where he was born and raised."
BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt says Canada is a safe first visit for a royal spreading her new wings, while US residents continue to be fascinated by Britain's royalty.
The cost of the visit to the Canadian government, not including security, is estimated to be 1.4 million Canadian dollars (£958,580).
A poll commissioned by the Toronto Star newspaper found that more than half the 18 to 34 year-olds questioned about the visit were indifferent about the trip.
The duke and duchess will travel to the US state of California for two days from 8 July, attending a black-tie Bafta reception and dinner in Los Angeles on 9 July. | Diplomatic Visit | June 2011 | ['(Canadian Press via Winnipeg Free Press)', '(BBC)'] |
Republican Senators Ron Johnson and Bob Corker opt not to commit to endorsing Donald Trump in the 2020 elections. | Two Senate Republicans, both of whom are leaving the Senate after their current terms, said they would not necessarily back President Donald Trump for re-election in 2020, with one of them speculating that he may not even seek the Oval Office again.
“I have no idea who's going to run for president in 2020 and I'm not about to say who I will support for that, so we have no idea who's going to run. Whether the president runs again or not is questionable, candidly,” Sen. Bob Corker, who is retiring from the Senate this year, said on CNN.
The president announced in February that he would run for a second term, and has already named his 2016 digital strategist Brad Parscale as his campaign manager.
Corker added during the interview that he would like to see who else is included in the field of 2020 Republican candidates before making a decision on who to endorse.
The Tennessee senator, who also chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has had a complex relationship with Trump. He had previously questioned the president’s fitness for office, which led to Trump calling him names on Twitter, but eventually the two men reconciled.
He has been asked several times in recent days if he would support the president for re-election.
Just yesterday, he said his position changes by the hour and that many of his colleagues are likewise conflicted.
“Any Republican senator that hasn't been conflicted over this presidency is either comatose or is pretty useless in their blindness,” Corker said during a breakfast with reporters Wednesday.
Sen. Ron Johnson, also appearing on CNN today, chastised an anchor for asking if he would support the current Republican president for re-election, calling it a “gotcha question.”
"It could be a completely different world by 2020. We have a 2018 election first," Johnson said. Johnson, who was re-elected to his seat in 2016, has said that he will not seek re-election again. | Government Job change - Election | April 2018 | ['(ABC News)'] |
The European Space Agency's Philae spacecraft wakes up after six months in hibernation as comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko gets closer to the sun. | The European Space Agency (Esa) says its comet lander, Philae, has woken up and contacted Earth.
Philae, the first spacecraft to land on a comet, was dropped on to the surface of Comet 67P by its mothership, Rosetta, last November.
It worked for 60 hours before its solar-powered battery ran flat.
The comet has since moved nearer to the Sun and Philae has enough power to work again, says the BBC's science correspondent Jonathan Amos. An account linked to the probe tweeted the message, "Hello Earth! Can you hear me?"
On its blog, Esa said Philae had contacted Earth, via Rosetta, for 85 seconds on Saturday in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.
"Philae is doing very well. It has an operating temperature of -35C and has 24 watts available," said Philae project manager, Dr Stephan Ulamec.
Scientists say they now waiting for the next contact.
Esa's senior scientific advisor, Prof Mark McCaughrean, told the BBC: "It's been a long seven months, and to be quite honest we weren't sure it would happen - there are a lot of very happy people around Europe at the moment."
Philae was carrying large amounts of data that scientists hoped to download once it made contact again, he said.
"I think we're optimistic now that it's awake that we'll have several months of scientific data to pore over," he added.
This is one of the most astonishing moments in space exploration and the grins on the faces of the scientists and engineers are totally justified, says BBC science editor David Shukman.
For the first time, we will have a hitchhiker riding on a comet and describing what happens to a comet as it heats up on its journey through space, he adds.
Philae is designed to analyse the ice and rocky fragments that make up the comet.
Prof Monica Grady from the Open University told the BBC that scientists now hoped to be able to carry out experiments to see whether comets were the source of life on Earth. Comets contained a lot of water and carbon, and "these are the same sorts of molecules responsible for getting life going," she said.
"What we're trying to find out is whether the building blocks of life, in terms of water and carbon-bearing molecules, were actually delivered to Earth from comets."
When Philae first sent back images of its landing location, researchers could see it was in a dark ditch. The Sun was obscured by a high wall, limiting the amount of light that could reach the robot's solar panels.
Scientists knew they only had a limited amount of time - about 60 hours - to gather data before the robot's battery ran flat.
But the calculations also indicated that Philae's mission might not be over for good when the juice did eventually run dry. The comet is currently moving in towards the Sun, and the intensity of light falling on Philae, engineers suggested, could be sufficient in time to re-boot the machine. And so it has proved. Scientists must now hope they can get enough power into Philae to carry out a full range of experiments. One ambition not fulfilled before the robot went to sleep was to try to drill into the comet, to examine its chemical make-up. One attempt was made last year, and it failed. A second attempt will now become a priority.
Return of the plucky robot
Philae's extraordinary opportunity
Rosetta: The whole story
The Rosetta probe took 10 years to reach 67P, and the lander - about the size of a washing-machine - bounced at least a kilometre when it touched down.
Before it lost power, Philae sent back images of its surroundings that showed it was in a dark location with high walls blocking sunlight from reaching its solar panels.
Its exact location on the duck-shaped comet has since been a mystery.
Esa had a good idea of where it was likely to be, down to a few tens of metres, but could not get Rosetta near enough to the comet to acquire conclusive pictures.
Continued radio contact should now allow precise coordinates to be determined, correspondents say.
Comet 67P is currently 205 million km (127 million miles) from the Sun, and getting closer. It is due in August to get to a distance of about 186 million km, before then sweeping back out into the outer Solar System.
As it approaches the Sun, the comet is warming and its ices are melting.
This process will throw out a huge shroud of gas and dust, and if Philae can continue to keep working it will provide scientists with an extraordinary view of what is happening right at the surface of 67P. | New achievements in aerospace | June 2015 | ['(BBC)'] |
A bomb at an office building in Baghdad kills eight people and injures 10. The U.S. military blames the attack on rogue members of Shia Muslim militias. The attack is believed to be a suicide bombing, but the U.S. military is investigating allegations that a bomb was planted in the building. | The aftermath of the attack at a council office in a Shia area of Baghdad
Six Iraqis, two American soldiers and two US civilians have been killed in a bomb attack at a local council office in eastern Baghdad. One of the US civilians was an official with the state department and the other worked for the defence department, US embassy officials said. Ten people were wounded including three members of the Sadr City council. The US military has blamed the attack on what it calls "special groups", or rogue members of Shia Muslim militias.
Iraqi police said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, but investigations by the US military suggested a bomb had been planted in the building. A suspect who tested positive for contact with explosives had been caught trying to flee the scene, the US said. Eyewitnesses said the bomb exploded inside the office of the deputy leader of the council, who was among the injured. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the deaths of the American civilians were "a terrible reminder of the dangers that our colleagues face daily in advancing our critical foreign policy goals".
Emphasis on councils
Representatives had been due to elect a chairman of the council for Sadr City, a militant Shia stronghold which has been the scene of fierce battles between US troops and fighters from the Mehdi Army, the militia loyal to the anti-US Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr. On Monday, a gunman opened fire at US troops attending a municipal council meeting in a mainly Sunni Muslim area south-east of Baghdad, killing two soldiers and and wounding another three. Correspondents say the US military has been working hard to shore up local government in Iraq amid a sharp drop in insurgency activity, to prevent areas from falling back under the control of Sunni and Shia extremists. "This was the fourth meeting of this district council, led by hard-working Iraqis determined to make a difference and set Sadr City off on the right path," said US spokesman Lt Col John Digiambatista. "Special groups are afraid of progress and afraid of empowering the people," he added. He said the "cowardly" attack would only harden the determination of the council, as well as local civilians and the military. | Armed Conflict | June 2008 | ['(BBC News)'] |
Maria Sharapova crashes out of the 2010 Australian Open, losing in the first round against compatriot Maria Kirilenko, 6–7 , 6–3, 4–6. | Russian star Maria Sharapova has slumped to her worst grand slam performance in seven years after a shock first round exit from the Australian Open.
The 14th seed and 2008 Open winner, Sharapova fell to friend and countrywoman Maria Kirilenko 7-6 (7-4), 3-6, 6-4.
It was her first match at Melbourne Park since she won the title two years ago, having withdrawn last year with a right shouler injury.
Sharapova has won every major title expect the French Open but this was her worst performance since she left Roland Garros in 2003 after a first round loss.
The 22-year-old said the result was a combination of a lack of confidence and a relentless opponent.
"I certainly had my chances and just didn't execute," Sharapova said.
"When she was up and then I'd get back there, back in the game, I just didn't take advantage of that and let her control the situation again.
"She's not really the type of player that makes you feel that good, but there are many of those types of players. She changes the pace a lot. She just has a little bit of a different type of game."
Sharapova said she played a match of extremes.
"There is no grey area. It was just up and down in many areas, and I just finished at the down level.
"I wouldn't say it's 'belief.' I think 'belief' is either something you have or you don't have.
"Whether it's just a little bit of, maybe confidence ... obviously it's the first tournament of the year and I just came up against somebody that just played really good tennis. That's just the way it goes."
However Sharapova was philosophical about the loss and promised to quickly regroup.
"I could be disappointed or I could just take it as it is and just go back on the court and just keep working.
"I choose option two ... that it's a bad day and you have to get on with your life.
"There are many worse situations in life. There are people that don't even know what a tennis match is in the world.
"A bad day's not going to stop me from doing what I love. I'm still going to go back on the court and work hard and perform. I'll be back here on a Saturday of the second week, so you'll watch."
Along with Kirilenko, second seeded Russian Danira Safina and Belgian comeback queen Kim Clijsters also won through to the second round.
Safina defeated Slovakian Magdalena Rybarikova 6-4, 6-4 while Clijsters, who stunned the tennis world when she won the US Open last year in her third tournament back from becoming a mother, sailed to a 6-0, 6-4 victory over Canadian Valerie Tetreault.
- AAP
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AEST = Australian Eastern Standard Time which is 10 hours ahead of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) | Sports Competition | January 2010 | ['(4–7)', '(Australian Broadcasting Corporation)'] |
The United States Armed Forces says that three American soldiers have been killed in rocket or mortar attack in eastern Baghdad. | BAGHDAD (AP) The U.S. military says three American soldiers have been killed in a rocket or mortar attack in eastern Baghdad.
A statement says the soldiers were killed in an indirect fire attack Monday in an eastern section of the capital.
The statement doesn't give an exact location for the attack but the area has been the scene of intense fighting recently between Shiite militiamen and U.S.-Iraqi troops.
BAGHDAD (AP) Militants shelled Baghdad's Green Zone on Monday as troops tried to push Shiite fighters farther from the U.S.-protected enclave and out of range for their rockets and mortars.
At least three more salvos hit the Green Zone in central Baghdad, but there were no reports of injuries. In Sadr City the stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia U.S. soldiers battled deeper into the district a day after fierce clashes that killed at least 38 suspected militants, the military said.
U.S. soldiers killed seven more extremists Monday after coming under small-arms fire in Sadr City, the military said. Four of the suspects were killed in an airstrike and three others by an Abrams tank crew, according to a statement.
Sadr City has become the center of a showdown between the Iraqi government and the Mahdi Army, which is led by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. forces have been increasingly drawn into the battles including operations seeking to curb a rise in mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone.
On Monday, 30 Iraqi lawmakers from various political parties urged Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to end the monthlong confrontation, saying innocent civilians and children were the main victims of the fighting.
"Yes, you can do it if you remember your own children," said a joint statement read by Mustafa al-Heeti, a Sunni member of parliament. "Your people (are) are demanding of you to intervene and solve the crisis peacefully."
Their appeal came after U.S. forces, backed by Abrams tanks and Bradley armored personnel carriers, fired on insurgents positions in Sadr City. The military said 38 militants were killed. Iraqi health officials said 58 people, including five children and eight women, were injured.
The fighting erupted after militants took advantage of a sandstorm to unleash a barrage of 107 mm rockets and 82 mm mortar shells at the Green Zone, which includes the U.S. and British embassies and some key Iraqi government offices.
The near-daily shelling of the Green Zone has become acutely embarrassing for both Iraqi authorities and the U.S. military.
Rather than mount an all-out assault, U.S. commanders have tried to limit the shelling by walling off the southern third of Sadr City and trying to put the Green Zone out of range of light rockets and mortars.
Chinese-made 107 mm Katyushas have a range of about five miles, while 82 mm mortars can exceed three miles. Much of the Green Zone is more than five miles from firing positions beyond the new wall.
"It's a tried and true strategy that we'll continue to prosecute here because it has worked well in other locations, and we think it'll work well here," said Brig. Gen. Will Grimsley, an assistant division commander.
Col. John Hort, who commands U.S. troops on the southern edge of Sadr City, said the heavy sandstorm sharply limits sensors and targeting lasers on helicopters and unmanned drones used to identify firing positions. | Armed Conflict | April 2008 | ['(AP via Google News)'] |
The Turkish media reports that the Turkish Army has sent troops into Syria to evacuate troops and artefacts from the Tomb of Suleyman Shah in the Aleppo Governorate which has been under threat from Islamic State for several months. One soldier has reportedly been killed. , | PM Davutolu said Feb. 22 Turkish army took control of another area inside Syria, raising the flag, for the future transfer of Süleyman ah artifacts. Citing international treaties, Turkey recognizes the land around the tomb as its territory, 'wherever in Syria it is.' | Armed Conflict | February 2015 | ['(New York Times)', '(Hurriyet Daily News)'] |
2006 European floods: The Danube, swollen by heavy rain and melting snow, rises to record levels, and floods hundreds of homes in Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. | A state of emergency has been declared in some areas as the authorities try to shore up defences and move out people threatened by the rising water. In Romania, authorities carried out controlled flooding to divert water away from populated areas. Last summer floods killed dozens and damaged farmland and infrastructure.
"We must not relive the nightmare of last year," Romanian Interior Minister Vasile Blaga said.
"We must act quickly to prevent the loss of human lives."
Power plant threat
The Danube is expected to rise as flood waters from central Europe make their way south. Romanian Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu told a news conference that in the next two days they expected the Danube to pass its highest level for a century.
A state of alert has been declared in 12 areas bordering the river, the French news agency AFP reported. On Thursday several hundred people were removed from areas bordering the river as 300 houses in the south were flooded, according to the agency. | Floods | April 2006 | ['(BBC)'] |
Slovak citizens vote for a new president, with front runner Zuzana Čaputová facing Maroš Šefčovič. | Anti-corruption candidate Zuzana Caputova has won Slovakia's presidential election, making her the country's first female head of state.
Ms Caputova, who has almost no political experience, defeated high-profile diplomat Maros Sefcovic, nominated by the governing party, in a second round run-off vote on Saturday. She framed the election as a struggle between good and evil. The election follows the murder of an investigative journalist last year.
Jan Kuciak was looking into links between politicians and organised crime when he was shot at home alongside his fiancée in February 2018.
Ms Caputova cited Mr Kuciak's murder as one of the reasons she decided to run for president, which is a largely ceremonial role. She won 58% of the vote, with Mr Sefcovic trailing on 42%.
Her opponent was nominated by the ruling Smer-SD party, which is led by Robert Fico, who was forced to resign as prime minister following the killings.
Ms Caputova gained national prominence as a lawyer when she led a case against an illegal landfill lasting 14 years. Aged 45, a divorcee and mother of two, she is a member of the liberal Progressive Slovakia party, which has no seats in parliament. In a country where same-sex marriage and adoption is not yet legal, her liberal views have seen her promote LGBTQ+ rights. The opponent she defeated, Mr Sefcovic, is vice president of the European Commission.
Saturday night did feel like a moment. Addressing crowds of supporters in her impromptu election HQ at Bratislava's Habsburg-era indoor market, Zuzana Caputova quietly extolled values that now seem to come from a bygone political age: compassion, tolerance, truth. But while liberals rejoice at what they see as proof the tide of populism in Central Europe can be turned, some urge caution. One analyst said darkly within hours of her election: "Expect Fico to launch a campaign against her right away, before June's inauguration."
He added that parliament would seek to stymie her liberal agenda even before she took office, for example by passing legislation to make same-sex marriage difficult if not impossible. But, he said, her appeal to voters remained strong.
"Viktor Orban [the Hungarian PM] attacked her hard from Budapest," he said. "But I'm hearing most ethnic Hungarians [10% of Slovakia's population] voted for her anyway."
In the first round, Ms Caputova won 40% of the vote, with Mr Sefcovic gaining less than 19%. Several heads of state - including those of neighbouring Austria and Ukraine - have expressed their support for Ms Caputova on social media.
My warmest congratulations to Zuzana #Čaputová, President-elect of #Slovakia, on the impressive success in the presidential election in Austria’s neighbouring country. Wishing her all the best and success for everything that lies ahead. (vdb)
She will be sworn in on 15 June when Slovakia's current president, Andrej Kiska, finishes his term of office.
| Government Job change - Election | March 2019 | ['(BBC)'] |
Israel approves the construction of hundreds of homes for Israeli settlers in the West Bank in response to a Palestinian attack. | JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Demonstrations in solidarity with settlers and a Cabinet committee's approval for new housing in the West Bank are among the Israeli responses to the suspected terrorist attack that killed five members of a West Bank Jewish family.
An estimated 20,000 people attended Sunday afternoon's funeral at a cemetery in Jerusalem to mourn the deaths of Udi Fogel, 36, and Ruth Fogel, 35, and their children Yoav, 11; Elad, 4; and Hadas, 3 months.
Two sons -- Roi, 8, and Yishai, 2 -- were sleeping in a side bedroom and were spared in the Sabbath eve attack in Itamar on March 11. A daughter, Tamar, 12, returned home at midnight from a youth group program to discover the massacre.
The family had been evacuated from Gush Katif and lived in Ariel before building a home in the northern West Bank, near the Palestinian city of Nablus.
Following the funeral, protesters holding demonstrations across Israel in sympathy with residents of the West Bank blocked junctions, some holding signs reading "We are all settlers" and "Peace isn’t signed with blood." One of the largest rallies took place in Tel Aviv near the army's national headquarters. Passing drivers honked in solidarity.
Israeli media quoted Palestinian sources as saying that settlers set five cars on fire in the Hawara village near Itamar and threw stones at Palestinian cars passing near Kedumim. Palestinians also reportedly threw stones at buses returning to the Itamar area from the funeral.
Earlier Sunday, an Israeli Cabinet committee approved the construction of hundreds of housing units in West Bank settlements, reportedly in response to the attack. The vote, after several months of no new construction approval, is for 500 housing units in Gush Etzion, Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel and Kiryat Sefer.
The settlements are believed to be among those that will remain as part of Israel under a peace agreement with the Palestinians. The committee discussed expanding the Itamar settlement or creating a new settlement in memory of the victims, Haaretz reported.
The United States, which wants an Israeli freeze on settlement building, reportedly was informed of the decision.
Danny Dayan, chairman of the Yesha Council settlers' umbrella group, called the approval of new housing in response to the attack "a small step in the right direction." He said it was "deeply troubling that it requires the murder of children in the arms of their parents to achieve such an objective."
At the funeral, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said Udi and Ruth Fogel personified devotion to the Zionist vision and were pioneers.
"Your hands held both scythe and book, teachers and settlers whose entire lives were the love of their country and the love they had for their neighbors," Rivlin said. "Build more, live more, more footholds -- that is our response to the murderers so that they know -- they can't defeat us."
Udi Fogel's brother Motti said that "All the slogans about Torah and settlement, the Land of Israel and the Jewish people try to make us forget the simple and painful truth: You are gone. You are gone and no slogan will bring you back. Above all, this funeral must be a private event. Udi, you are not a symbol or a national event. Your life had a purpose of its own and your horrible death must not make your life into a pawn."
On Sunday, it was clarified that the fringe Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades of Imad Mughniyeh had claimed responsibility for the attack. The group is named for Mughniyeh, who was Hezbollah's chief of military operations until he was killed by a car bomb in Damascus in 2008. Hezbollah blames Israel's Mossad intelligence agency for the killing.
In Gaza, Hamas officials reportedly handed out candy to residents in celebration of the attack.
Israeli military and police forces were scouring the West Bank Sunday for the murderer or murderers, as well as to prevent revenge attacks by Israeli settlers.
"Israel will not stand by idly after such a despicable murder and will act vigorously to safeguard the lives of the citizens of Israel and punish the murderers," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement released after the Sabbath ended. "I expect the international community to sharply and unequivocally condemn this murder, the murder of children.
Netanyahu also called on the Palestinian leadership, who he said condemned the attacks with "weak and mumbled statements," to "stop the incitement that is conducted on a daily basis in their schools, mosques and the media under their control. The time has come to stop this double-talk in which the Palestinian Authority outwardly talks peace and allows -- and sometimes leads -- incitement at home."
P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas called the killings "despicable," "inhuman and immoral" in an interview Monday morning on Israel Radio. "A human being is not capable of something like that," he said in Arabic, translated into Hebrew by the inteviewer. Abbas also said that the P.A. would work to find the killer or killers responsible and that he has agreed a request by Israel to launch a joint investigation. Abbas also took issue during the interview with Netanyahu's accusation that the Palestinian Authority incites against Israel in its mosques and schools and offered to set up an Israeli-Palestinian-American committee to look in to the allegations.
PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad "firmly" condemned the attack, The Jerusalem Post reported.
The White House and the Mideast Quartet -- the diplomatic grouping of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States that guides the peace process -- also condemned the attack, offering their condolences to the victims' family and to the Israeli people.
"There is no possible justification for the killing of parents and children in their home," said the White House statement, which called the attack an act of terrorism.
"Attacks on any civilians are completely unacceptable in any circumstance," the Quartet's statement said. The Quartet also called to "expedite efforts to achieve Israeli-Palestinian and comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace."
Volunteers for ZAKA, a search and rescue organization, described the scene shortly after the terror attack as "absolutely horrific."
"We saw toys lying next to pools of blood, Shabbat clothes covered in blood and everywhere the smell of death mixing with the aroma of the Shabbat meal,” one volunteer said.
The volunteers said the sights were “among the worst we have ever seen."
Israeli President Shimon Peres said in a statement that the attack "indicates a loss of humanity. There is no religion in the world or any faith that allows these kinds of horrible acts."
Meanwhile, the head of Israel's Government Press Office is demanding an apology from Cable News Network over its coverage of the attack, which avoided describing the incident as a terrorist attack and then placed the words 'terrorist attack' in quotation marks in a headline on its website.
The CNN report said that the Israeli military was searching for an intruder, though the official Israel Defense Forces statement said soldiers were searching for the terrorist.
Also on Sunday, Members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction in an official ceremony named a town square in the West Bank town of Al-Bireh, near Ramallah, in memory of a terrorist involved in killing 37 Israelis
Dalal Mughrabi was killed in a 1978 bus hijacking on Israel's coastal road. She had directed the hijacking of two buses on the coastal road between Haifa and Tel Aviv, which led to the murder of 37 Israelis, including 13 children.No PA government officials attended the ceremony, according to Reuters.
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This article was made possible by the support of readers like you. Donate to JTA now. | Government Policy Changes | March 2011 | ['(AFP via Google News)', '(BBC)', '(JTA)'] |
In tennis, Serena Williams wins the French Open by defeating Maria Sharapova. | Top-seeded Williams beat No. 2 Maria Sharapova 6-4, 6-4 to secure her second French Open title, 11 years to the day after she beat her older sister Venus to win her first in 2002.
"Eleven years," Williams said in French during the trophy ceremony. "I think it's unbelievable. Now I have 16 Grand Slam titles. It's difficult for me to speak because I'm so excited."
The national anthem of the USA, played for the winner, was heard for the first time for a singles champ at Roland Garros since 2002, Williams' last title here.
A year after crashing out of the French Open's opening round for the first time in her career, Williams returned to play one of her best wire-to-wire tournaments.
She dropped 29 games, matching her best Grand Slam effort (she also dropped 29 games on her way to the 2002 U.S. Open title).
The 31-year-old American is sixth on the all-time Grand slam singles list, two majors behind Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova.
Fist pumping and screaming "C'mon!" almost from the get-go, Sharapova survived a 0-40 deficit in the opening game and then broke Williams for 2-0.
But the 26-year-old failed to convert two game points on her serve the next game, and Williams — invoking some vocal histrionics and menacing fist pumps of her own — broke back.
Sharapova didn't fade, breaking Williams again for 4-4, but the American had too much firepower. Her baseline drives were deeper. Her serves were more accurate. Her defense was better.
"She played a great match," Sharapova said. "She played strong, she played deep, served really good; served better than I did."
Williams had 10 aces, including three in the final game, the last and biggest one (123 mph) came on match point.
"Well, honestly, at that point I was just so nervous," Williams said about those three final-game aces. "I thought, I'm not going to be able to hit groundstrokes."
"No joke," she said, to laughter. "As you see the one groundstroke I did hit went like 100 feet out. I thought to myself, 'Look, Serena, you've just got to hit aces. That's your only choice.' "
Sharapova suggested she was not surprised that Williams was able to deliver big serves when she needed them.
"Obviously it's a little bit of confidence but also ... we know she's going to be able to hit a big serve," Sharapova said. "I think if I was built like Serena I hope I'd be able to hit a big serve like that, too. "
Williams' celebration at the end looked much like a first-time-major champion: sinking to her knees, burying her face in the clay, then her hands, and flashing big, bright, wide smiles throughout the trophy ceremony.
Since her first-round exit here a year ago, Williams has captured three of the last four majors and a gold medal at the London Olympics.
Williams charmed crowds with her on-court interviews in the native tongue, something she said she had prepared for 12 months ago.
"I love Paris," Williams said. "I spend a lot of time here. I live here. I practice here. I think I am a Parisian."
Williams also congratulated Sharapova during the ceremony.
"She played a beautiful final," Williams said in French. "She's a great champion. I hope to be with her again next year."
"Merci beaucoup," Sharapova responded with a laugh.
Sharapova, the defending French Open champion, dropped to 2-14 vs. Williams, including 13 in a row and four defeats this season.
"I think she played probably the best she's played me," Williams said of Sharapova. "I think she really wanted it. I think she came out with a real plan, and she was really determined."
Sharapova, who admitted before the final that her struggles against Williams do weigh on her, said after the match that she tried her best and will move forward from here.
"You have to move forward," Sharapova said. "And it doesn't matter, you know, how many times I have lost to a player or what situation I was in, whether I was up or down, how it ended or how it finished.
"You move on. Of course I thought I earned my position to be in the final. I did put up a fight obviously today against her; it was not enough."
When asked if she can take positives from the match, or simply walk away disappointed, Sharapova suggested it's not that simple.
"I don't think that's black and white," Sharapova said. "It's a combination, obviously. Yeah, you lost and you can be really down about it. And I am because I'm a competitor and I'm a fighter and I don't train to lose. Nobody does. So of course I'm disappointed about that.
"But that's the feeling that ultimately will make you work harder and make you think a little bit. Gives you more determination. So, yeah, I hope that that's what I take away from the match."
Williams is 16-4 in Grand Slam finals. Sharapova, the only other active player to complete a career Grand Slam, fell to 4-4.
Williams improved to 43-2 this year, and is on a career-best 31-match winning streak. She wrapped up the clay season unbeaten, including 23-0.
With this victory, Williams eclipsed seven-time champion Evert as oldest Roland Garros winner in the Open era (31 years, 256 days).
Getting better with age?
"I really believe age is a number at this point, because I have never felt so fit," Williams said. "I feel great. I look great."
How much longer can she keep this going?
"I want to go out in my peak," she said. "That's my goal. But have I peaked yet?"
Now comes the switch to grass, and she'll be a heavy favorite to win Wimbledon for the sixth time. | Sports Competition | June 2013 | ['(USA Today)'] |
Indonesia falls into a recession for the first time since the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis after its economy contracts 3.49% in the third quarter. |
Indonesia has officially entered its first recession since the 1998 Asian financial crisis as its economy contracts again in the third quarter, albeit at a slower pace, as the government has allowed more economic activities to resume after easing coronavirus restrictions.
Southeast Asia’s largest economy shrank 3.49 percent on an annual basis in the third quarter, as almost all gross domestic product (GDP) components fell amid the persistent rise in COVID-19 cases, Statistics Indonesia (BPS) announced on Thursday.
The figure is worse than the 3 percent contraction forecast by a Reuters poll of analysts, as well as President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s expectation, but is still narrower than the second-quarter contraction of 5.32 percent.
An economy enters a recession if it records negative growth for two consecutive quarters.
According to the BPS, the Indonesian economy rebounded 5.05 percent quarter-on-quarter (qoq) in the period from July to September, in a reversal from the 4.19 percent qoq contraction it recorded in the second quarter.
“Although the economy continued to contract, there was significant improvement in economic activity compared to the second quarter,” BPS head Suhariyanto told reporters in a virtual briefing. “We are hoping that economic activity will further improve in the fourth quarter with loosening social restrictions.”
As regions began to gradually lift the large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) and cities began reopening in June, economic activities started stirring again in the third quarter.
However, economic activities did not reach pre-coronavirus levels, as the continuing rise in COVID-19 cases held up recovery. Jakarta even reinstated the “full” PSBB in September as the rise in daily cases strained its health system, before scaling it back down to the transitional PSBB in October.
The Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) soared 1.85 percent to 5,199.69 as of 11:51 a.m. Western Indonesia Time following the BPS’ announcement, while the rupiah appreciated 0.89 percent against the United States dollar to Rp 14,435.
BPS data shows that household spending, which contributes more than 50 percent of GDP, fell 4.04 percent – slower than the 5.52 percent contraction booked in the second quarter – led by a spending slump in transportation, restaurants and hotels. However, consumer spending in healthcare and education increased in the period from July to September.
Meanwhile, investment shrank 6.48 percent – smaller than the 8.61 percent contraction in April-June – as businesses cut back sharply on their investment in machinery and other products.
Exports and imports respectively plunged 10.82 percent and 21.86 percent, reflecting the downturn in global trade and domestic demand due to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
However, government expenditure jumped 9.76 percent in the third quarter to recoup from the second-quarter contraction of 6.9 percent, driven by higher social and capital spending in efforts to fight the impacts of the pandemic.
The government has earmarked Rp 695.2 trillion (US$47 billion) for a stimulus package to revive the economy, which is forecast to shrink between 0.6 percent and 1.7 percent this year. | Financial Crisis | November 2020 | ['(The Jakarta Post)'] |
Kuwait and France sealed a deal whereby the Gulf nation will upgrade its defense capabilities with $2.8 billion worth of military equipment. Defense experts cite the ongoing conflict in Iraqi Civil War, the June 2015 terror attack claimed by ISIS in Kuwait City, and a reluctance by the U.S. to supply Kuwait as reasons for the deal. | With the Islamic State creating chaos next door in Iraq, Kuwait is arming itself to the teeth. The tiny, oil-rich nation just signed a defense deal with France worth $2.8 billion.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and his Kuwaiti counterpart Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad al-Sabah finalized the agreement on Wednesday in Paris. France will equip Kuwait with 24 Caracal helicopters, with an option for six more, as part of a contract worth $1.2 billion. The helicopter was designed for cargo transport and search and rescue missions, and has supported military operations in Afghanistan, Libya, and Mali.
The two countries have also inked two provisional agreements. One involves France upgrading and maintaining Kuwait's small patrol warships, the other reportedly involves the sale of French-made all-terrain Sherpa trucks — light armored vehicles with 360-degree firepower that can carry up to four people and are designed to withstand landmines.
| Sign Agreement | October 2015 | ['(Vice News)'] |
SpaceX launches Bangabandhu-1, Bangladesh's first geostationary communications satellite, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, United States. | On Friday, Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, successfully launched the most advanced Falcon 9 rocket to date, called a Falcon 9 Block 5, then landed its giant booster on a ship at sea.
The launch came after an aborted attempt on Thursday, when flight computers automatically aborted the mission due to a relay glitch. The company resolved the problem and successfully launched on Friday.
Musk says the Block 5 is the final major version of the company's workhorse launcher, and that the system is designed to be the "most reliable rocket ever built."
"I hope fate does not punish me for these words, but that is unequivocally the intent, and I think our most conservative customers would agree that is an accurate statement," Musk told reporters during a teleconference call on Thursday. "Please, fate, do not punish me for this — the intentions are good."
The rocket's 16-story booster landed on a drone ship at sea about 8 minutes after launch.
The upper stage, which continued into deep space, deployed the first geostationary communications satellite for Bangladesh, called Bangabandhu-1, around 4:47 p.m. ET.
Thales Alenia Space, the company that designed and built Bangabandhu-1, said in a statement that the spacecraft is a "historical first satellite" for Bangladesh.
Bangabandhu-1 is expected to bring state-of-the-art phone, radio, TV, and internet service to the nation of more than 160 million people, as well as surrounding countries like Nepal, Myanmar, and Bhutan.
But the 23-story rocket carrying the satellite was the real star of the mission: the Falcon 9 Block 5 is the most powerful, most reusable, and most likely last version of SpaceX's workhorse orbital launcher.
SpaceX had previously launched 55 missions on a Falcon 9 since the rocket's debut in June 2010. But engineers have steadily improved the system over time, making it taller, stronger, less heavy, and more powerful.
The most important changes have been made to help the booster — which makes up about 60-70% of marginal launch costs, according to Musk — launch, land, and be relaunched. Those upgrades have involved the addition of avionics, fins, and landing legs.
All other orbital rockets in use today get used just once then are discarded in the ocean.
So far, SpaceX has only reused a Falcon 9 booster twice. With Falcon 9 Block 5, Musk hopes to expand that record to 10 launches for each new booster with only quick inspections needed between launches. With minor servicing and refurbishments, he said, the boosters could perhaps get reused 100 times or more.
Combined with other tricks to reuse parts of the rocket — primarily the fairing (the nosecone of the rocket) and the upper stage — he noted this could lower marginal launch costs to under $5-6 million.
"We expect this to be the mainstay for SpaceX business," Musk said of the new rocket.
The reason Musk has called Falcon 9 Block 5 the "final version" is that SpaceX's 6,000 employees are shifting nearly all of their engineering efforts to focus on the company's Big Falcon Rocket.
The two-stage BFR system is expected to be taller than the Statue of Liberty, deliver a 16-story spaceship into orbit, be fully reusable, and ferry 100 people and 150 tons of cargo to Mars. It will ultimately replace all other SpaceX rockets, as it will be cheaper to launch and reuse than any Falcon 9 — at least in theory.
SpaceX recently got a permit to begin constructing the first BFR spaceships in the Port of Los Angeles, about a dozen miles south of the company's headquarters. Musk hopes to begin test-launching the first BFR spaceships at SpaceX's Texas facilities early next year.
Although the rocket lifted off at 4:14 p.m. ET, you can rewatch the entire SpaceX live broadcast below.
The booster lands on a droneship about 8 minutes after the launch.
About 25 minutes after that, the upper stage of the rocket deploys the Bangabandhu-1 satellite into orbit some 22,230 miles above Earth. | New achievements in aerospace | May 2018 | ['(Business Insider)'] |
At least 49 people die in Irkutsk, Russia after consuming hawthorn–scented bath essence as if it were alcohol. The product has been found to contain methanol. | At least 49 people have died in the Siberian city of Irkutsk after drinking bath essence, Russian authorities say.
The hawthorn-scented liquid was consumed as if it were alcohol, according to Russia's Investigative Committee.
Several others are in a serious condition. Several people have been detained over the deaths and police are removing bottles from shops. Investigators said a warning that it should not be swallowed was ignored.
The product, called Boyaryshnik (Hawthorn), was found to contain methanol, a toxin found in antifreeze. A state of emergency has been declared in Irkutsk, and Russia's top investigative agency opened an enquiry into the incident.
Police uncovered an illicit workshop where the lotion was being made, and arrested its owners.
Russian media reported that the victims were poor people, aged between 35 and 50, and were not drinking together.
Household products are seen by some as a cheap alternative to alcohol across the former Soviet Union.
Two years of Western economic sanctions have made the situation worse, and analysts say up to 12 million Russians drink cheap surrogate alcohol, including perfume, after shave, anti-freeze and window cleaner.
While poisoning from alcohol is common, this is one of the deadliest incidents in years. This, officials said, was because the ethyl alcohol which was normally present in this product had been replaced by methanol.
A local official told Tass news agency that the liquid came in bottles whose labels said the content was 93% spirit.
President Vladimir Putin's spokesman described the case as a "terrible tragedy".
And Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told a cabinet meeting that authorities need to ban such substances quickly. "It's an outrage, and we need to put an end to this," he said in televised remarks.
Last month, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin said medicines and perfumes accounted for up to 20% of the alcohol drunk in the country.
'Aftershave drink' kills Russians
Toxic alcohol kills 84 in India
Indonesian bootleg alcohol kills 24
One Covid vaccine dose cuts hospital risk by 75%
But the number of Delta variant cases recorded in the UK has risen by 79% in a week, figures show. | Mass Poisoning | December 2016 | ['(The New York Times)', '(BBC News)'] |
Flooding in Niger kills at least 38 people and leaves more than 92,000 people displaced. | Last Updated: 08th September 2016 06:04 AM
| A+A A- NIAMEY: At least 38 people have been killed and more than 92,000 left homeless since June in disastrous floods in Niger, the United Nations have said.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the deaths, up from a previous government toll of 14, followed torrential rains in August.
More than 26,000 livestock have been lost and more than 9,000 homes destroyed, the UN said, citing government figures.
Authorities and NGOs have already given out aid to more than 50,000 people, the UN added, with many of the homeless sheltering in schools and public buildings.
Despite being in the middle of the desert, Agadez in the north and Tahoua to the west are among the worst hit regions, along with Maradi in the south.
Niger is in the midst of its annual rainy season, having struggled to overcome a severe food crisis caused by drought.
One of the poorest countries on the planet, its
authorities are also struggling with 300,000 refugees and internally displaced people who have fled the Boko Haram insurgency in Niger's southeast and in neighbouring Nigeria.
| Floods | September 2016 | ['(The New Indian Express)'] |
In Northern Ireland, 15 police officers are injured during rioting at Belfast City Hall following a vote to change Belfast City Council's policy on flying the union flag. | Fifteen police officers have been injured during rioting at Belfast City Hall on Monday night. It followed the passing of a vote to change the council's policy of flying the union flag all year round. A loyalist protest outside the building erupted into violence minutes after the motion was passed. Disorder also broke out in east Belfast.
Council staff removed the flag at 07:00 GMT on Tuesday. It will now only be flown on 18 designated days.
Two security guards and a press photographer were also hurt during the violence at the City Hall. he police were attacked with bottles and bricks in the Albertbridge Road and Templemore Avenue areas of east Belfast.
Three people were arrested - two teenagers in east Belfast and a 22-year-old man in Donegall Square in the city centre.
First Minister Peter Robinson condemned the violence but said the decision to remove the flag was "provocative".
In a statement, the DUP leader said: "There is no excuse or justification for attacks on police officers, council staff, and property."
However, Mr Robinson added: "The decision to pursue the removal of the flag from city hall and other council buildings, despite warnings of the likely consequential impact on community relations, was foolish and provocative. "Those who talk most about building community relations have by their actions in the council substantially damaged relations across the city."
Nationalists wanted the union flag taken down altogether, but in the end voted on a compromise from the Alliance party that it would fly on designated days. The vote was 29 to 21, with unionists accusing the Sinn Fein, the SDLP and Alliance of attacking their cultural identity. Sinn Fein Policing Board member Gerry Kelly said the police operation had been completely inadequate.
"If that had been 1,000 or more republicans out there they would not have left it that they were able to come into the back of city hall." However, Chief Superintendent Alan McCrum said: "We put in place last night a considered police operation, a substantial police operation - there were dozens, in fact scores of police officers deployed there.
"There was nothing to suggest before last night that there was going to be any significant violence."
He added: "Put the responsibility on the people who actually committed the criminality.
"Clearly there was a level of orchestration - some people brought bolt cutters, others put on masks immediately after the vote came through."
Justice Minister David Ford said some unionist politicians had to share some of the blame for the disturbances.
"The violence which took place at the city hall and round St Matthew's Church (in east Belfast) was the responsibility of two groups of people," he said. "The first is those who went to the city hall spoiling for a fight, who attacked police officers and council staff.
"But there is a second group which bears responsibility. DUP and UUP politicians fomented this protest, with both leaflets and the use of social media.
"They called people on to the streets. They must have known, from experience as recent as this summer, that violence was almost inevitable." Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt said: "Firstly, we are clear that no one should have been attacked or injured last night, no property should have been damaged, and no illegality should be tolerated. Attacking police officers is wrong, full-stop.
"But it is also wrong to continue to make the unionist people of Belfast feel that they are to be treated as a minority whose heritage and values are to be suppressed."
However, SDLP councillor Tim Attwood said: "The actions of these people, who were protesting the democratic decision by the council to alter the flag policy at city hall to only flying the union flag on designated days, were themselves an outrage to the democracy they claim to desire.
The council had to adjourn for half an hour when loyalists stormed Belfast City Hall's courtyard and came close to breaking into the building. The DUP has now asked that the union flag be allowed to be flown every day from the cenotaph in the grounds of the building.
The proposal is being considered and requires the Alliance party to support it.
Violence after Belfast flag vote
Protesters block Belfast street
Committee backs hall flag removal
Union flag 'should fly some days'
| Riot | December 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
The report of the diplomatic Quartet to the Security Council — the United Nations, Russia, the United States, and the European Union — calls on Israel to end settlement construction and expansion policy, and calls on Palestinians to act decisively to stop incitement to violence and to clearly condemn terrorist acts. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov tells the UNSC, “The main objective of this report is not about assigning blame ... it focuses on the major threats to achieving a negotiated peace." | Continuing violence, terrorism and incitement, settlement expansion, and the Palestinian Authority’s lack of control of Gaza are hurting the Middle East peace process, the United Nations envoy today said summarizing the first ever report by the diplomatic Quartet – comprising the United Nations, Russia, the United States and the European Union – to the Security Council.
“The main objective of this report is not about assigning blame,” Nickolay Mladenov, Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the 15-member council. “It focuses on the major threats to achieving a negotiated peace and offers recommendations on the way forward.”
Those include references to both sides, and specifically to the Palestinians and Israelis in relation to violence, incitement to violence, Israeli settlement construction and related policies, Palestinian unity and institution building. The UN envoy reiterated several times the urgent need for the parties to engage on these recommendations: “The Quartet has outlined a reasonable set of steps that, if implemented sincerely and resolutely, with support from the international community, could set Israelis and Palestinians firmly along a navigable course towards establishing a comprehensive peace with historic implications for the entire region.”
He also noted that a permanent status agreement on ending the conflict could only be achieved through “direct, bilateral negotiations, the outcome of which cannot be prejudged by unilateral steps that would not be recognized by the international community.”
In summary, he called for leadership and vision, saying they have been “starkly absent from this conflict for far too long” and replaced by “empty platitudes.” The Security Council met amid fresh violence in the region. Just a few hours earlier, a 13-year-old girl was stabbed to death by a Palestinian at her home in West Bank. Earlier in the month, four Israelis died in an attack in Tel Aviv, and a Palestinian teenager was killed by Israeli Security Forces on a highway.
“All three incidents clearly illustrate the environment of fear in which both Palestinians and Israelis have lived for generations,” Mr. Mladenov said.
“Palestinian frustration cannot be wished away,” he said, adding that “neither will the violence and terror, fuelled by resentment, bring about a Palestinian state.”
In its report – which will not be published until later this week – the Quartet pledges its active support for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). It also reaffirms that a negotiated two-State outcome that meets Israel’s security needs and Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood and sovereignty, ends the occupation that began in 1967, and resolves all permanent status issues is the only way to achieve an enduring peace.
“It is time for both sides to rise to the challenge,” he concluded.
The United Nations envoy for the peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today unveiled a plan by the diplomatic Quartet – comprising the UN, Russia, the United States and the European Union – to produce a report that would help create a political environment for the two sides to resume peace negotiations. | Government Policy Changes | July 2016 | ['(rather)', '(AP)', '(UN News Centre)', '(The Times of Israel)'] |
A car bomb in Somalia kills at least six people at the gates of the presidential palace in Mogadishu. | A car bomb has exploded at the gate of Somalia's presidential palace in the capital Mogadishu killing at least six people, witnesses say.
A conference debating the nature of Somalia's election in 2016 had just ended in the compound.
Presidential guards and a Turkish national are believed to be among the dead, as most delegates had left.
It is not yet known who carried out the attack but the Islamist group al-Shabab has targeted the palace before.
Al-Shabab lost control of Mogadishu in 2011, but often carries out attacks in the city.
The presidential palace is the seat of government and many top government officials live and work there. | Armed Conflict | September 2015 | ['(BBC)'] |
Voters in Tunisia go to the polls for a parliamentary election, the first under a new constitution. | Tunisia has voted in elections to its first parliament under a new constitution, part of political changes under way since the "Arab Spring". There are no opinion polls, but the moderate Islamist Ennahda party is predicted to do well.
Turnout reached 65% an hour before the close of voting, state TV reported. A series of democratic changes have taken place since the authoritarian leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in 2011. Tunisia is seen as the birthplace of the Arab Spring - the pro-democracy movement which sought to replace autocratic governments in several Arab countries. Tunisia is considered to have had the most successful outcome, with relatively low levels of violence.
Despite a rainy and damp start to the day, there were queues outside this polling station in the Tunis 2 district, with some carrying the Tunisian flag. In this district, voters have a choice between 45 candidates. The entire process is being tightly observed by around 800 international, as well as more than 10,000 national, election monitors across the country. The security presence is visible at the polling stations and on the streets. Today marks the end of the political transition period from dictatorship to democracy. It's a milestone, the expectations are high, not just in Tunisia but abroad as well. Ennahda's main rival is likely to be the liberal Nidaa Tounes (Tunisia's Call), although it has promised to seek a coalition government even if it wins the most seats.
Most of the major parties have vowed to tackle Tunisia's high unemployment and to reinvigorate its economy.
Polls opened at 07:00 (06:00 GMT) and closed at 18:00 (17:00 GMT). Results are expected on Wednesday.
More than 50,000 security personnel and nearly 20,000 soldiers were ordered to be deployed on Sunday to ensure safe voting.
Radical groups within Tunisia have threatened to disrupt the elections and on Thursday militants shot a policeman on the outskirts of the capital, Tunis.
Casting his vote on Sunday, Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa said "the whole world is watching Tunisia today".
Earlier Mr Jomaa warned that extremist groups could attempt to attack polling stations.
"We know that this [election] will be a target because it is unique in the region. It brings hope," he said, during an inspection of troops near Tunis.
Around five million Tunisians were registered to vote, with overseas residents having already cast their ballots on Friday.
Ennahda, which currently rules in coalition with other parties, has promised to pursue a unity government even if it wins the most seats.
Tunisia is set to hold a presidential election on 23 November, which will deliver the country's first directly elected leader since the removal of Ben Ali in 2011.
Protests which began in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid in late 2010 later gathered pace and spread across much of the Arab world the following year. | Government Job change - Election | October 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
Sri Lanka unveils a new seaport in southern Hambantota which received a large amount of financial assistance from China. | Sri Lanka has unveiled a new seaport, the showpiece among a series of big new infrastructure projects on the island. The port in southern Hambantota was built with Chinese assistance as part of a $6bn (£3.8bn) drive to rebuild infrastructure after the war.
It has four terminals, two for cargo and two for fuel bunkering. A second, equally big, phase is being built. The government hopes the port will get business from some of the 70,000 ships that cross the Indian Ocean each year. The first ships will arrive in November. Sea water was released into the new port by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, breaching the remaining piece of land separating the site from the Indian Ocean. About a metre's depth of seawater will flow in each day for nearly three weeks. "It is not sea water that will fill this port, but the future prosperity of our nation. From this port will emerge our true economic independence, " he said in a speech.
For two years, men and machines have been gouging out a huge chunk of Sri Lankan land, says the BBC's Charles Haviland in Sri Lanka. Mr Rajapaksa paid tribute to the project's financier, China, in his speech. Most of the project's workers are Chinese, employees of two state-owned companies, and China's Exim Bank has lent 85% of the cost. China is now the biggest lender to Sri Lanka - it is also funding a large coal power station, roads and railways, and an airport near the new seaport. The government says the ever-closening ties with China are purely commercial. But some geopolitical analysts speculate that this port's future phases might afford Beijing a naval facility, a prospect that worries Sri Lanka's close neighbour and major benefactor, India. The government tends to speak of this new port in nationalistic terms, our correspondent adds. President Rajapaksa told the crowd on Sunday in his home-town that this day revived the same feelings of pride and victory as the end of the civil war did. "We have dug into the earth, broken great rocks, overcome inland and foreign threats," he said. "We have now entered the path to being the true Wonder of Asia." | Financial Aid | August 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters India)'] |
Portions of Eastern Australia are affected by the worst floods in the last 20 years. | Parts of the country's most populous state, New South Wales, have been cut off by heavy rain and have been declared natural disaster zones. There are similar problems further north in Queensland, which has also been battered by wild conditions. The floods are easing now but officials have warned that many communities could be isolated for several days.
Food drops
Thunderstorms since late last week have dumped huge amounts of rain on Australia's east coast. Many rivers have been unable to cope and their banks have burst. Floods: Eyewitness account
Roads have been turned into lakes and bridges have been washed away. Entire towns in northern New South Wales have been cut off, while rising flood waters have forced hundreds of residents to leave their homes. In some areas, food and other essential supplies for trapped residents have been brought in by helicopter.
"There are some 3,000 people who remain isolated by flood waters," New South Wales State Emergency Service spokesman Phil Campbell told the French news agency AFP.
Some people in isolated areas could remain cut off for as long as a week, he said. About 700 people attending a music festival on an island near the town of Tenterfield in the north-east of the state were stranded after a bridge washed out. "The people have been isolated for three days and will remain isolated for the rest of today and possibly into tomorrow as well until road access can be restored," Mr Campbell said. Long drought
Others parts of the country had also been suffering from the weather. Australia has been hit in 2007 by the most severe drought on record
Heavy downpours have affected Queensland, triggering flash floods in the south-east of the state. Many coastal areas have been affected by the wild weather and beaches have been closed during the busy holiday period. In the Northern Territory, the city of Darwin is recovering after being pounded by Cyclone Helen over the weekend. Trees were uprooted and officials are busy restoring power and water supplies. The bad weather follows months of drought in Australia. The BBC's Phil Mercer in Sydney says that although rain is desperately needed, to receive so much at once is - to say the least - unfortunate. Experts have associated the inclement conditions in the eastern states with the La Nina weather pattern. More summer rain is anticipated but climatologists believe it is far too early to declare Australia's drought to finally be over.
They say that the continent's long dry spell has built up massive rainfall deficits that will take a lot more than one reasonable wet season to fix. | Floods | January 2008 | ['(BBC News)'] |
Police in Turkey arrest at least 18 people in connection with an alleged coup plot. | Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) -- Turkish police launched a second wave of raids rounding up military officers tied to the alleged "Sledgehammer" coup plot.
Turkey's semi-official Anatolian Agency reports one retired officer and 17 active duty soldiers were detained in operations conducted on Friday in 13 cities.
Among the suspects is Col. Huseyin Ozcoban, the commander of the paramilitary gendarme force in the central province of Konya. Anatolian reports he was arrested while on holiday in Istanbul on Friday morning.
Scores of military leaders have been imprisoned or charged as part of "Sledgehammer," an alleged plot hatched by the staunchly secular military to plant bombs in mosques to destabilize the country's elected and Islamist-inspired government.
When contacted directly by CNN, Turkish police and prosecutors refused to comment on the investigations and arrests.
Full coverage in Turkish: CNN Turk
An on-duty officer answered the phone when CNN called the gendarme headquarters at Konya provincial headquarters, but then hung up the phone before answering any questions.
An officer at the gendarme headquarters in Istanbul also refused to comment on the latest detentions.
Turkey's president held crisis talks Thursday with the prime minister and top military general and sought to calm tensions following the detention of around 50 high-ranking active duty and retired military commanders in connection to the alleged coup plot.
President Abdullah Gul tried to reassure the population. His office released a short statement urging the public to "be confident that the matters on the agenda are going to be resolved within the constitutional order... and everyone will act responsibly to ensure our institutions will not be hurt."
As the private meeting was underway in the Turkish capital, the retired commanders of Turkey's air force and navy along with the former general in charge of Turkey's 1st Army were taken in for questioning in an Istanbul court.
However, later Thursday, former commander of Air Force, Gen. Halil Ibrahim Firtina, former Commander of Navy, Gen. Ozden Ornek, and former 1st Army Commander Gen. Ergin Saygun were all released.
Assistant Chief Prosecutor Turan Colakkadi said the generals were released after questioning was completed. He added, "the investigation is ongoing, but the generals are released for now." General Ergin Saygun was forbidden to travel abroad.
CNN Turk reported that three high-ranking generals -- Suha Tanyeri, Semih Cetin and Turgay Erdag -- were arrested as part of the investigation.
Turkey's Taraf newspaper first published reports about the "Sledgehammer" last January.
The commander of the armed forces, General Ilker Basbug, angrily denied the accusations in a fist-pounding performance.
"How on earth could the Turkish Armed Forces plan to bomb mosques?" he asked on January 25. "The Turkish Armed Forces has limits to its patience. I denounce these claims. ...We order our soldiers to attack [enemies] exclaiming,
'Allah, Allah!' ...Such claims are unjust."
"It's a first in Turkey's history," said Yasemin Congar, the deputy editor-in-chief of Taraf, in an interview with CNN.
"The high-ranking military officers have almost always been deemed untouchable and now this is changing... it sends them a message that first, intervening in politics will not be tolerated. Coup plans will not be tolerated."
The military has a long history of dominating Turkish politics.
Generals overthrew at least four civilian governments over the course of the last half century.
But the armed forces have seen their influence gradually eclipsed since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party swept to power after winning parliamentary elections in 2002.
Since then, the generals, as well as other elements of Turkey's traditional secular establishment, have periodically clashed with Erdogan, whose party has its roots in political Islam.
But the prime minister repeatedly has outflanked the secularists by continuing to win big in popular elections.
And, more then a year ago, prosecutors began detaining hundreds of suspects, including several retired generals, as part of an investigation into another alleged secular plot against the government.
The credibility of that investigation has been questioned, however, after journalists, academics and civil society leaders have been detained for months at a time. Some appeared to have done little more then criticize Erdogan's government.
"There are some concerns that perhaps some of the allegations may be too far fetched and seem to be getting more dramatic with the passage of time," said Fadi Hakura, a Turkey expert at the British foreign policy institute the Chatham House.
"The emerging pattern seems to be a power struggle between two groups who are trying to control the state," Hakura added. "One is the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party and the other is the military establishment. At the present time it is the civilian government that has the upper hand." | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | February 2010 | ['(CNN)'] |
After initial hesitation, Pakistan ultimately accepts $5 million in aid from India; it subsequently calls it a "very welcome initiative". | Pakistan has accepted $5m (£3.2m) in aid from its rival and neighbour India, as donors pledged more money for the flood-hit country.
Abdullah Haroon, Pakistan's UN Ambassador, welcomed the offer saying the disaster transcended any differences the two countries had.
Meanwhile, officials say the province of Sindh is now the worst hit, with more than two million people affected.
New warnings are being issued and villages evacuated, they said.
Mr Haroon welcomed the latest offers of help, which followed a two-day special meeting of the UN Security Council in New York to discuss the crisis.
The UN says it has now raised about 70% of the $460m it called for in its emergency appeal.
Mr Haroon described the new donations as "indeed heartening" and "a good beginning", but added that Pakistan will need support for years to come.
India's UN Ambassador, Hardeep Singh Puri, said the donation of $5m in relief supplies was an initial offer and his country was ready to do more if needed.
"We are willing to do all that is in our power to assist Pakistan in facing the consequences of floods," he said.
"We extend our wholehearted support to the government of Pakistan in its efforts for relief and rehabilitation of the... population."
The offer came after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke to his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani on Thursday.
Pakistan and India have slowly been improving ties since the Mumbai militant attacks of 2008 put relations between the two nuclear-armed rivals at a new low.
The floods began last month in Pakistan's north-west after heavy monsoon rains and have since swept south, swamping thousands of towns and villages in Punjab and Sindh provinces. About one-fifth of Pakistan's territory is underwater and an estimated 20 million people are affected.
Officials estimate that about 1,600 people have been killed. In the southern province of Sindh, hundreds of thousands of people have been left homeless as the Indus river overflowed, swamping homes and valuable farmland.
"Everything has been wasted. Nothing is left," said Qasim Bhayyo, 45, a refugee from Qayyas Bhayyo village in Sindh.
"I saw my house of wood and mud washed away. I saw grain and flour - we stockpiled food for months. It was all destroyed. We had no way to save our goats and buffaloes stranded in the water and crying."
As aid agencies stepped up the relief effort, the UN said on Friday that more helicopters were urgently needed to reach communities cut off by the water.
Experts warn of a second wave of deaths from water-borne diseases such as cholera unless flood victims have access to supplies of fresh drinking water.
| Financial Aid | August 2010 | ['(The Times of India)', '(The Guardian)', '(The Sydney Morning Herald)', '(BBC)'] |
In China, a group of farmers in Shengyou village in Hebei province that demonstrated over seizure of an arable land for the power plant, win in a dispute. | The June clashes, in which six people died, were filmed by a local and given widespread publicity abroad.
Farmers in Shengyou village, northern Hebei province, were angry they had not been compensated for land proposed for a power plant's ash storage yard.
Now, the yard will be built in a place where it will take less arable land.
"[Because] Shengyou village, the originally proposed site of the power plant's ash storage yard, has a big population but relatively little land, the Hebei provincial government... has now made a decision not to requisition land from that village," Xinhua state news agency reported.
Dramatic footage handed to The Washington Post in June showed local farmers fighting a pitched battle with dozens of unidentified men wearing camouflage gear and construction helmets wielding hunting rifles and clubs. Arrests
Police have since arrested 31 people and detained another 131 involved in the incident, Xinhua said.
Violent disputes like this one are common in China, where competition for useable land is fierce. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that farmers in eastern Zhejiang province had forced a pharmaceutical plant to halt activity in a row over pollution.
A factory official told the Associated Press news agency that government officials were negotiating with the farmers. The eviction of local people to make way for new developments is becoming one of the country's sharpest social issues, says a BBC correspondent in Beijing, Daniel Griffiths. | Protest_Online Condemnation | July 2005 | ['(Reuters AlertNet)', '(BBC)'] |
An earthquake occurs off the coast of Aceh in Indonesia with a preliminary magnitude of 8.6 and a tsunami warning issued. There are five indirect fatalities. | A huge earthquake and strong aftershock have struck off Indonesia's Sumatra island, triggering an Indian Ocean-wide tsunami alert that sent terrified people fleeing from the coast.
The 8.6-magnitude quake hit 431 kilometres off the city of Banda Aceh at 1838 AEST on Wednesday, and was followed by another undersea quake measured at 8.2, the US Geological Survey said.
Panicky residents poured into the streets of Banda Aceh, which was near the epicentre of a 9.1-magnitude quake in 2004 that unleashed an Indian Ocean tsunami which killed 220,000 people including 170,000 in Aceh province.
Wednesday's quake was felt as far afield as Thailand, where skyscrapers in the capital Bangkok swayed. India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Reunion Island, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar all issued alerts or evacuation orders.
Small tsunamis hit Indonesia and Thailand, with waves of up to 80 centimetres in Aceh, but there were no reports of damage or casualties.
US seismologists then cancelled the tsunami warning, saying the quakes had generated only small waves and were nowhere near the scale of the disasters that struck Asia in 2004 and Japan last year.
But in Banda Aceh, there were chaotic scenes as people grabbed their families and raced through crowded streets, with motorbikes and cars jostling for space.
"There are people trying to evacuate, some are praying and children at a school were panicking as teachers tried to get them out," an AFP correspondent in Banda Aceh said.
"There are traffic jams everywhere as people are trying to get away from the coast - many are on motorcycles," he said, adding that telephone connections and electricity were patchy.
Television images showed hundreds gathering at a large mosque in Banda Aceh, many weeping and searching for family members. Women and girls draped head-to-toe in white were praying on mats laid out on the ground.
Sri Lanka issued a tsunami warning across the island and the disaster management centre asked residents on the coast to move inland to avoid being hit by any large waves.
In the capital Colombo, nervous crowds gathered on the streets after the strong quake.
"There was a first jolt for five seconds, then a pause and then a really big one. It was really frightening, the whole room was shaking," said 42-year-old tourist Maria Teresa Pizarro from the Philippines.
"You could hear the wood in the furniture cracking, the curtains were moving and the ceiling fan was rattling. I just picked up the children and ran downstairs," she said from the city's seafront Galle Face hotel.
Thailand issued an evacuation order for its Andaman coast, a popular tourist destination, and flights to the tourist island of Phuket were diverted to other airports as passengers and staff were evacuated to higher ground.
A small tsunami measuring just 10 centimetres reached the coast, but authorities remained on alert.
"We cannot be complacent," said Somsak Khaosuwan, the director of Thailand's National Disaster Warning Centre, noting there had been several powerful aftershocks. "So we are maintaining the warning."
Australian Bonnie Muddle, vacationing in the Thai resort island of Phuket, said people were evacuated from popular tourist areas including Krabi and Phang Nga bay.
"All the local villagers are up on the hill," she told AFP. "Some boats have just left the dock and are anchoring out (which is) supposedly safer."
India issued a red high-level tsunami warning for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, located in the Indian Ocean, and lower alerts for several other eastern coastal states, but later downgraded the warning.
The catastrophic tsunami of December 26, 2004, was generated by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake that struck in the ocean about 200 kilometres away from Wednesday's initial quake.
An expert with the British Geological Survey said the tsunamis were small because the quakes' movement was horizontal, not vertical, and caused no drop in the sea floor, which is what triggers tsunamis.
"Although an earthquake of this magnitude has the potential to cause a large tsunami ... we haven't seen any drop of the sea floor, which is what generates the wave," seismologist Susanne Sargeant told AFP.
Last year, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake caused a tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, killing some 19,000 people.
The latest Indonesian quakes occurred in a notoriously seismic area, where the Indian tectonic plate descends into the Earth beneath the Eurasian plate. | Earthquakes | April 2012 | ['(NineMSN)'] |
Kenneth Lay, the former Chairman of Enron, is indicted by a grand jury in Houston, Texas. Enron filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, after investigators discovered that it had hidden more than $1 billion in debt and inflated profits. | The charges against Mr Lay include bank fraud, share trading fraud and making false statements. Prosecutors led Mr Lay to court in handcuffs after he kept an agreement to turn himself in to the FBI in Houston. If convicted of all counts, Mr Lay could face up to 175 years in jail and fines totalling $5.75m (3.10m).
Bail was set at $500,000 by US magistrate Judge Mary Milloy, rejecting a request from prosecutors to post bail at $6m on the contention that Mr Lay is a flight risk.
'Devastating harm'
In a separate action, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Mr Lay with
securities fraud and insider trading, seeking to recover $90 million in unlawful
proceeds from stock sales. "Kenneth Lay is charged with abusing his powerful position....and repeatedly lying in an effort to cover up the financial collapse that caused devastating harm to millions of Americans," said US Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray during a press briefing at the Justice Department.
Kenneth Lay and other senior Enron officials "engaged in a wide-ranging scheme to
deceive the investing public," the government charged.
Mr Lay's lawyer, Michael Ramsey, told reporters that his client was innocent.
Mr Ramsey said former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow and other top officials
at Enron "were not telling the boss that they were stealing from Enron." In a televised news conference from a Houston hotel, Kenneth Lay said: "I firmly reject any notion that I have engaged in wrongful or criminal activity."
"I want a speedy trial," he said. " I hope it will begin by early September this year. "As chair and CEO of Enron when it collapsed, I feel it
is my duty and obligation to go to trial as soon as possible."
Political fallout
Enron's collapse shook corporate America to the core, and resulted in reforms to company law. LAY: THE 11 CHARGES
One count of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud
Two counts of wire fraud in connection with false and misleading statements in employee meetings
Four counts of securities fraud
One count of bank fraud
Three counts of false statements to banks
The case has political significance since Mr Lay and President George W Bush are known to be close friends. The BBC's North America business correspondent Stephen Evans says bringing the businessman - a former Republican fundraiser - to court resurrects an issue that is unhelpful to the Republicans in election year. Mr Lay has previously complained that his close friendship with fellow Texan millionaire Mr Bush, who is said to call him "Kenny Boy", would encourage prosecutors to charge him rather than face criticisms of a political cover-up. Responsibility issues
Enron went bankrupt in December 2001 after it emerged that the company had concealed millions of dollars in debts.
Mr Lay poured substantial sums into Mr Bush's campaigns in what appeared to be a relentless quest for political influence
Ken Lay: A fallen hero
Chief financial officer Andrew Fastow had devised complex partnerships to hide the true state of affairs from investors. He pleaded guilty and accepted a 10-year prison sentence.
The question now is how much Mr Lay, a former federal energy regulator who holds a doctorate in economics, knew about the false accounting. Mr Lay has always said he was not aware of the accounting tricks used to disguise Enron's true position.
However, it is clear that he was warned about them by middle-managers, including the whistle blower Sherron Watkins. She wrote to him detailing her concerns about accounting ploys that artificially bolstered Enron's profits in 1999 and 2000. Mr Lay has said she impressed him as "very credible, very smart" but that her letter did not convince him to take action. Confessions
In light of the Enron scandal, US lawmakers passed the Sarbanes-Oxley act, compelling chief executives to submit a pledge that they fully understand and take responsibility for their firm's accounts. ENRON'S FALL
Oct 01 Accounts black hole becomes public knowledge
Dec 01 Enron admits inflating profit, files for bankruptcy
Emerges firm used complex web of transactions to hide debt
2002 Criminal inquiry launched
Jan 04 Ex-finance chief Fastow pleads guilty, accepts 10-year jail term
Feb 04 Ex-chief Skilling pleads not guilty to fraud and insider trading charges
Jul 04 Ex-chairman Lay indicted
Q&A: Why Enron collapsed
The Enron affair prompted a wave of confessions among other firms such as Worldcom which subsequently admitted to falsifying accounts. It also led to the collapse of Andersen, once one of the world's largest and most prestigious auditors, which had approved Enron's accounts. Mr Lay has also been heavily criticised for selling his own Enron shares while encouraging his staff to hold on to theirs. Staff were left holding worthless stock options and pension plans when Enron went bust. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2004 | ['(CNN)', '(BBC)', '(Democracy Now!)'] |
British Prime Minister Theresa May fires Gavin Williamson as Secretary of State for Defence, following the leaking of information relating to a National Security Council meeting, regarding the security risk posed by Chinese multinational telecommunications company Huawei. Secretary of State for International Development Penny Mordaunt is appointed the first–ever female British Defence Secretary. | Gavin Williamson has claimed that he is the victim of a “kangaroo court” after being dramatically sacked by Theresa May over the leak from the National Security Council of Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s 5G network.
May was told of what she called “compelling” evidence of Williamson’s involvement before she was due to face a grilling from the backbench liaison committee. The defence secretary was later summoned to May’s House of Commons office, where she confronted him with the evidence, offered him the opportunity to resign – and when he refused, immediately fired him.
It is understood that Williamson has acknowledged speaking to the Daily Telegraph’s Steven Swinford on the phone for 11 minutes on the day of the leak. But he denies that he revealed what had happened at the National Security Council when he was asked by the reporter about the Huawei discussion.
In what rapidly escalated into an extraordinary public spat, the ex-minister continued to maintain that the leak came from outside his team. “I think the prime minister has made a serious mistake,” a source said.
Formerly a staunch May loyalist who served the prime minister as her chief whip, Williamson later issued a strenuous public denial. He told Sky News the leak inquiry, overseen by cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, had been “a witch hunt from the start” and had taken place “in a kangaroo court with a summary execution”.
May was determined to reassert her authority over her squabbling ministers, whom Williamson’s successor as chief whip, Julian Smith, recently described as the “worst example of ill-discipline in cabinet in British political history”.
The investigation was launched by Sedwill after an outcry from ministers and the security services, who warned of the risks of allowing a culture of leaks to continue with impunity. Those anxieties were amplified in the case of the Huawei story, which was regarded as both economically and politically sensitive.
Sedwill, who unusually combines the job of cabinet secretary with that of May’s national security adviser, has insisted on the need for a tough line against leaks.
On Wednesday evening, No 10 published a blunt letter from May to Williamson, in which she accused him of failing to engage fully with the leak investigation.
The prime minister said: “It has been conducted fairly, with the full cooperation of other NSC attendees. They have answered all questions, engaged properly, provided as much information as possible to assist with the investigation, and encouraged their staff to do the same. Your conduct has not been of the same standard as others’.”
“In our meeting, I put to you the latest information from the investigation, which provides compelling evidence suggesting your responsibility for the unauthorised disclosure. No other credible version of events to explain this leak has been identified,” she added.
Williamson later published his reply, saying that he believed a “thorough and formal inquiry” would have vindicated him. He said he had declined May’s offer to resign, believing that it would have appeared to be an acceptance that he or his staff had been responsible.
Williamson will be replaced as defence secretary by the Brexiter Penny Mordaunt, widely regarded as a potential leadership contender, who previously served as international development secretary.
Mordaunt will retain responsibility for women and equalities in her new role. Prisons minister Rory Stewart, a cerebral former diplomat, will become the new international development secretary.
The Daily Telegraph obtained details of discussions at the NSC, including the claim that the prime minister had overruled several ministers, to allow the controversial Chinese firm to be involved in building “non-core” parts of the 5G network.
Before Westminster
Born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, he had a comprehensive education before going on to gain a degree in social science at the University of Bradford. Williamson then worked for a while in the pottery industry and for an architectural design firm before being elected MP for South Staffordshire in 2010 at the age of 33.
A rapid rise
Just a few years after his election, Williamson became David Cameron’s parliamentary aide, acting as his eyes and ears among MPs. But when Cameron stepped down, Williamson quickly threw his lot in with Theresa May as the most effective stop-Boris candidate and was adopted as her campaign manager. Having impressed with his organisational skills, he was elevated to chief whip, despite not having previously served as a minister.
Appointed defence secretary
After becoming pivotal in the deal with the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), Williamson earned May's respect for managing difficult parliamentary votes with the slimmest of DUP-backed majorities. His move into the cabinet after Sir Michael Fallon resigned over allegations of sexual harassment appeared to position him as a potential Conservative leader, but the backlash among MPs was significant.
Spider man
In Westminster he kept a tarantula called Cronus in a glass box on his desk, seemingly to intimidate MPs who had stepped out of line. The creature is named after the Greek god who came to power by castrating his own father before eating his own children to ensure they would not oust him.
Gaffes in office
Known for his colourful Instagram posts, Williamson was involved in a series of gaffes as defence secretary. As well as clashing with the prime minister over the publication of the government’s defence review, he angered the Chinese enough for them to cancel a trade trip by chancellor Philip Hammond, and was called 'the minister for war' by a Russian minister after his comments about the Skripal poisoning.Good Morning Britain presenter Richard Madeley once cut off a live interview with him after he repeatedly refused to answer a question. It was all enough to earn him the nickname 'Private Pike' in Whitehall, in reference to the hapless youth in the sitcom Dad’s Army
Downfall
Williamson was sacked as defence secretary by Theresa May after she "lost confidence in his ability to serve in the role of defence secretary and as a member of her cabinet".
The move followed an investigation into who leaked sensitive National Security Council discussions about the Chinese company Huawei's involvement in the UK's 5G network infrastructure.
Williamson has denied being the source of the leak, saying he was the victim of a 'kangaroo court'.
Williamson was among those reported to have raised concerns, together with the home secretary, Sajid Javid, the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, and Mordaunt.
All of them subsequently became suspects in the most serious Whitehall leak inquiry in living memory. With Williamson now identified as the culprit, Downing Street said the leak inquiry had been shut down. “The prime minister thanks all members of the National Security Council for their full cooperation and candour during the investigation and considers the matter closed,” it said.
Hunt, who was travelling between Nigeria and Ethiopia when the announcement was made, said: “On a personal level, I am very sorry for Gavin’s sake for what has happened, but given the gravity of the situation, there was no other alternative outcome.”
The Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, and the shadow defence secretary, Nia Griffith, said that if Williamson has been found to have leaked the story, he should face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. Griffith said: “The Tories are in chaos and incapable of sorting out their own crisis. Conservative infighting has undermined the basic functioning of government, and has now potentially put security at risk. The police must urgently investigate.” Any criminal investigation would be carried out by Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command. As of Wednesday evening, the Met had not opened a criminal inquiry and sources said that they had not received any allegation from the Cabinet Office, the government department most likely to refer the leak to the police.
May’s spokesman said: “It’s not for the government to determine prosecutions, but the prime minister has said, from her point of view, that she considers the matter to be closed.”
May’s spokesman said the inquiry “was constituted in order to ensure the integrity of the National Security Council in general is upheld and that, vitally, participants can continue to hold full confidence in its operation”.
Those attending included senior defence and security officials, the spokesman said. “It’s very important that they can provide information in a very candid way and in total confidence that that information will not be disclosed. If they do not have that confidence, you risk undermining that decision-making process, which in turn potentially harms national security.”
Williamson was closely involved in negotiating the confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist party, and had recently sought to thaw relations with the DUP’s senior members at Westminster in a bid to secure their support for the prime minister’s rejected Brexit deal.
He was promoted from chief whip after Michael Fallon was forced to leave the cabinet after admitting that his conduct had “fallen short” over sexual harassment claims.
Williamson, who was made defence secretary 18 months ago, had been one of those in the cabinet most sceptical about the necessity of engaging in Brexit talks with Labour. He preferred to focus on winning back the support of the DUP, with whom he negotiated the confidence and supply agreement on May’s behalf after she lost her majority at the 2017 general election.
Remainers welcomed the arrival of Stewart to the top table at a critical time in cross-party Brexit talks, when the government appears to be seriously contemplating a compromise.
“Rory will be good for balance,” said one cabinet source. The Penrith MP, who recently said he believed he would make a good prime minister, has been a prominent public defender of May’s Brexit deal. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | May 2019 | ['(The Guardian)', '(Evening Standard)'] |
Pittsburgh Police prepares large riot gears for a potential protest if Donald Trump fires Robert Mueller. | President Trump suggested Wednesday that he is in no rush to fire either special counsel Robert S. Mueller III or Mueller’s boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. But that hasn’t stopped thousands of people across the country from planning protests in the event that the president does choose to give Mueller and Rosenstein the boot from the Russian investigation.
One city’s police agency is already preparing for the worst.
Pittsburgh Bureau of Police has ordered its plainclothes detectives to bring full uniform and riot gear to work starting Thursday, “until further notice.”
“We have received information of a potential large scale protest in the Central Business District,” read an internal email from Victor Joseph, commander of major crimes, according to a copy obtained by a WTAE reporter and confirmed by Pittsburgh’s mayor. The email was sent to plainclothes detectives, according to Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto.
“There is a belief that President Trump will soon move to fire Special Prosecutor Mueller,” Joseph’s email continued. “This would result in a large protest within 24 hours of the firing. The protest would be semi-spontaneous and more than likely happen on short notice.”
“We may be needed to assist in the event that there is a large scale protest,” Joseph added in the email.
The memo, which circulated on Twitter, quickly raised questions about what may have spurred the agency’s preparations.
Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich clarified in a statement that although authorities received information about potential events, “we have not assessed the credibility of the potential for disturbances, and we do not have any knowledge of the President’s decision-making process.”
“The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police receives information daily that we evaluate and prepare for if the event should occur,” Hissrich said. “Events can include anything from extreme weather to potential demonstrations. Often the events we prepare for do not occur. However, through an abundance of caution, we attempt to adequately prepare for an appropriate response.”
Indeed, plans are in the works for potentially large protests if Trump does fire Mueller. Thousands of people in cities across the country have signed up to participate in “emergency” protests called “Nobody is Above the Law.”
“Donald Trump could be preparing to put himself above the law. We won’t allow it,” the group says on its Web page. “Trump will create a constitutional crisis if he fires special counsel Robert Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Mueller, or attempts to compromise the investigation by other means.”
“Our response in the hours following a potential power grab will dictate what happens next — whether Congress will stand up to Trump or allow him to move our democracy toward authoritarianism,” the group says.
In Pittsburgh, more than 2,300 people have registered to participate in a potential rally at the Pittsburgh City-County Building, as of early Thursday. If news were to break about a Mueller firing before 3 p.m. on any given day, the rally would begin at 6 p.m. that day. If the news were to break after 3 p.m., the protest would start at noon the following day.
City officials faced criticism on social media from both sides of the political aisle. Some suggested police were trying to clamp down on protesters or that the Pittsburgh mayor was “scaring his constituents” into thinking Trump will fire Mueller.
Peduto fired back at the “conspiracies” on Twitter, saying the police memo “doesn’t claim to know what the President will do. It doesn’t say people can’t lawfully assemble. It says you may be needed to help, bring your uniform. It is called being prepared.”
“A Commander tells Officers to bring uniforms & it becomes a Constitutional issue,” Peduto also said. “Conspiracy Theories come from the right … and the left.”
Peduto told WTAE that city officials “want to be precautionary, especially on something that is unprecedented in American history.”
Hissrich also clarified to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that he specifically asked detectives who work in the major crimes unit, investigating crimes such as homicides, robberies, burglaries, sexual assaults and narcotics, to bring their uniforms and protective gear to work.
“You can’t have officers out in suit and coat,” Hissrich said. “But part of the uniform is the appropriate gear that they have.”
According to the New York Times, Trump tried to get White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire Mueller last June but backed off when McGahn threatened to quit.
Trump has repeatedly said that the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election is part of a “hoax.” He has tweeted that the investigation is “headed up by the all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama. Mueller is most conflicted of all (except Rosenstein who signed FISA & Comey letter).” And while Trump has considered firing Mueller, many Republicans have urged him not to.
After months of negotiations over a possible bill to protect Mueller from getting fired by Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that such legislation is “unnecessary.”
“I’m the one who decides what we take to the floor,” McConnell said. “That’s my responsibility as the majority leader. And we will not be having this on the floor of the Senate.”
Trump on Wednesday said there was “no collusion” between his presidential campaign and Russia and that “no one has been more transparent” than he in cooperating with the probe.
“They’ve been saying I’m going to get rid of them for the last three months, four months, five months, and they’re still here,” Trump said of Mueller and Rosenstein. “So we want to get the investigation over with, done with, put it behind us.”
More from Morning Mix:
Statue of ‘father of gynecology,’ who experimented on enslaved women, removed from Central Park
The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. | Protest_Online Condemnation | April 2018 | ['(Washington Post)'] |
The Anti–Secession Law of the People's Republic of China, a law aimed at resolving the issue of Taiwan, is passed and enters into force. | The National People's Congress passed the law as Premier Wen Jiabao warned "outsiders" not to get involved.
China sees Taiwan as its territory, and says it reserves the right to use force if "peaceful re-unification" fails.
The Congress also backed an increase in China's official military spending of almost 13% to $29.5bn (£15bn).
China's announcement last week of the anti-secession law drew criticism in Taiwan and from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
But in Monday's final session of the 11-day annual Congress, the anti-secession law was passed almost unanimously by a margin of 2,896 to zero, with two abstentions.
Delegates broke into applause when the law was passed.
Wen Jiabao said the law was aimed at strengthening relations with Taiwan.
TAIWAN-CHINA RELATIONS
Ruled by separate governments since end of Chinese civil war in 1949 China considers the island part of its territory
China has offered a "one country, two systems" solution, like Hong Kong
"This is a law to strengthen and promote cross-Strait relations, for peaceful reunification, not targeted at the people of Taiwan, nor is it a law of war," he said.
China's senior legislator, Wu Bangguo, said the law "represents the people's determination not to allow Taiwan to be separated from China by any means or any excuses".
As passed, the law calls for the use of "non-peaceful and other necessary measures" if hopes for peaceful unification are exhausted.
Some analysts have said China's emphasis on "non-peaceful" means appears designed to include alternatives to military force, such as blockades or sanctions. On Sunday, China's President Hu Jintao told China's 2.5 million-strong People's Liberation Army, whose budget has risen rapidly in recent years amid growing concern in the US, to put national defence "above all else".
"We shall step up preparations for possible military struggle and enhance our capabilities to cope with crises, safeguard peace, prevent wars and win the wars if any," the president said. | Government Policy Changes | March 2005 | ['(BBC News)'] |
Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi regains the role of Secretary of the Democratic Party, after his resignation in February, in an open primary election. | Italians voted yesterday overwhelmingly to elect Matteo Renzi as the new head of the ruling Democratic Party, returning him to frontline politics as the party faces a growing challenge from populist politicians.
"It is a clear, ample victory that went beyond our expectations," said agriculture minister Maurizio Martina, who has been campaigning for Mr Renzi. "This is the opening of a new phase."
Voters queued at tents, bars and local party headquarters across the country to choose between Andrea Orlando, the justice minister, Michele Emiliano, governor of the southern Puglia region, and Mr Renzi, the former prime minister.
Turnout was estimated at between 1.9 to 2 million voters, an "extraordinary" result, said Mr Renzi, 42, who resigned in December after Italians overwhelmingly rejected a national referendum to reform Italy’s constitution.
In remarks on the terrace of the party headquarters, Mr Renzi said the primary victory - estimated to be well over 60 percent - marked the "turning of a new page" for the party, and possibly the future of Europe.
"Yes, we want to change Europe, we say it with humility and responsibility. We are not against Europe, we want a Europe that is able to represent its citizens, otherwise the alternative is populism."
Infighting in the wake of the referendum failure fractured the party, which recently fell behind the populist 5-Star Movement in the national polls. But Renzi Sunday pledged to return unity to the centre-left.
"We will now move forward together," he said.
Buoyed by the first-round victory of centre-left reformist Emmanuel Macron in France, Mr Renzi campaigned with the slogan In Cammino (on the way), drawing comparisons to Mr Macron’s En Marche.
A general election is scheduled for early 2018, but could come earlier if parliament were to agree on electoral reforms.
Mr Renzi has not ruled out forming an alliance with centre-right leader and former premier Silvio Berlusconi if the party faces a tough race against the 5-Star Movement.
Mr Renzi’s return comes just as Italy prepares to welcome dozens of foreign delegations to the G7 meeting in Sicily's Taormina.
He is also reportedly planning to meet former US president Barack Obama, who is due to arrive in Italy on May 8 to attend a global food summit.
Mr Obama welcomed Mr Renzi at the White House last year, and Mr Renzi and his wife are now hoping to host the Obamas in Tuscany, according to Italian media reports.
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | April 2017 | ['(The Telegraph)'] |
The Ethiopian government releases a preliminary report on the investigation into the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. | Updated on: April 4, 2019 / 12:53 PM
/ CBS News
The Ethiopian government briefed journalists Thursday on the initial findings of its investigation into the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. Both the government and the airline said a preliminary report by Ethiopian authorities shows the doomed jet's crew followed guidance provided by Boeing on how to fly the plane, including emergency procedures, but failed to regain control of the jet, putting the blame largely on the manufacturer.
The full preliminary report was released on Thursday.
The Boeing 737 Max 8 jet crashed just after takeoff from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 passengers and crew on board.
Similarities between the disaster and the crash of a Lion Air 737 Max 8 in October last year have brought huge pressure on Boeing. Both crashes have been linked to a new flight control system that the American aviation giant installed on the Max series of jets, known as MCAS. What has remained unclear -- and will remain unclear until the investigation is complete and made public -- is the extent to which a malfunctioning MCAS system caused the crashes, versus pilot error.
"The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft," Ethiopia's Minister of Transport Dagmawit Moges said on Thursday.
CBS News transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave reported on Wednesday that investigators increasingly believe that after take-off, something happened to one of the external sensors linked to the MCAS system on the Ethiopian jet and it began to send erroneous information, triggering the system. This is similar to what data show happened on the Lion Air flight.
The similarities between the two crashes have prompted governments and airlines worldwide to ground all of their Max jets -- the newest passenger aircraft made by Boeing. Hundreds of the planes remain on order from airlines around the world, so there are huge implications for both air passengers, and a major U.S. employer from a business standpoint.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Kevin McAllister said in a statement the company will carefully review the preliminary report released Thursday and "take any and all additional steps necessary to enhance the safety of our aircraft."
"The preliminary report contains flight data recorder information indicating the airplane had an erroneous angle of attack sensor input that activated the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) function during the flight, as it had during the Lion Air 610 flight," Boeing said in a statement.
"To ensure unintended MCAS activation will not occur again, Boeing has developed and is planning to release a software update to MCAS and an associated comprehensive pilot training and supplementary education program for the 737 MAX."
"As previously announced, the update adds additional layers of protection and will prevent erroneous data from causing MCAS activation. Flight crews will always have the ability to override MCAS and manually control the airplane."
"We will carefully review the AIB's preliminary report, and will take any and all additional steps necessary to enhance the safety of our aircraft." -Boeing Commercial Airplanes President & CEO Kevin McAllister.Read the full statement: https://t.co/kBvAhlv4JC
CBS News' Van Cleave notes that, in light of the assertions made by Ethiopian officials and the airline on Thursday, questions remain over how closely the doomed jet's crew followed the guidance given by Boeing regarding the MCAS system.
At no point has Boeing or anyone else recommended switching the MCAS system back on after it engages in error. As noted below, the Ethiopian Transport Minister confirmed on Thursday that the Flight 302 crew did take that action, at least once, and it remains unclear why.
Van Cleave says the Ethiopian officials stressing that the flight crew followed "all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer" also requires further explanation, as the guidance provided by Boeing in the wake of the Lion Air crash in October was not as straight forward as a, "step 1, step 2, step 3, repeat" set of instructions.
That is not to say that Boeing's design wasn't a principle factor in the crash, but more information was still needed, and there won't be any conclusions on what caused the crash until the final report is released within a year.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the preliminary report released on Thursday, "was prepared by the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA) to share certain information obtained during the early stages of investigating."
The FAA noted that the Ethiopian government's probe "remains ongoing, with the participation of the FAA" and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board -- the American government's accident investigation agency.
"We continue to work towards a full understanding of all aspects of this accident," the FAA said. "As we learn more about the accident and findings become available, we will take appropriate action."
As noted below, the FAA has also come under intense scrutiny in the wake of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, over its close working relationship with Boeing and other manufacturers in the certification process for new planes and the highly-complex systems that make them work in this day and age.
The Transport Ministry said there was no indication that Flight 302 had struck a foreign object after take-off from Addis Ababa.
Data from the plane's black boxes show no reason to believe that a bird or other object hit the plane or one of its engines. Bird strikes are relatively common and a large passenger jet's engines can usually cope with the damage, but they have been linked to previous crashes.
The Ethiopian Transport Minister on Thursday confirmed to CBS News that the crew of Flight 302 did switch the faulty MCAS system back on after initially disabling it when they encountered problems.
As CBS News' Van Cleave has reported, they are believed to have done so as many as four times, and it remains unclear why they would have taken that action, but it raises questions about the guidance provided to airlines by Boeing, which knew the system had issues following the Lion Air crash in October.
Minister of Transport Dagmawit Moges told CBS News that data showed the crew turned the system back on at least once after initially shutting it off. She said investigators were still waiting for the full report to confirm how many times that action was taken, and other details about the flight control software.
Ethiopian Airlines released a statement on Thursday, as the Ministry of Transport news conference was still going on, saying the preliminary report "clearly showed" that the Flight 302 crew "followed the Boeing recommended and FAA approved emergency procedures."
"Despite their hard work and full compliance with the emergency procedures, it was very unfortunate that they could not recover the airplane from the persistence of nose diving," the statement said.
The Ministry of Transportation said the Ethiopian Airlines crew on the doomed flight followed all of the rules and guidance provided by Boeing, but they still were unable to regain control of the jet. She said the findings were based on information from both of the planes black boxes, the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
Dagmawit Moges, Ethiopia's Minister of Transport, said the onus was on Boeing to investigate the automated flight control system linked to the crash, but she did not specifically name the MCAS system.
She said the full report on the crash would be issued by the government within one year.
CBS News' Van Cleave noted on Wednesday that the Ethiopian government and Ethiopian Airlines were widely expected to try and put the lion's share of the blame for the crash on the plane's manufacturer, while Boeing will have a clear interest in showing any fault the flight crew might have had.
The truth, said Van Cleave, will likely end up being somewhere in the middle, but it is undeniable that had Boeing not deployed the new MCAS system with clear and fundamental flaws, the Ethiopian pilots would not have found themselves in a situation where they were fighting against it to try and control their aircraft.
The tragedy, like most transportation accidents, was likely to end up being blamed on a series of contributing factors, but Van Cleave said it would be difficult to place the blame entirely on the pilots, regardless of how they handled the response to the emergency.
Boeing announced a software fix last month for the MCAS anti-stall system, intended to make it less aggressive and easier to control, but the 72 Boeing Max's in use in the U.S. were to remain grounded until the FAA approves Boeing's updates, which could take months.
"There is an extreme amount of pressure for Boeing to find a fix and for the FAA to validate the Boeing finding," former NTSB investigator Jeff Guzzetti has told CBS News. "Boeing is taking a black eye -- they're already taking a black eye. And so is the FAA quite frankly.
"I think much of this is not deserved and will be short lived," Guzzetti added, "but it's certainly creating fear and the lack of confidence in Boeing customers and those that trust the FAA."
Attorney Steven Marks filed the first lawsuit against Boeing connected to the Max 8 crash in Ethiopia. He believes the company's rush to catch up to rival Airbus in 2015 led to design mistakes that turned deadly.
"It's hard to have a great deal of confidence when the regulatory agency allowed this product and Boeing participated and having this product going to market without a complete review," Marks said.
CBS News' Van Cleave reported last month that with the technology on modern passenger jets advancing so fast and resources being so tight, the FAA -- long the gold standard in airline safety regulation -- has worked increasingly closely with manufacturers.
Federal authorities have told employees at Boeing and the FAA to retain documents relating to the plane's approval process, which by design relies heavily on manufacturers like Boeing to self-police. Scott Brenner, a former associate administrator at the FAA, told CBS News last month that the FAA does not have the resources to certify aircraft without the help of the manufacturer.
"On some level, the FAA is taking Boeing's word for a lot of this," Van Cleave pointed out.
"They are taking Boeing's word, but they - Boeing is also presenting data to prove their word," Brenner said. As far back as 1993, the government accountability office warned "FAA's certification staff were falling far behind industry in technical competency" in part because of delegating to manufacturers.
The Ethiopian Airlines pilots did initially follow Boeing and the FAA's suggested Emergency Procedures and turned off an electronic system to shut down the MCAS system soon after take-off. MCAS was designed to push the nose of a plane down if it is climbing too steeply, which can cause a stall.
But Van Cleave's sources said the pilots struggled to regain control of the plane even after turning the system off.
Data from the plane's black boxes indicate the pilots then deviated from the emergency procedures by turning back on the electronic system, which meant the MCAS kicked back into action. Over the following minutes, the MCAS system is believed to have reactivated as many as four times, pushing the nose of the plane downward each time. Eventually it went into a dive and slammed into the ground outside Addis Ababa.
It remains unclear why the pilots decided to turn a malfunctioning system back on.
The fact MCAS was turned off and the plane was not brought under control does raise questions about the emergency procedures provided by Boeing and the FAA in the wake of the Lion Air Crash.
Van Cleave's sources have said it is unlikely that the MCAS system would have somehow turned itself back on. | Air crash | April 2019 | ['(CNN)'] |
The Russian military announces a second test of its most advanced nuclear ICBM, the RS-28 Sarmat, from a base in Plesetsk. President Vladimir Putin claimed in his March 1 state of the nation speech that the new nuclear arsenal will be impossible for U.S.-engineered technology to intercept. | Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted of powerful new nuclear weapons, pledged to cut the country's poverty rate in half, and vowed to make its economy one of the world’s mightiest in his annual state-of-the-nation address on March 1. Speaking before hundreds of top officials and lawmakers 17 days before an election that seems certain to hand him a new six-year term, Putin set out ambitious domestic goals and issued defiant warnings to the West, which he accused of trying to hold Russia back.
"I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful sanctions aimed at containing our country's development: Everything that you wanted to impede with your policies has already happened," he said. "You have failed to contain Russia."
Putin said Russia had tested new nuclear weapons, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile and a nuclear-capable underwater drone that, Putin claimed, would be impossible to intercept.
Using colorful graphics and video, Putin said the high-speed underwater drone capable of carrying a nuclear warhead could target both aircraft carriers and coastal facilities.
Putin said that Russia also tested a new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, called Sarmat, with a range and number of warheads exceeding its predecessor.
Putin contended that Russia was forced to upgrade its nuclear arsenal after the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002. Putin said Russia warned it would take such measures in 2004, but that the West didn't want to talk with Russia.
"No one listened to us then. So listen to us now,” Putin said to thunderous applause in the speech, which was held at a venue just outside the Kremlin and televised live nationwide. Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White downplayed Putin’s comments, saying the U.S. military was capable of defending the country from any threats.
“We're not surprised by the statements, and the American people should rest assured that we are fully prepared," she told reporters.
She added that U.S. missile-defense systems in Europe are not focused on Russia but are more designed to defend against Iran, North Korea, and other rogue threats.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a regular briefing that “Putin has confirmed what the United States government has known for a long time [and which] Russia has denied prior to this.”
“Russia has been developing destabilizing weapons systems for more than a decade in direct violation of [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] treaty obligations.”
"We have a new defense budget that's over $700 billion. We believe that our military will be stronger than ever," she added.
However, she also appeared to downplay the Russian leader’s remarks. Noting that Russia’s presidential election is approaching, she said that Putin "was playing to the [domestic] audience, certainly.”
No media source currently available
Putin has rattled Russian sabers repeatedly in the past, and independent Moscow-based military analyst Aleksandr Golts said a lack of detailed information made it difficult to assess his statements about weapons.
Golts said it would be “groundbreaking” if Russia had developed a compact nuclear reactor to power a drone, for example, but added: "We can’t find anything about this [development] from open sources."
"It could either be a bluff or the hard truth,” Golts told RFE/RL's Russian Service. Part of a video Putin used to highlight one of the "new weapons" was 11 years old, according to some reports. Opposition figure Leonid Gozman said on Twitter that anyone alarmed by Putin's remarks should not be, suggesting that corruption or incompetence would undermine efforts to make strides in weaponry. But he expressed concern about the reaction of the officials and lawmakers in the audience.
"The worst thing about the address was the stormy, sincere, hysterical ovation in response to Putin's militaristic passages," Gozman tweeted. "That was worse than what he actually said."
At one point in his address, Putin said the names of the nuclear-powered cruise missile and the drone haven't yet been chosen and suggested the Defense Ministry run a nationwide contest to select them, triggering loud applause. "No one in the world has anything like that," he said. "It may appear someday, but by that time we will develop something new."
Journalist Leonid Ragozin called Putin's remarks on Russia's arsenal "nuclear trolling" and said the speech included "practically no international agenda at all."
Some trolling for the West at the end of the speech with animated videos of state-of-the-art weapons, but practically no international agenda at all. Domestically, it is all development and a hint of political liberalization.
Putin focused on domestic matters for much of the address, speaking about the economy and quality-of-life issues ranging from roads to health care and saying that Russia needs to improve living standards.
Putin said 20 million Russians now live in poverty compared to 42 million in 2000, but called he figure “unacceptable” and said Russia should cut the poverty rate in half in the next six years.
Putin -- who is 65 and will be barred from seeking a fifth term in 2024 unless he changes the constitution -- said the coming years will be “decisive” for Russia. The well-being of Russia and the well-being of our citizens must be the foundation of everything, and it is in this area that we must make a breakthrough," Putin said.
He called for a technological push to improve Russia's living standards and economy.
"Lagging behind in technology is the main threat and our main enemy," Putin said.
"To move forward and dynamically develop, we need to expand liberties in all spheres," he added.
Putin called on authorities to create an environment under which businesses can thrive. "The unjustified persecution [of businesspeople], including by the security services, is absolutely unacceptable," Putin said, adding that this "undermines people's faith in the law and in justice."
The Russian leader said that while the state will support Russian business, its share in the economy "should gradually decline."
Putin stated that Russia should become one of the world’s top five economies over the next six years, aiming to raise its GDP by 150 percent over that time. "This is a complicated task, but I am sure that we are ready to accomplish it," Putin told lawmakers.
The address is one of three regularly scheduled national appearances Putin makes each year -- the others being a lavish question-and-answer session with the public and a stage-managed annual press conference. It was the 14th time Putin has given the address, before an audience that traditionally includes both houses of the legislature, or Federal Assembly; government ministers; judges from the Constitutional and Supreme courts; leading regional officials; and other members of the political elite.
In the past, the address has normally lasted about one hour.
The constitutionally mandated address is normally given in December in the lavish St. George's hall in the Kremlin. This year, however, it was relocated to the Manezh, an exhibition hall just off Red Square and adjacent to the Kremlin, and was repeatedly postponed in a move that observers say was intended to bolster Putin's reelection campaign.
"Even though the address is being given in the name of the president and not the candidate, no one can ban Putin from presenting his vision of the future," Moscow-based political scientist Vladimir Slatinov told the state-run news agency RIA Novosti ahead of the speech.
"Of course, Putin can't use his official post for his campaign. He can share his vision for the development of the country and the solution of key problems facing Russia."
"It is a clear public gesture intended to enliven the election campaign," Slatinov added.
Putin's spokesman said the Manezh was chosen because the number of invitees has been substantially increased and because it has large video monitors and other technology for infographics and multimedia segments. The Kremlin made prolific use of the screens, showing graphics ranging from charts of the social statistics to a computer simulation of potential Sarmat launch trajectories.
On February 27, the liberal Yabloko party -- whose candidate, Grigory Yavlinsky, is one of seven people running against Putin -- issued a statement saying, "the choice of the date for presenting the address and its transformation into essentially a campaign-platform declaration is a violation of the Constitution of the Russian Federation."
Putin has been president or prime minister of Russia since 1999. Opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who has been barred from running in the election because of a felony conviction that observers denounce as politically motivated, has dubbed the election "the reappointment of Vladimir Putin" and has called on voters to stay away from the polls. Putin has refused to participate in televised debates or other traditional public campaign events.
Analysts believe the Kremlin fears that a low turnout will undermine the appearance of the election's legitimacy. The government appears to be taking numerous measures to boost turnout, including moving the day of voting to March 18, the fourth anniversary of Russia's formal annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.
Those events, while widely condemned by the international community, were welcomed among Putin's supporters in Russia.
In addition to the election, Putin's state-of-the-nation address also comes in the context of international sanctions imposed on Russia for its interference in Ukraine, tense relations with the United States, and a struggling economy. Government statistics show that real incomes fell in 2017 for the fourth straight year. The government's economic program forecasts that the percentage of Russians living below the poverty line will be reduced from the current 13.8 percent to 11.2 percent by 2020. However, that figure is higher than the 10.7 percent posted in 2012.
| Famous Person - Give a speech | March 2018 | ['(ABC News)', '(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)'] |
Charges are dropped against Larisa Litvinova in the case of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose controversial death in a Russian jail led to claims of torture and neglect. | Charges have been dropped against a doctor in the case of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian jail amid claims of torture and neglect.
Larisa Litvinova was one of two doctors facing charges. The case was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired, reports said.
Mr Magnitsky, who worked for a Western investment fund, was detained after accusing officials of tax fraud.
He died after "deliberate and inhumane neglect", a report found.
His high-profile death at the age of 37 was taken up by human rights groups as one of the most glaring examples of corruption and prison abuse in modern Russia.
He had suffered from pancreatitis and gallstones and had been found with broken fingers and bruising to his body, the Kremlin's Human Rights Council said in July 2011. There were, it said, grounds to suspect that he had died as a result of a beating.
Dr Litvinova was the head doctor at Butyrka maximum security prison in Moscow where Mr Magnitsky died in November 2009.
In a statement his investment fund, Hermitage Capital, said he had been directly under her care from 7 October 2009 and she had "refused all medical treatment" to him.
Hermitage Capital said that news of the charges against Dr Litvinova being dropped was conveyed to Sergei Magnitsky's mother in a legal document from the Russian Investigative Committee's lead investigator, Marina Lomonosova.
"The crime committed by [Dr Litvinova] is an inadvertent act for which the maximum sentence does not exceed three years. Currently, the crime... is considered by law as a crime of insignificant severity, for which the statute of limitation constitutes two years," Ms Lomonosova said.
Hermitage Capital said that the decree releasing the jail's head doctor from criminal liability was "the latest example of the reluctance within the Russian government to hold anyone accountable for Sergei Magnitsky's death".
A second prison doctor, Dmitry Kratov, is still facing negligence charges.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | April 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Australian authorities offer a Aus$1 million reward in their search for a man suspected of ordering the murder of a vampire. | Australian police have offered a reward of Aus$1m ( US $926,000, £567,000) to find a man suspected of ordering the killing of a self-proclaimed vampire.
Mark Adrian Perry allegedly ordered the 2003 murder of Shane Chartres-Abbot, a prostitute who said he drank blood. At the time of his death, Mr Chartres-Abbot was on trial for allegedly raping Mr Perry's former girlfriend and biting off part of her tongue. Police in Victoria state say they believe Mr Perry is in Australia. A 'centuries-old vampire'
Mr Chartres-Abbot was shot in broad daylight in Melbourne, in front of his father and pregnant girlfriend. A man has already been convicted for carrying out the shooting, but Mr Perry - who is believed to have ordered the killing - is still at large. "There will be some people who know where Perry is and $1m is a lot of money," said Victoria state police Det Insp Steve Waddell. Mr Chartres-Abbot had allegedly told Mr Perry's former girlfriend that he was a centuries-old vampire who drank blood to survive. Mr Perry was last seen in Queensland in 2007. Police said they believed he had changed his name and appearance. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | October 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, his wife and their four children test positive for COVID-19. | YEREVAN (Reuters) - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Monday he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus and that members of his family were also infected.
“I didn’t have any symptoms, I decided to take a test as I was planning to visit the frontline,” Pashinyan said during a Facebook live video.
Armenia, which has a population of 3 million, had registered 9,492 confirmed coronavirus cases and 139 deaths as of Monday.
Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan said later on Monday that the country will resume international flights in mid-July to support the domestic tourism industry.
Reporting by Nvard Hovhannisyan; Editing by Alexander Marrow and Catherine Evans
| Famous Person - Sick | June 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, in the case Sony BMG v. Tenenbaum, awards Sony BMG US$675,000 in statutory damages against Joel Tenenbaum, who shared 30 MP3 files through the defunct Kazaa network. | Joel Tenenbaum, the guys who was hit with a $675,000 bill for sharing 30 songs though the Kazaa network has had a major setback (again). After being found guilty of infringement back in 2009 the courts ruled that he owed the RIAA (Recording Industry Artists of America) cartel $22,500 per track which amounted to 675,000 in damages. We have talked about the interesting math that the MPAA and RIAA use (which is starting to trickle over into other areas), but still could not find out how they arrived at this figure for their original request for “statutory damages”.
In order to hit $22,500 in damaged per track that single shared file would have to have been downloaded from Tenenbaum about 16,000 times if we use the high-end price for songs on iTunes in 2009. If we use the lower $0.99 that jumps to 22,700 downloads. Even taking the length of time that the RIAA claims for infringement, 1999 – 2007, that means 4-6 downloads per day of each of the 30 songs which is not realistic. The number is not only unrealistic, but illustrates that the RIAA just does not get the world in which they operate. The court system still buys into these figures though and the judge in the case said that Tenenbaum should be thankful that he did not have to pay more.
Tenenbaum did dig his own grave and probably should have tried a little more to strike a deal with Sony (and to stop after the second threat maybe..), but we do find it interesting that the court only used testimony from the music industry for the damage that the industry faces from piracy. They appeared to reject the fact that Sony Music Group continues to earn a significant profit from music sales and at the time the suit was filed they were trying very hard to fight the rise of digital distribution. Now they have embraced it (if somewhat late to the party) and it is costing them for their reluctance to get on the wagon. The original evidence presented it contrary to what they are doing today. In their original testimony they claimed it would be cost ineffective to provide a blanket license for digital distribution “quoting testimony by a representative from Universal Music Group which suggested the grant of a such a license would result in the record companies losing complete control over their assets and drive them out of business”. Oddly enough this is what they are doing with most titles now. Considering sites like Zune and Rhapsody that provide an all-you-can eat type of access for a very low rate we cannot believe that anyone can really believe that it is not possible to offer music for a lower price than $.99 per track.
In the end it is all about the profit as the RIAA clearly stated in their claims that their “primary source of revenue stems from their exclusive rights to copy and distribute the musical works of their contracted artists”. The majority of that money goes to the record companies and not to the artists. This why they reject the digital medium as there is less control, lower profits and a higher potential for artists to escape the highly restrictive contracts that the industry requires. We already know that it is one of the reasons the RIAA teamed up with the MPAA to get rid of Megaupload and it is also the reason that both cartels are embarking on a new campaign against anyone sharing any type of media files… in some cases even if it is a file that the MPPA or RIAA do not even have rights to. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | August 2012 | ['(Decrypted Tech)'] |
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