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Typhoon Nangka makes landfall on the Japanese island of Shikoku. | .
Typhoon Nangka made landfall in Japan late Thursday, lashing the country with heavy rainfall before petering out over the Sea of Japan early Saturday.
More than 2 feet of rain were reported in parts of Kōchi, Wakayama, Nara and Mie prefectures in the central part of the country. Many rivers went out of their banks as a result. Heavy rains came well in advance of landfall as well, bringing up to 10 inches of rain to northern parts of the Greater Tokyo area.
The center of Typhoon Nangka made its first Japanese landfall at 11:07 p.m. Thursday night local time near Muroto city, which is on the Pacific coast of Shikoku, one of Japan's four main islands.
Nangka was the equivalent of a Category 1 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale at landfall with maximum sustained winds estimated at 75 mph, according to both the Japan Meteorological Agency and the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center. (Japan is 13 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Daylight Time.)
About seven hours later, Nangka made a second landfall after crossing the Seto Inland Sea separating Shikoku from Japan's largest island, Honshu. The second landfall, as a tropical storm, occurred in Kurashiki city, Okayama prefecture.
Nangka's center exited Tottori Prefecture and emerged over the Sea of Japan around 3 p.m. local time Friday. Later, JMA said Nangka had weakened to a tropical depression as of 3 a.m. local time Saturday, when it was centered over the Sea of Japan just west of the Noto Peninsula of central Japan's Ishikawa Prefecture. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | July 2015 | ['(Weather.com)'] |
Paraguay's Minister of Agriculture, Luis Gneiting, and three others are killed in a plane crash near Ayolas. | ASUNCION (Reuters) - Paraguay Agriculture Minister Luis Gneiting and three others died when the twin engine airplane carrying them to the capital Asuncion crashed into a wetland on Wednesday night, an official told reporters on Thursday.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the deaths of four people on a flight that had an accident,” said Joaquin Roa, the head of the National Emergency Secretariat, adding that emergency workers were currently trying to recover the bodies and that the aircraft was “totally disintegrated.”
A search and rescue team located the small aircraft on Thursday morning six kilometers (3.73 miles) from the airport in the southern city of Ayolas, where the plane took off, Luis Aguirre, head of the National Civil Aviation Directorate told Reuters.
“The remains of the plane were found in a wetland. The tip of the tail is visible and the rest of the plane is underwater,” Aguirre said.
Aguirre added that the plane was only in the air for two or three minutes and did not reach a high altitude before falling. Gneiting’s vice-minister for cattle, Vicente Ramirez, and the plane’s pilot and co-pilot also died in the crash. The pilot, Gerardo López, was a former agriculture vice-minister.
Gneiting, who took office two months ago, is a former governor of Itapua department, one of Paraguay’s main soy producing regions.
“All of Pagaguay is in mourning over this accident,” President-elect Mario Abdo, who will take office on Aug. 15, told reporters.
Reporting by Daniela Desantis; editing by Jonathan Oatis; Writing by Luc Cohen and Scott Squires; Editing by Bill Trott and Susan Thomas
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays.
Exclusive: Fed’s Neel Kashkari opposes rate hikes at least through 2023 as the central bank becomes more hawkish | Air crash | July 2018 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inaugurates a series of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility, revealing that Iran had violated in kind the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action which mandates the testing and usage of only "first-generation" centrifuges for uranium enrichment, in response to Western sanctions violating the deal. The move comes amid indirect discussions in Vienna between Iran and the United States to revive the deal. | TEHERAN (AFP) - Iran announced Saturday (April 10) it has started up advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in a breach of its undertakings under a troubled 2015 nuclear deal, days after the start of talks on rescuing the accord.
The United States had said Friday that it had offered "very serious" ideas on reviving the accord but was waiting for Teheran to reciprocate, something Saturday's move signally failed to do.
President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated a cascade of 164 IR-6 centrifuges for producing enriched uranium, as well as two test cascades - of 30 IR-5 and 30 IR-6S devices respectively - at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment plant, in a ceremony broadcast by state television.
The television aired no images of the injection of uranium hexafluoride gas into the cascades, but broadcast a link with engineers at the plant who said they had started the process and showed rows of centrifuges.
Mr Rouhani also launched tests on the "mechanical stability" of its latest-generation IR-9 centrifuges.
Under the nuclear deal, Iran is currently only allowed to use "first-generation" IR-1 centrifuges for production, and to test a limited number of IR-4 and IR-5 devices.
Iran's latest move to step up uranium enrichment follows an opening round of talks in Vienna Tuesday with representatives of the remaining parties to the deal on bringing the United States back into it.
Then-president Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018 but his successor Joe Biden has said he is ready to return, arguing the deal had been successful in dramatically scaling back Iran's nuclear activities.
The Vienna talks are focused not only on lifting crippling economic sanctions Mr Trump reimposed, but also on bringing Iran back into compliance after it responded by suspending several of its own commitments.
All sides said the talks, in which Washington is not participating directly but has the European Union as intermediary, had got off to a good start.
Iran has demanded that the United States first lift all sanctions imposed by Mr Trump, including a sweeping unilateral ban on its oil exports, before it falls back in line with obligations it suspended.
The "US - which caused this crisis - should return to full compliance first," Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted, adding that "Iran will reciprocate following rapid verification."
Washington has demanded movement from Teheran in return.
"The United States team put forward a very serious idea and demonstrated a seriousness of purpose on coming back into compliance if Iran comes back into compliance," a US official told reporters as talks broke for the weekend.
But the official said the United States was waiting for its efforts to be "reciprocated" by Iran.
The US official indicated the major stumbling block in the initial talks was not the order of compliance but rather which sanctions were under discussion, as Iran is demanding an end to all US restrictions.
The deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, covers only nuclear sanctions and not US measures taken in response to human rights or other concerns, the official said.
The far more powerful centrifuges started up on Saturday allow uranium to be enriched quicker and in greater amounts than Iran's first-generation devices.
Uranium enrichment can produce the fuel for a nuclear reactor, or in highly extended form, the fissile core of an atomic warhead. It is one of the most sensitive nuclear activities carried out by Iran.
Mr Rouhani again underlined at the ceremony, which coincided with Iran's National Nuclear Technology Day, that Teheran's nuclear programme is solely for "peaceful" purposes. | Government Policy Changes | April 2021 | ['(The Straits Times)'] |
A shooting in Flint, Michigan leaves three people dead. | Update: Investigators said the three people who were found shot to death were 49-year-old Casius Eugene Childress, 40-year-old Winfred Ricky Galloway, and 26-year-old Mariah Marie Wells.
(2/19/20) - Michigan State Police released more details Wednesday about a shooting in Flint that left three people dead. They identified the victims found in a home on Rankin Street as two men and a woman. Investigators did not release their names or relationships Wednesday morning.
A neighbor discovered the bodies inside the house around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.
A Michigan State Police mobile crime lab arrived Tuesday afternoon to begin documenting the scene inside. Officers from the Flint Police Department were interviewing possible witnesses outside the house. No suspect information has been released. K-9 teams were in the neighborhood Tuesday attempting to track the suspect. | Riot | February 2020 | ['(WJRT–TV)'] |
At least 19 people are killed and more than 172 injured Saturday after a liquefied gas tanker exploded on a Chinese highway near the city of Wenling. Close to 100 fire trucks responded. Some people are still missing. | June 14 (UPI) -- At least 19 people died and more than 172 were injured after a gas tanker exploded on a Chinese highway.
The truck was transporting liquefied gas between the cities of Ningbo and Wenzhou and exploded while exiting a highway near the city of Wenling at around 4 p.m. Saturday, shutting down traffic in both directions.
Portions of the truck were blasted into nearby buildings causing several to collapse.
Local officials said people remained missing and rescue efforts were underway.
At least 34 fire trucks and 138 rescuers from the local area and an additional 62 fire trucks and 316 rescuers from other regions were deployed to search the collapsed buildings for survivors.
Deputy mayor of Wenling city, Zhu Minglian, said Sunday that the cause of the explosion is under investigation. | Gas explosion | June 2020 | ['(UPI)'] |
Brenton Tarrant, accused of killing 51 people and wounding 49 others in two New Zealand mosques, is also charged with committing terrorist acts. | Submit May 21, 2019 | 1:37am | Updated May 21, 2019 | 9:28am
The Muslim-hating white supremacist behind February’s deadly shooting rampage in two New Zealand mosques was formally charged with terrorism early Tuesday.
Brenton Tarrant, who allegedly massacred 51 people in a partially livestreamed rampage, was hit with the terror charge more than two months after the April 15 attack.
Tarrant, 28, posted a far-right screed before the killings, which laid out his desire to “create an atmosphere of fear” and to “incite violence” against Muslims.
The terror charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison and will serve as a test case for terror laws adopted by New Zealand in 2002.
Tarrant was charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 counts of attempted murder following the massacre, but officials on Tuesday tacked on an additional murder charge for a Turkish man who was wounded in the attack and died earlier this month. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | May 2019 | ['(New York Post)', '(Mid Day)'] |
The Supreme Court sends to preventive prison the Speaker of the Parliament of Catalonia, Carme Forcadell. She leaves the prison the next day, after the payment of a bail. Four of the members of the Bureau of the Parliaments are condemned to pay a fine, while one of them not receives any precautionary measure. | A Supreme Court judge in Spain has said the ex-speaker of the Catalan parliament can be freed on bail pending an investigation into her role in the banned push for independence. Carme Forcadell will be held in custody until the bail of €150,000 (£132,000) is paid, court sources said.
Four other Catalan lawmakers were granted bail of €25,000. All are being investigated for alleged rebellion and sedition over Catalonia's unilateral declaration of independence.
A fifth Catalan MP, who is also under investigation, was released under certain conditions without bail being imposed.
In Thursday's ruling, Judge Pablo Llarena wrote: "All the accused... have expressed that either they renounce future political activity or, those that remain active, will do it renouncing any actions outside the constitutional framework."
Eight sacked members of the Catalan government are already being held in detention in a parallel investigation.
Spain's Constitutional Court ruled the Catalan bid for independence illegal.
The country has been gripped by a crisis since a referendum on independence from Spain was held in Catalonia on 1 October in defiance of the central government in Madrid. After the Catalan parliament voted to declare independence on 27 October, the Spanish government dissolved the parliament, sacked the Catalan leaders and called a snap election for 21 December.
As Ms Forcadell entered court on Thursday she was jeered by supporters of Spanish unity.
She and her five colleagues were part of the body that organised the affairs of the Catalan parliament. They are accused of following a "concerted strategy to declare independence" that led to Catalonia announcing it was breaking away.
Ms Forcadell has always maintained that holding discussions and votes in a democratically elected parliament is not a crime.
The Supreme Court in Madrid is dealing with the case because the six had parliamentary immunity at the time of the alleged offences. A previous hearing earlier this month was postponed until Thursday.
Supporters of Catalan independence have already staged blockades of roads and railway stations, angered at the detention of the eight other politicians and two activists they see as political prisoners.
A Spanish judge is also seeking the extradition from Belgium of five others - including the former Catalan leader, Carles Puigdemont.
A Belgian judge has yet to decide whether to execute an EU arrest warrant.
Mr Puigdemont has been freed on bail and is scheduled to appear in court on 17 November.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | November 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
Turkish officials say that Turkish Air Force jets have begun bombing the Syrian-Iraqi border on Monday night, ahead of an imminent invasion of northern Syria. That region is controlled by Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, whom Turkey regards as terrorists. | Turkey has bombed the Syrian-Iraqi border in anticipation of an offensive against Kurdish forcesafter the Trump administration’s move to pull U.S. troopsfrom northeast Syria,Reuters reportedTuesday.
Turkish officials toldthe outlet that theirmilitaryon Monday night struck the border toprevent the Kurds from using thetransitroute to fortify their positions in the area. A security official said the intention was to cut off the road “before the operation in Syria.”
“In this way, the group’s transit to Syria and support lines, including ammunition, are shut off,” the official said.
Kurdish fighters make up the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces and have been instrumental in helping the United States defeat ISIS fighters in Syria.
Turkey, however, views theKurds in northern Syria as a terrorist insurgency connected to theKurdistan Workers' Party, a far-left militant and political groupthat has beenengaged in various states of conflict with the Turkish government for four decades.
Ankarahas long threatened a military strike against the Kurds, whohope to set uptheir own autonomous state near the Turkish border.
Itappears that threat will be acted upon soon after theWhite Houseannounced late Sundaythat Turkey would be moving forward with an offensiveinto Syria and that U.S. troops would not be in the “immediate area” when it happens.
President TrumpDonald TrumpChinese apps could face subpoenas, bans under Biden executive order: report Kim says North Korea needs to be 'prepared' for 'confrontation' with US Ex-Colorado GOP chair accused of stealing more than 0K from pro-Trump PAC MORE then said Monday thathe decided to pull back American troops from the area, citing“ridiculous Endless Wars.”
The surprise decision is viewed as an implicit endorsement of Turkey’s plans for the offensive and has been widely criticized in Washington including by several Republicans who are typically aligned with Trump as an abandonment of a U.S. ally.
Following the announcement, U.S. forces left two observation posts at Tel Abyad and Ras al Ain.
Butadministration officials on Monday insistedthewithdrawal is not giving Turkey a “green light” to invade Syria and that the move “does not constitute a withdrawal from Syria.”
Trump the same day warned he would "obliterate" Ankara's economyif it did anything "off limits,” but thenon Tuesdaydefendedthe country as a NATO ally and strong trade partner.
It was unclear the extent of damage or whether there were any casualties following Turkey's strike on Monday night.
The strike was a joint operation by Turkey’s intelligence service and the military, but details were contradictory, with one official telling Reuters it was an air strike and another describing the move as making the area “unusable through various means.”
Ankara also said its plans for an offensive into Syria are now in place.
“The [Turkish Armed Forces] will never tolerate the establishment of a terror corridor on our borders. All preparations for the operation have been completed,” the Turkish Defense Ministry said.
Should the U.S. military fully withdraw from northeast Syria, the Kurdish forces indicate that they might start talks with Russia or the government of Syrian PresidentBashar Assadto fill a security vacuum.
“At that time we may hold talks with Damascus or the Russian side to fill the void or block the Turkish attack,” said Syrian Kurdish official Badran Jia Kurd.
Up until Monday, U.S. troops had effectively prevented a Turkish offensive by remaining in the area, acting as a shield for Kurdish forces. | Armed Conflict | October 2019 | ['(The Hill)'] |
President of Tunisia Zine El Abidine Ben Ali wins 90% of votes, his fifth term and a new five–year mandate in the country's general election. | Tunisia's leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has secured a landslide victory in the presidential election, gaining almost 90% of the votes.
Official figures say 84% of the country's voters turned out for the presidential and legislative polls. The president-elect has won another five-year mandate. The head of the African Union observer delegation, Benjamin Boungolous, described Sunday's election as free and fair, but opposition groups cried foul. They said there was no genuine freedom of choice during the election. The president's ruling party the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) also held on to the vast majority of seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The RCD won 161 seats out of 214 available. Mr Ben Ali has been in power for 23 years and this was his fifth election. The BBC's Rana Jawad in Tunis says the only suspense in Tunisian elections lies in what percentage of the vote is declared in favour of Mr Ben Ali. She says the only shock may well be that it was the first time he has won less than 94% of the vote. Results in 2004 gave him nearly 95%. | Government Job change - Election | October 2009 | ['(BBC)', '(Al Jazeera)', '(CBC)'] |
Five people are killed after a car crashes into barriers just outside the Forbidden City in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China. | Chinese state media have said at least five people died and 38 others were injured after a vehicle crashed in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Three of those killed were inside the car and the other two were bystanders.
The square was evacuated and quickly reopened after the vehicle went into the crowd in front of the Tiananmen rostrum at midday. Images posted online showed a vehicle in flames, amid barricades. There has been no explanation for the crash.
Other pictures on social media showed a column of smoke rising from the scene of the crash.
Three people inside the vehicle died, Beijing police said on its official microblog account, adding that one female tourist from the Philippines and a male tourist from Guangdong province had also died.
Senior leaders from both the central government and the local authorities in Beijing and the Ministry of Public Security have visited the scene, it said.
An investigation is under way and the injured have been taken to hospital, Beijing police said.
Tiananmen Square was the scene of the 1989 pro-democracy protests which were ended by a military crackdown.
The site is generally kept under very tight security both because of its proximity to key political institutions and so that is does not serve as a hub for protesters and petitioners. Incidents do occur, nonetheless. In 2011, a man set himself on fire at Tiananmen Square following what officials said was a legal dispute, close to the square's portrait of Chairman Mao. Two years before that, three people set themselves on fire in a car at a busy intersection near Tiananmen Square over what the authorities called personal grievances. In 2000, several members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement were arrested for protesting at the square.
Fire extinguishers are kept at the site, and have been used when protesters set themselves on fire.
Monday's incident took place at the north end of Tiananmen Square, near an entrance to the Forbidden City. "A driver and two passengers were killed after a jeep crashed into a crowd of people and caught fire," Xinhua news agency said. Citing police and emergency officials, it said police officers were among those injured by the jeep, "which crashed into a guardrail of Jinshui Bridge on the moat of the Forbidden City before bursting into flames at 12:05 pm". One unnamed eyewitness told AFP news agency: "I saw a car turn a bend and suddenly it was driving on the pavement, it happened fast but looked like it knocked people over." "I heard an explosion and saw fire. The scene was very frightening," he added. "There were paramilitary police who told people to get back into their cars and stop taking pictures."
In a microblog post on its verified Sina Weibo account, the Beijing police said that "the injured people were all sent to a nearby hospital".
"Police at the site immediately launched rescue efforts, and the fire was quickly extinguished... the situation is currently being investigated further," the police added.
A subway station close to the square was temporarily closed at the request of police, Beijing transport authorities said. Police also closed the road near the crash.
News of the incident first appeared on social media from those who were at the scene, but it appeared that some pictures were being quickly removed. A BBC team that went to the site to gather footage said that they were detained for around 20 minutes before being released.
AFP news agency said that two of its reporters were also held close to the square, with images deleted from their cameras. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, when asked whether the government believed the incident was a terror attack, said that she did not know the specifics of the case and declined further comment. | Road Crash | October 2013 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(BBC)'] |
The French National Assembly votes unanimously to amend an existing age of consent law in order to officially recognize sex with children under the age of 15 as rape and making it punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Previously, the law allowed an adult to claim the consent of a child in court. The bill also classifies incestuous sex with a minor under the age of 18 as rape. |
PARIS, April 15 (Reuters) - The French parliament on Thursday adopted legislation that characterises sex with a child under the age of 15 as rape and punishable by up to 20 years in jail, bringing its penal code closer in line with many other Western nations.
| Government Policy Changes | April 2021 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Georgia Senator David Perdue is criticized for remarks at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference in which his quote of Psalm 109:8, "Let his days be few, and may another have his office," appears to be a prayer for President Barack Obama’s death. Perdue says, "It was a little humor and I said it in a way that we were talking about his days as president." | WASHINGTON, June 10 (UPI) -- Georgia Sen. David Perdue said Friday people should pray for President Barack Obama, then recited a Bible verse about death, praying "let his days be few."
Perdue, a Republican, speaking to an evangelical conference in Washington, said Christians should be "very specific about how we pray" for Obama.
He then quoted the beginning of Psalms 109:8: "Let his days be few, and may another have his office."
Perdue stopped short of reciting the whole the verse, in which the next two lines are: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places."
When Perdue delivered the remark to the Faith and Freedom Conference of religious conservatives, those in attendance laughed and clapped. Perdue said he picked the Bible verse for levity and did not seriously imply people should pray for Obama's death.
"It was a little humor and I said it in a way that we were talking about his days as president," Perdue said. "So I said 'May his days be few,' and that's a direct quote from the Scripture. And I set it up by saying, in relation to his being in the office of the presidency."
Purdue told Politico he does not regret the remarks because he was quoting Scripture.
His spokeswoman, Megan Whittemore, released a statement after the speech, saying Perdue "in no way wishes harm towards our president and everyone in the room understood that."
"However, we should add the media to our prayer list because they are pushing a narrative to create controversy and that is exactly what the American people are tired of."
Several other Republicans members of Congress and former Republican presidential candidates were also scheduled to address the conference and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump was scheduled to be the keynote speaker. | Famous Person - Give a speech | June 2016 | ['(UPI)', '(The Daily Beast)'] |
2013 Solomon Islands earthquake: The death toll from a magnitude 8.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Solomon Islands rises to nine, while government officials express fear regarding remote areas where emergency personnel are arriving. | Authorities have arrived in a remote south-eastern province of the Solomon Islands to assess the damage caused by yesterday's tsunami, which killed at least nine people. Two people are still missing after the magnitude 8.0 earthquake triggered the tsunami which wiped away entire villages.
Brown Beu, the premier of Temotu province where the one-metre-high wave hit, says at least 100 homes have been destroyed.
"They need food, cooking utensils and clothes, temporary shelter like tents and that stuff," he said.
People have cleared the airfield at Lata of debris to allow emergency supplies to be flown in.
A plane carrying an assessment team and emergency supplies was scheduled to have left Honiara on the 90-minute flight to Lata earlier today.
So far, only a government helicopter has managed to land and officials are assessing the damage to determine the aid required.
The National Disaster Management Office says the death toll has risen to nine after two missing people were found dead.
It says another five people have been injured and at least 2,500 people on the island of Santa Cruz are homeless.
Spokesman Frank Menoia told the ABC those figures are likely to rise once a disaster assessment team reaches stricken areas today.
A boat carrying emergency supplies is due to leave the capital for the disaster zone today, for a planned arrival on Saturday.
The Australian Government is poised to provide supplies and reconstruction help.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr has expressed condolences to the government and people of the Solomons.
"We're ready to offer assistance, which will include emergency food and shelter, medical supplies, and help with reconstruction," he said.
"[We] will await discussions with the government of the Solomons and they, I believe, are still measuring the extent of the destructive force."
World Vision's Solomon Islands director Andrew Catford says the immediate health concern is the spread of disease.
"There's quite a bit of [dead] livestock, chicken and pigs and fish are sort of strewn, particularly in these five communities," he said.
"So obviously you don't want to leave that there for too long given health issues, so that's one of the immediate tasks this morning to clear that up."
Wednesday's quake struck near the Santa Cruz islands, about 300 kilometres east of the Solomons, the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said.
A 90-centimetre tsunami hit Lata, said the centre, which later cancelled warnings for other South Pacific islands, as well as for Australia and New Zealand.
An 11-centimetre wave also hit Vanuatu, while a tsunami of about 50 centimetres reportedly hit New Caledonia. A small wave also hit Japan and Papua New Guinea. The Manus Island detention centre was evacuated as a precaution.
The US Geological Survey recorded more than 20 quakes near the Santa Cruz Islands, some registering 6.6 and 6.4.
We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
| Earthquakes | February 2013 | ['(Stuff.co.nz)', '(ABC News Australia)'] |
President Park Geun–hye of South Korea is in Washington, D.C. and met with President Barack Obama at The White House. | SEOUL, South Korea — President Park Geun-hye of South Korea said Thursday that she was willing to meet one-on-one next month with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, a development that would be welcomed by American officials, who have repeatedly urged Washington’s two key East Asian allies to mend their strained relationship.
Speaking in Washington, where she is scheduled to meet on Friday with President Obama, Ms. Park said that a November meeting in Seoul between herself, Mr. Abe and Premier Li Keqiang of China would provide a chance for her to meet alone with the Japanese leader for the first time.
“I think I can take that opportunity to hold a bilateral summit with Prime Minister Abe,” Ms. Park said while addressing the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research institute.
Her comment was the clearest indication yet that the two countries were preparing for such a meeting, after months of negotiations. Mr. Abe on Friday reiterated his desire for bilateral meetings with both the Chinese and South Korean leaders, said Takeo Kawamura, a former chief cabinet secretary who is serving as an envoy for Mr. Abe on the issue.
“I’m going to South Korea, and we’re going to do Japan-China and Japan-South Korea,” Mr. Abe said Friday, according to Mr. Kawamura, who spoke to reporters after meeting with the prime minister.
Ties between South Korea and Japan, its former colonizer, have been strained for years, largely over issues rooted in their painful history. The United States is eager for them to improve the relationship, especially given the anxiety in the region over China’s growing assertiveness and North Korea’s nuclear arms program.
Mr. Abe had previously expressed interest in meeting with Ms. Park, but until Thursday she had seemed cool to the idea. She has met several times with President Xi Jinping of China, however, raising concern in Washington that South Korea might be drawing closer to Beijing.
Here is a look at major statements on Japan’s war legacy by monarchs and senior officials since its defeat in 1945.
South Korea has said that for a meeting with Mr. Abe to be possible, Japan must take steps toward what Seoul regards as proper atonement for its history during World War II and the preceding decades — particularly the recruitment of Korean and other women to work in military-run brothels, which many historians say involved coercion. Seoul has complained that under Mr. Abe, Japan has played down state responsibility for the abuses suffered by those women, often referred to euphemistically as comfort women.
Ms. Park reiterated that condition on Thursday, saying that for a meeting with Mr. Abe to be “meaningful,” Japan should “help ease the agony” of those women, 47 of whom she said were still alive in South Korea.
Japan has argued that the issue was settled half a century ago in a treaty that normalized relations with South Korea. Many Japanese, especially nationalist politicians and activists, say South Korea is being unreasonable in repeatedly demanding apologies that they feel Japan has already offered for its World War II deeds.
No date has been announced for the meeting between Ms. Park, Mr. Abe and Mr. Li, but Ms. Park said Thursday that it would be held in Seoul in early November. Japan, South Korea and China began holding annual, trilateral meetings among high-ranking officials in 2008, but they were suspended after the 2012 meeting amid flaring regional tensions, notably over a dispute between Japan and China over islands in the East China Sea. The three countries agreed earlier this year to resume the meetings by the end of 2015. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | October 2015 | ['(New York Times)'] |
The United States Senate accuses the HSBC bank of laundering Mexican drug money. | A US Senate probe has disclosed how lax controls at Europe's largest bank left it vulnerable to being used to launder dirty money from around the world.
The report into HSBC, released ahead of a Senate hearing on Tuesday, says huge sums of Mexican drug money almost certainly passed through the bank.
Suspicious funds from Syria, the Cayman Islands, Iran and Saudi Arabia also passed through the British bank.
HSBC said it expected to be held accountable for what went wrong.
The report into HSBC
was issued by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a Congressional watchdog that looks at financial improprieties.
It also concluded that the US bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, failed to properly monitor HSBC.
Many of HSBC's breaches of US anti-money laundering relate to its use of bearer share accounts. Under the rules for these accounts, ownership of shares and the income they incur can be passed from person to person in secrecy.
HSBC's US subsidiary HBUS had opened more than 2,550 accounts for bearer share corporations.
These businesses are commonly set up in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands.
Most of the bearer share accounts - some 1,670 - were opened at the Miami office of HBUS. At their peak, these Miami accounts held $2.6bn of assets and generated annual revenues of $26m.
The report highlights the case of Miami Beach hotel developers, Mauricio Cohen Assor and Leon Cohen Levy. The father and son used HBUS accounts opened under the names Blue Ocean Finance Ltd. and Whitebury Shipping Time-Sharing Ltd. to help hide $150m in assets and $49m of income. The pair were jailed for 10 years for criminal tax fraud and filing false tax returns in 2010.
The year-long inquiry, which included a review of 1.4 million documents and interviews with 75 HSBC officials and bank regulators, will be the focus of a hearing on Tuesday at which HSBC executives are scheduled to testify.
These will include
HSBC's chief legal officer Stuart Levey, who joined the bank in January and was previously one of the top officials on terrorism and finance at the US Treasury Department.
In a memo released ahead of the hearing, HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver said: "It is right that we will be held accountable and that we take responsibility for fixing what went wrong. "As well as answering the subcommittee's questions, we will explain the significant changes we have already made to strengthen our compliance and risk management infrastructure and culture," he said.
A separate HSBC statement said its executives will offer a formal apology at the hearing.
"We will apologise, acknowledge these mistakes, answer for our actions and give our absolute commitment to fixing what went wrong," the bank said.
Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the sub-committee, spoke of a "polluted" system that allowed black-market funds to move through the US banking system. In 2010, Wachovia agreed to pay $160m as part of a Justice Department probe that examined Mexican transactions. Last month, ING agreed to pay $619m to settle US government allegations that it violated US sanctions against Cuba and Iran.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2012 | ['(BBC News)'] |
Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf and First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri submit their candidacies as registration closes. The final list of approved candidates will be announced on April 27. | TEHRAN, Apr. 15 (MNA) – With closing registration for Presidential Elections, there is a clear image of the final, however pre-Guardian Council lineup of candidates, setting aside long list of unknown registrations.
The 5th day now has turned out to show its new names, where heavy-weight figures came finally to submit their names to the Elections Headquarters operating from Interior Ministry in Tehran's Fatemi Square. The final day's rather unsurprising registration was definitely of Tehran's mayor and former IRGC general. Mr. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who said in a statement earlier this month that he was not invited by any parties to run for presidency – interpreted by many as a refrain from registration – found himself endorsed by the national forum of newly-established Popular Front of Islamic Revolutionary Forces just a day later, which provided Mr. Ghalibaf a reason for coming to the fore and run for presidency.
Ghalibaf's registration would be just to recognize the calls by Popular Front and the mayor would abandon campaign just before the Election Day in May 19 to support Mr. Raeisi as other candidates and possibly Saeid Jalili, an important name in the Principlist camp, would also follow the suit, to invest heavily in Raeisi, the Custodian of Astan Quds, in the battle with President Rouhani.
Notable among the other registrations is by Rouhani's first VP, Mr. Ishaq Jahangiri. His movement in the last day would puzzle the public of supporters of the government, since Reformist-Moderates would finally coalesce on Rouhani as their single nomination for the elections. Mr. Jahangiri would choose to do what Mr. Mohammad Reza Aref had done back in 2013 Presidential Elections on the demand and recommendation of late Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami.
Mohammad Hashemi, a former IRIB head and brother of late Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was also another prominent candidate nominating for the presidential race. He asserted that he is running independently and would not step aside in favor of anyone.
Mohsen Rohami is a cleric and a major figure of the Association of Combatant Clerics, which is a reformist clerical party and in 1980 acted as a left wing of the Islamic Republic of Iran's political system. He told reporters that he would not be considered as a secondary nomination to Rouhani's wider sweep among the Reformists, but would act as independent in the campaign.
From among the names endorsed by the Popular Front, former Tehran MP Mehrdad Bazrpash also appeared in Interior Ministry, but told reporters he had refrained from running for presidency. He officially announced this late Saturday when the registration was being closed. Mr. Bazrpash added that he would himself support any final candidate of the general camp of the Principlists and from among those endorsed by the Popular Front.
The final exhaustive list shows a rise in the number of registered individuals in Presidential Elections. This number had more than doubled compared to that in 2013 Presidential Elections of June. 1636 people submitted their names to the Headquarters. Only a handful would be qualified by the Guardian Council as the final candidates to launch their campaign after April 27. | Government Job change - Election | April 2017 | ['(Mehr News)'] |
Two bombs hidden in plant pots explode killing at least one person and injuring 10 others, including foreign tourists, in Hua Hin District, Thailand. | Two bombs have exploded in the Thai resort of Hua Hin, killing one woman and injuring 19 people including foreign tourists.
The bombs were hidden in plant pots spaced 50m (164 ft) apart, and detonated by mobile phones within half an hour of each other, police said.
Local reports say the woman who died was running a food stall in the area of the blasts.
Five foreigners are reported to be among the injured.
Twin bombings are a regular occurrence in Thailand's three southern provinces, which are wracked by an insurgency, but it is rare to find such attacks in Thailand's tourist areas.
Briton Mark Gainsford told the BBC he had been in a bar near the blasts: "I heard people shouting 'Bomb! Bomb!' but I didn't hear any blast. "I ran out to see if I could help. I saw eight to 10 people injured, on the floor. The police arrived very quickly."
Hua Hin, an upmarket coastal resort on the Gulf of Thailand, is popular with foreign and Thai visitors. | Armed Conflict | August 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
South Carolina authorities announce that a riot yesterday at the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, Lee County, killed seven inmates and wounded seventeen others. | Inmates killed with homemade knives and 17 others injured during seven hours of fighting in a maximum-security prison in Bishopville
Last modified on Mon 16 Apr 2018 22.00 BST
Seven inmates in a maximum-security prison in South Carolina were brutally killed with homemade knives on Monday morning as wardens struggled for seven hours to bring mass fighting under control.
With a further 17 inmates requiring medical treatment for the injuries in outside hospitals, the unrest at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopsville was the worst outbreak of fatal violence in the state in recent times. The killings bring the number of inmates murdered by fellow prisoners in South Carolina to 20 since January 2017, and marks an alarming increase in bloody incidents within the correctional system over the past five years.
Most of the victims appeared to have died as a result of stabbings or slashings with homemade knives, known as “shanks”. The weapons are ubiquitous within South Carolina’s 21 prisons.
“Put simply, anyone who can has a knife,” wrote Steve Bailey, a columnist for the local Post and Courier newspaper who investigated the condition inside state lock-ups earlier this year.
His research discovered a frighteningly steady rise in violent deaths among inmates in the state in recent years. Last year there were 18 – 12 murders and six suicides; in 2016 there were five murders and six suicides; back in 2009 the total of deaths was just two.
There has been a similarly steep rise in the past couple of years in serious assaults, with 250 inmates requiring hospital treatment in 2016 and 2017 alone.
Yet at the same time as violence has been increasing, the overall prison population has been steadily falling as part of a nationwide trend towards redirecting non-violent offenders to non-custodial sentences.
The fighting at Lee Correctional Institution, which houses about 1,600 inmates including some of the most dangerous in the state, erupted at about 7.15pm on Sunday night and quickly spread to three housing units. Control was not restored until shortly before 3am on Monday morning.
The deaths occurred as a result of inmates fighting each other in numerous altercations, the prison service indicated. Precisely what may have sparked the unrest was unknown.
The uptick in violence in South Carolina’s prisons has a number of causes, experts say, including gang activity, increasing prevalence of smuggled cell phones that exacerbates illegal trade and rivalries and other factors. But the overwhelming problem is staff shortages and the consequent dire morale among officers.
More than 600 staff positions are currently standing vacant in South Carolina – almost a third of the total correctional workforce.
A reason for that, in turn, is low pay, with the Post and Courier pointing out that a prison guard has an annual starter salary of about $27,000 – about $4,000 less than a garbage truck driver would bring home.
As a result of the shortages, there are simply too few guards to keep an eye on volatile prisoners. According to the state’s prison chief, Bryan Stirling, the ratio of officers to inmates is more than 200 – vastly above the standard of 30 recommended nationally.
The crisis of staff shortages is replicated across the country. Research by Pew Charitable Trusts has found many states – including Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Michigan, Missouri and West Virginia – grappling with the associated problems of shortages and high staff turnover.
Shane Bauer, a reporter for Mother Jones, witnessed the results of inadequate staffing when he spent four months working undercover as a prison guard in a privately-run lock-up in Louisiana. He found lax security standards because too few people were willing to take on such a dangerous job for such paltry pay.
“Without sufficient staff the prison environment became more violent,” said Bauer, whose book American Prison is publishing soon. “Standard safety procedures, such as routine checks on inmates, happened less frequently, and there were fewer resources for rehabilitative programs which meant that inmates had less to do and there was an increase in general frustration.”
Many prison systems are trapped in a vicious cycle. Fewer staff leads to inmates being locked up in their cells for longer hours, and that in turn exacerbates nascent mental health problems that are already so rampant that advocates have dubbed US prisons the “new asylums”.
At times the pressure cooker explodes. Last April in a separate South Carolina prison, Kirkland Correctional Institution, four inmates were strangled to death within a 30-minute period in a dorm that housed prisoners with mental illness.
According to the local newspaper the State, the victims were deemed a “nuisance” to the two other prisoners who murdered them. | Riot | April 2018 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
2010 Tunisian protests: Protests in Tunisia over unemployment and poor living conditions are criticized by President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali during a national television broadcast; he warns of "firm" punishment. | The protests spread to the capital Tunis on Monday, where several hundred people gathered in the city centre to demonstrate solidarity with the protestors in Sidi Bouzid.
The rally was called by several trade unions, including secondary school teachers, postal, social security, and health workers.
Protestors assembled in front of the headquarters of the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) but were prevented from marching by police. The demonstration broke up after three hours of chanting slogans.
"The root of the problems is the high rate of unemployment for university graduates, the high price of raw materials and agriculture being the sole source of work," said the Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights.
Tensions heightened five days after Bouazizi's attempted suicide when another young man climbed up an electricity pylon and electrocuted himself on the cables, saying he was fed up with being unemployed.
"Unemployment is the immediate problem, with all that can follow," said Touhami Heni, the regional head of Tunisia's major union.
Tunisia's unemployment rate is officially 14 percent, but the percentage of graduates without work is about double that, prompting a warning from the International Monetary Fund.
While the government forecasts the economy to grow by 5.4 percent next year, from 4.1 percent this year, job creation is laggard and development uneven.
"The weakness of the development model has caused inequality between regions, as witnessed by the fact that 90 percent of (investment) projects are in coastal areas, and 10 percent in the interior," said opposition leader Rachid Khechana.
Khechana said the situation was aggravated by the migration of thousands of graduates from poorer interior regions to coastal cities in search of work.
For those that remain in places such as Sidi Bouzid, livestock and informal commerce are the main ways of scratching out a living.
While violent protests are rare in Tunisia, where the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally maintains a tight grip on dissent, unrest has boiled over in recent years over economic woes.
The mining region of Gafsa saw protests in 2008 over lay-offs and the high cost of living, while the southern town of Ben Gardane near the Libyan border was hit by protests last year when Tripoli imposed trade restrictions.
The government said the December 24 violence, in which two national guard members suffered serious injuries, was the result of opposition manipulation.
But in an acknowledgment of the plight of the region's young people, Development Minister Mohamed Nouri Jouini announced a new 15-million-dinar (7.5 million euros/10 million dollars) employment programme.
"Work is a legitimate right for every person, but there is no justification for violence," he said. | Riot | December 2010 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(Ahram Online)', '(AFP via Google News)', '(The Guardian)'] |
Two car bombs targeting a unit of the Libyan National Army injure 18 people in the city center of Derna, Libya. | At least 18 people were wounded in two car bomb explosions that targeted a military unit in Libya's eastern coastal city of Derna, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky, a medical source and residents told Reuters early on Sunday.
Residents said the car bombs targeted a military unit called Bulahati belonging to the eastern forces of the Libyan National Army (LNA) in the city center.
"We heard the first explosion, but we thought it was fireworks, then we heard the second," one resident told Reuters by telephone. "We found people around the Bulahati military unit and there was huge black smoke in the sky," another added. "We then discovered it was car bombs."
Derna, once a jihadist bastion, is about 292 km (182 miles) distant from Libya's second city, Benghazi, and was declared to be under the complete control of Khalifa Haftar's LNA in June 2018.
After the ouster of longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011, militant groups Al Qaeda and Islamic State have used the oil-rich country as a base for attacks, exploiting its chaos and lack of security.
(Reporting by Ayman Warfalli in Benghazi; Writing by Ahmed Elumami; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
| Armed Conflict | June 2019 | ['(Reuters)'] |
In a referendum held yesterday in the breakaway state of Nagorno-Karabakh , 87.6% of voters approve changing the country's governance system from semi-presidential to full presidential, therefore abolishing the position of prime minister. | The separatists controlling Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region have strengthened their executive leader's powers in a referendum that international observers warned was illegal.
The separatist region's de facto Central Election Commission said on February 21 that 87.6 percent of voters supported changing its form of governance from semipresidential to fully presidential. Nagorno-Karabakh will have no prime minister, and the de facto president will appoint government ministers.
Other amendments include the change of the region's name from the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic to the Republic of Artsakh, but the two names will be treated as synonymous. Turnout in the February 20 vote was 76 percent, the commission said. Armenia-backed separatists seized control of mainly Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh during a war in the early 1990s that killed some 30,000 people. Diplomatic efforts to settle the conflict have brought little progress.
Baku and a mediating group from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which consists of U.S., Russian, and French diplomats, have denounced the referendum as illegal.
Despite near-total government control over the media, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service has built a high-impact social-media presence in Azerbaijan and a reputation as a leading source of independent news.
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, operating out of a bureau in Yerevan, is a leading source of trusted reporting and technical innovation, reaching outsized audiences when developments demand authoritative, up-to-the-minute news most. | Government Policy Changes | February 2017 | ['(a region long claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia)', '(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)'] |
The retrial of Vicky Pryce, the ex–wife of former UK Cabinet Minister Chris Huhne, begins hearing evidence. | The jury at the retrial of ex-cabinet minister Chris Huhne's former wife Vicky Pryce has been told by the judge to listen to the case "afresh".
Mr Justice Sweeney discharged the jury at Southwark Crown Court last week after it was unable to reach a verdict.
The new jury must base its decision on evidence heard in court, he said.
Ms Pryce, 60, denies perverting the course of justice on a charge relating to speeding points she took for Huhne, saying he had coerced her in 2003.
Huhne has admitted the offence and is awaiting sentence. He resigned as the Lib Dem MP for Eastleigh in Hampshire after pleading guilty earlier this month.
After the second jury of seven men and five women was sworn in, Mr Justice Sweeney told them that their predecessor's failure to reach a verdict was "irrelevant". The judge told them to put out of their minds anything they had learned of the first jury's failure to reach a verdict. He said: "You judge the case afresh... only on the evidence that unfolds before you. The other jury's disagreement is irrelevant in this case."
In opening the case, prosecutor Andrew Edis also made reference to last week's events, telling the jury: "It would be foolish for anyone to pretend that you are all entirely ignorant about the circumstances of this case. There is no such pretence.
"What we also urge you to do is to pay no heed at all to anything that you know about it up until now."
Mr Edis told the jury Huhne was caught speeding in his BMW on the M11 in Essex in March 2003 as he returned from Stansted airport to London.
He said the politician nominated his economist wife to take the points so he could avoid losing his licence and the pair "cheated the system".
Ms Pryce, of Clapham, south London, would be claiming a defence of marital coercion, he told the court.
For the jury to accept this, they would need to accept that her husband was present at the time and applied such pressure that she had no real choice, he said.
Mr Edis said Ms Pryce was a "woman who had spent her life making important choices both in her own case and even for other people too because she was a very influential person who had had a glittering career as an economist in banking" earning a six-figure sum.
He said: "Women such as her have proudly led the struggle for equality with men over decades... and here she is saying that she was unable to choose whether to commit a crime or not because a man, whether her husband or not, was telling her what she had to do."
Mr Edis said the offence came to light after Huhne confessed to an affair with PR adviser Carina Trimingham and the couple separated.
He said the end of Ms Pryce's marriage was "distressing, very upsetting" but "being the person that she is, a strong-minded, strong-willed person, it also caused her great anger and in the end led her to want to get revenge".
She spoke to Sunday Times political editor Isabel Oakeshott and the pair discussed how they could publish the story. The journalist suggested Ms Pryce could inflict "maximum and perhaps fatal damage" on Huhne.
In an email obtained by police, Ms Pryce had told her: "I have no doubt as I definitely want to nail him, more than ever actually".
Mr Edis said the points-swapping would not have come to light if Ms Pryce's "desire of vengeance had not overcome her better judgment".
Ms Oakeshott told the court she first met Ms Pryce at the Lib Dem conference in September 2010, and at a lunch meeting in March 2011 the points swap was revealed.
"She had made it fairly clear that she wanted the public voters to know about the true character of her husband who was, of course, in a very important and respected position as a member of the cabinet," Ms Oakeshott said.
Ms Pryce told the journalist she had been surprised to receive a letter from police saying she had been caught speeding.
"She explained that she was shocked to receive this communication because she knew that she had not been at the wheel of the car, in fact she had never had any penalty points, and a row then ensued with her husband.
"She had felt pressurised, pushed into taking these points and she felt that she was put in an impossible position."
Asked about the risk of Ms Pryce being arrested herself, Ms Oakeshott said the economist's "decision was that she would say 'no comment' to the police and hope that the storm would blow over".
A story was published in the Sunday Times in May 2011.
Ms Oakeshott added: "She seemed to me exceptionally fragile, although not so fragile that she didn't know precisely what she was doing in relation to her dealing with me over this story".
Ms Oakeshott described Huhne as "ferociously" ambitious, "an extremely clever individual, very very bold, very brazen, unafraid of anything".
The trial was adjourned until Tuesday.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | February 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
Steward Derek Warwick gives Michael Schumacher, who performed a dangerous maneuver against a fellow driver, a 10–place penalty in a future Grand Prix race. | The former Formula One driver Derek Warwick, a steward at the Hungarian grand prix, has revealed he wanted to disqualify Michael Schumacher from the race.
Schumacher received a 10-place grid penalty for the next grand prix, in Belgium, after a dangerous move which saw him almost edge Williams's Rubens Barrichello into the pit wall at 180mph during the closing stages of Sunday's race. But Warwick believes showing the German the black flag would have sent a better message to young drivers that such behaviour would not be tolerated.
"I believe we had three laps to disqualify him from Budapest, and throwing a black flag would have shown a better example to our young drivers that we will not tolerate that kind of driving," Warwick told Radio 5 Live. "But by the time we got the video evidence we ran out of time and we had to do it retrospectively.
"We inteviewed Rubens and Michael and it was kind of disappointing how Michael handled it, and we had no option but to give him a 10-place penalty. If we had enough laps [we could have disqualified him] but you have to have video evidence and make sure all four stewards are in agreement."
After initially defending his move, Schumacher yesterday issued an apology to Barrichello, who partnered him at Ferrari from 2000 to 2005. Although Warwick, who was on the stewards panel in Budapest as part of the FIA's decision to introduce former drivers to adjudicate on incidents during races this season, would have liked to have been able to take stronger action, he believes the penalty handed down still sends the right message.
"You have to view the evidence you have and you could disqualify him from the next grand prix, or two grands prix," he continued. "But we felt a 10-place penalty is a big penalty to carry for Spa. It kind of puts him out of the race at Spa, and hopefully he will learn from that and remember that the new stewards will not tolerate that driving."
After reviewing the incident, Schumacher said yesterday: "I have got to say that the stewards are right with their judgment: the manoeuvre against him was too severe. I obviously wanted to make it difficult for him to overtake me and I also showed him clearly that I did not want to let him past, but obviously I did not want to endanger him with my manoeuvre. If he feels this way, then sorry, that was not my intention."
Following the race Barrichello was far from amused, claiming the 41-year-old had resorted to "a go-kart manoeuvre". Barrichello added: "If he wants to go to heaven – in the event he is going to heaven – I don't want to go before him."
The race was won by Red Bull's Mark Webber, with Schumacher finishing 11th and Barrichello 10th. The penalty marks the latest disappointment of Schumacher's difficult return to the sport after three years in retirement. The seven-time champion had high hopes of challenging for an eighth crown with Mercedes, but he has been off the pace and failed to match his team-mate Nico Rosberg. Warwick thinks the 41-year-old is already looking towards next season.
He said: "He has been disappointed with the Mercedes and its performance. He is a winner and all he cares about is winning races and winning the world championship. I think his mindset is already looking to 2011 and winning his eighth world championship. This year will become a long season for him.
"I think his legacy is tainted with some of the moves he has had over his career but let's not forget he has won 91 races and seven world titles and he is a great champion, a legend, and is up there with the greatest and we need to give him time. He has been three years out of the car and come back alongside Nico Rosberg who has done a great job." | Sports Competition | August 2010 | ['(Press Association via The Guardian)'] |
Abdulkadir Masharipov is charged with murder in relation to the shootings in Istanbul that killed 39 people and is remanded in custody. Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has claimed responsibility for the shootings. | The gunman suspected of killing 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub on New Year's Day has been remanded in custody, Turkey's state-run media says.
Abdulkadir Masharipov was caught at a hide-out in Istanbul on January 16 after evading police for more than two weeks.
He was formally charged with membership of an armed terrorist group, multiple counts of murder, possession of heavy weapons and attempting to overturn the constitutional order, the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Saturday.
Authorities said the suspect was trained in Afghanistan and staged the attack for the Islamic State (IS) group.
IS has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Reina nightclub.
Turkey is part of the US-led coalition against IS and launched an incursion into neighbouring Syria in August to drive the Sunni militants, and Kurdish militia fighters, away from its borders.
The jihadist group has been blamed for at least half a dozen attacks on civilian targets in Turkey over the past 18 months, prompting the authorities to intensify their efforts to break up its suspected networks in the country.
Police in the southern city of Adana detained a Danish and a Swedish citizen suspected of receiving weapons and explosives training in Syria and of planning attacks in Europe, Anadolu said.
On Thursday, police in Gaziantep, another city near the Syrian border, detained four IS suspects believed to be planning attacks in Turkey, along with suicide belts and explosives.
The arrests came after the biggest round-up targeting the jihadist group in Turkey last weekend, in which 748 suspects were detained. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | February 2017 | ['(ABC)'] |
China passes the controversial Hong Kong national security law. | The law, approved in Beijing with speed and secrecy and signed off by Xi Jinping, will tighten the Communist Party’s grip on Hong Kong after last year’s protests. By Chris Buckley, Keith Bradsher and Tiffany May
China unveiled a contentious new law for Hong Kong late Tuesday that grants the authorities sweeping powers to crack down on opposition to Beijing at home and abroad with heavy prison sentences for vaguely defined political crimes.
The law’s swift approval in Beijing signaled the urgency that the Communist Party leader, Xi Jinping, has given to expanding his control over Hong Kong to quash pro-democracy protests that evolved last year into an increasingly confrontational challenge to Chinese rule. | Government Policy Changes | June 2020 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
At least three Qassam rockets landed in the western Negev, despite Israel Defense Forces' Operation Blue Skies. At least one Qassam rocket landed in Sderot, in which the Red Dawn alert system was activated around 15:30. Two Qassam rockets landed in an open area near Israeli communities in the western Negev. In all the cases there were no injuries. | Two rockets landed in an open area near a western Negev community. No injuries were reported in the strike. Meanwhile, the "Red Dawn" alert system was activated in the southern town of Sderot around 3 p.m. after a Qassam was launched at the community.
All three rockets were fired from areas not targeted during operation Blue Skies.
Sderot resident Moshe Ben Sheetrit told Ynet he did not see the rocket land but heard the explosion.
"It was very loud. The (Red Dawn) system was activated, but it doesn't really help. Unfortunately, all of us are practiced and know what to do," he said. "I hope it will get quiet, because we're sick and tired of this tension."
2 terrorists killed
The latest Qassam fire follows the first successful IDF strike at terrorists planning to fire rockets in the framework of operation "Blue Skies". Saturday night, the Air Force spotted a rocket launching cell and fired at it, killing two Palestinians and wounding one.
Following the incident, army officials said the successful neutralization of the Qassam cell demonstrates the effectiveness of operation "Blue Skies". However, the officials noted other areas used as Qassam launching sites will also be handled.
"We must remember 'Blue Skies' can be expended to any area in the Strip," one officer said. "If we see assessments that point to such need, we'll act accordingly."
However, the sources admitted some pressure has been exerted, particularly by foreign diplomats, to end the operation.
"For the time being there's no intention to end the operation and we're continuing as usual," one official said. | Armed Conflict | January 2006 | ['(Ynetnews)'] |
Indian officials have raised the death toll of those suspected dead in the 2005 Maharashtra floods to more than 800. | Rescuers are still searching for survivors and authorities are racing against time to prevent diseases. Late on Thursday 22 people, including several children, died in a stampede in a Mumbai suburb when rumours spread that a tsunami was about to occur.
Mumbai is slowly returning to normal but many villages are still cut off.
Rumour-mongering
Authorities in the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, fear the death toll could rise further.
Senior relief official, Krishna Vatsa, said bodies buried by landslides were still being recovered.
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This monsoon only proved that there is absolutely no drainage system in the city
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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh toured the area on Thursday and said he was "deeply pained by this human tragedy".
The federal government has given Maharashtra seven billion rupees ($162m) in aid.
More than 300 of those killed died in Mumbai, 22 of them crushed to death in the stampede in the suburban shantytown of Nehru Nagar, in the north-west of the city.
Police there have arrested 17 people for alleged rumour-mongering.
"People died due to false rumours," RR Patil, the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra state told the Associated Press news agency.
A second false rumour on Friday of an approaching cyclone forced Mumbai police to use loudspeakers to tell residents not to pay heed.
Weather officials said the rainfall in Mumbai on Tuesday - more than 65cm (26 inches) - was the heaviest recorded in India's history, causing havoc in a city known for its inadequate infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the state government said it was racing against time to prevent epidemics that could be caused by the large amounts of debris and animal carcasses.
The home ministry says the carcasses of 17,000 goats and 1,000 buffaloes and cows are strewn in the city's western and eastern suburbs.
Medical teams are going door-to-door to distribute medicine and the government has asked Unicef to help distribute medicine in rural Maharashtra.
Mr Vatsa, the relief official, said: "We need to restore the water supply and electricity supply and telecommunications and we need to disinfect water - so the hygiene and sanitation are some of the important considerations right now in terms of restoring the situation."
Cut off
Rescuers are still trying to find survivors in rubble in the suburbs.
In northern Mumbai, a whole shantytown was crushed by a hill that collapsed on top of it.
"It was terrible to pull out little babies from under boulders and mud," a firefighter told Associated Press.
"The very young and the old just didn't make it." Rescuers flagged down private cars to get dozens of injured to hospital, and bodies were loaded onto trucks.
Some 40 villages in the region surrounding Mumbai are still cut off from the rest of the country, and food parcels and water bottles are being airdropped in the affected areas.
Those killed in the city were crushed by falling walls, trapped in cars or electrocuted - many of them on their way to work, despite a government warning not to set out the morning after the rainfall.
The BBC's Zubair Ahmed in Mumbai says that schools and offices have reopened after being shut down for two days. | Floods | July 2005 | ['(BBC)'] |
Former Governor of Texas Rick Perry suspends his campaign for the presidential race. , | The former Texas governor told the Eagle Forum in St. Louis, Missouri Friday afternoon that he is suspending his presidential campaign, making him the first 2016 presidential candidate to do so.
“We have a tremendous field –- the best in a generation -– so I step aside knowing our party is in good hands, and as long as we listen to the grassroots, the cause of conservatism will be too,” he said, adding that he has "no regrets" about his run.
"That is why today I am suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States."
Perry, whose White House bid started on June 4 and lasted 97 days, has been polling in the low single digits throughout his campaign -- most recently at 1 percent in the crucial first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa. He was slated to debate for the second time in the lower-tier debate on CNN next week.
"Today I step aside knowing as long as we fight for the cause of conservatism, our nation is in good hands." - @GovernorPerry— Rick Perry (@GovernorPerry) September 11, 2015
"Today I step aside knowing as long as we fight for the cause of conservatism, our nation is in good hands." - @GovernorPerry
He also took what appeared to be a veiled swipe at GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. "Demeaning people of Hispanic heritage is not just ignorant, it betrays the example of Christ," he said.
In recent weeks, Perry has been particularly vocal in his criticism of the real estate mogul, calling him a "cancer on conservatism."
"My second warning is this: we cannot indulge nativist appeals that divide the nation further. The answer to our current divider-in-chief is not to elect a Republican divider-in-chief," Perry said, adding that the nominee "must make the case for the cause of conservatism more than the cause of their own celebrity."
It seems though that Trump has at least buried the hatchet, tweeting today wishing Perry well and that he "will have a great future."
.@GovernorPerry is a terrific guy and I wish him well- I know he will have a great future!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2015
.@GovernorPerry is a terrific guy and I wish him well- I know he will have a great future!
In August, reports came out about Perry not having enough money to pay his campaign staff. Perry’s campaign chairman Sam Clovis quit from the former Texas governor’s campaign in late August and went to work for Trump.
"The answer to a president nominated for soaring rhetoric and no record is not to nominate a candidate whose rhetoric speaks louder than his record," Perry said in his speech. "It is not to replicate the Democrat model of selecting a president, falling for the cult of personality over durable life qualities."
He also ran in 2012, briefly polling at the top of the pack before falling to eventual nominee Mitt Romney.
Other fellow 2016 contenders including Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, and Rick Santorum expressed their support for Perry.
Amen. God bless Rick Perry for his continuing commitment to that cause. https://t.co/s3wSHkDYSy— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) September 11, 2015
Amen. God bless Rick Perry for his continuing commitment to that cause. https://t.co/s3wSHkDYSy
.@GovernorPerry is a great friend, and has the best record of any Governor anywhere, anytime.— Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) September 11, 2015
.@GovernorPerry is a great friend, and has the best record of any Governor anywhere, anytime.
@GovernorPerry getting to know you and Anita has been a great joy for our family. Thank you for your service friend. pic.twitter.com/DGom5sEgSP— Rick Santorum (@RickSantorum) September 11, 2015
@GovernorPerry getting to know you and Anita has been a great joy for our family. Thank you for your service friend. pic.twitter.com/DGom5sEgSP
.@GovernorPerry has dedicated his entire life to his family, friends, and Jesus Christ.— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) September 11, 2015
.@GovernorPerry has dedicated his entire life to his family, friends, and Jesus Christ.
I commend him for running an honorable, positive campaign, and wish the best to him and his family.— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) September 11, 2015
I commend him for running an honorable, positive campaign, and wish the best to him and his family.
.@GovernorPerry, I'm proud to call you my friend and I wish you the best in the future.— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) September 11, 2015
.@GovernorPerry, I'm proud to call you my friend and I wish you the best in the future.
I like Rick Perry. We have liked his team. He has all my good wishes.— James S Gilmore (@gov_gilmore) September 11, 2015
I like Rick Perry. We have liked his team. He has all my good wishes.
.@GovernorPerry has served the state of Texas and this country honorably and tirelessly. I wish him all the best.— Chris Christie (@ChrisChristie) September 11, 2015
.@GovernorPerry has served the state of Texas and this country honorably and tirelessly. I wish him all the best. | Government Job change - Election | September 2015 | ['(ABC Go)', '(National Journal)'] |
A 6.3 magnitude earthquake strikes near Sarpol–e Zahab, Iran, and close to the Iraqi border. A person died in Iraq while more than 700 others are injured. | More than 700 people have been injured in a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that struck western Iran on Sunday night, state television reports.
The epicentre was in Kermanshah province, where last year more than 600 people were killed in the country's deadliest earthquake in over a decade.
Tremors were reportedly felt across the wider region, with reports of at least one death in nearby Iraqi Kurdistan. No fatalities were reported in Iran, nor any major damage.
The earthquake hit 20km (12 miles) away from the city of Sarpol-e Zahab, at a depth of 10km, at about 20:00 local time on Sunday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. Shallower earthquakes are more likely to cause broader levels of damage. "We have had 729 injured, 700 of them have been treated and released ... some 18 people have been hospitalised," the provincial governor, Houshang Bazvand, told state TV on Monday. An official for Iran's Red Crescent Society, Morteza Salimi, told AFP that most of Sunday's casualties were caused by a stampede sparked by the first tremors.
State TV aired footage of damaged houses in Sarpol-e Zahab, where a number of people still remain homeless after last year's destructive earthquake.
Dozens of rescue teams, as well as the national army and Iran's Revolutionary Guards have been deployed, the authorities said.
President Hassan Rouhani "has ordered officials to do whatever is necessary to provide help for the victims," state TV reported.
According to officials in nearby Iraqi Kurdistan, one person died and 43 others were injured in the quake. Very sadly, one of the injured person just passed away in the hospital, and the number of people raised to 43 affected civilians https://t.co/CYyJfN5ovF
Residents in the Iraqi capital Baghdad - about 175km away - and several other Iraqi provinces also felt Sunday's quake. Many people in the affected areas in Iran were forced to spend the night outdoors in cold weather due to concerns about aftershocks.
Iran sits on two major tectonic plates and is prone to frequent seismic activity. In 2003, a 6.6-magnitude earthquake destroyed the historic city of Bam in the south-east of the country, killing 26,000 people.
'My aunt, cousin and my cousin's children died'
| Earthquakes | November 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
An avalanche at the Crans–Montana ski resort in Switzerland injures four, one seriously, with fears that up to a dozen skiers may have been hit according to witnesses. 240 rescuers including police and army search the affected piste area. No further victims are immediately found, or missing persons reported. | One of the people rescued from an avalanche at the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana died in the hospital overnight. Three other people were injured by the huge avalanche that hit a ski slope on Tuesday. Rescuers suspended a coordinated search on Wednesday morning.
The man who died was a 34-year-old French ski patroller who had worked since 2010 at the Swiss resort, police said. When the avalanche hit the piste, he had been helping an injured skier.
On Tuesday, a huge avalanche swept down the mountain at an altitude of 2,500 metres, just below the Plaine-Morte Glacier, and hit the popular Kandahar ski slope at 2.20pm at a spot known as “Passage du Major”.
In all, four people were quickly pulled from the snow and flown by helicopter to Sion Hospital. Three had light injuries; the French ski patroller later died overnight from his serious injuries.
Rescuers continued working on Tuesday night above the resort in canton Valais to try to find skiers who might have been trapped in the avalanche. Witnesses had told police that there could be more people under the snow.
More
A Nobel Prize for the country’s astrophysicists is a reminder Swiss scientists are at the forefront of space research. This video by Swiss public radio, RTS, shows the extent of the avalanche. The police said it measured over 840 metres long and 100 metres wide and spread over the slope for about 400 metres.
Rescue services were immediately on the spot and the search continues. Eight helicopters and more than 240 police and rescue workers are involved in the emergency operation, including army officers who were there to help prepare for two Women's Alpine Ski World Cup races next weekend.
A report by the Valais-based Le Nouvelliste newspaper quoted the commune's president Nicolas Feraud as saying 10 to 12 people were believed to be trapped in the snow.
“We heard a loud noise. After, there was a huge avalanche. I have never seen a 1.5-metre-4 metre high avalanche in my life. It was just impressive. We were almost left behind too. It was a close call,” Martial, a 40-year-old skier, told 20Minutes news site.
According to the local avalanche bulletin, the avalanche danger was level 2 (moderate) on a scale of 1-5 on Tuesday. The accident came as warm temperatures over the past week began melting heavy snow and coincided with school holidays in some cantons.
+ What are the real risks from avalanches?
The cause of the avalanche is unclear and an investigation has been opened. The police said it had either been set off by skiers or by the weather conditions. Avalanches that hit resort ski slopes are rare. According to the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) in DavosExternal link, since 1996 there have been five similar accidents where an avalanche hit a resort slope, resulting in a total of five deaths. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | February 2019 | ['(Fox News)', '(SwissInfo)'] |
Ukrainian voters go to the polls to elect a new president. | Ukrainian voters, battered by the recession and disillusioned by unkept promises of reform, cast their first presidential ballots since the 2004 Orange Revolution Sunday, an election that could steer the country from its pro-Western course and strengthen ties with Russia.Voters trudged toward polling stations in light snow in the capital Kiev. At one polling station in the eastern city of Donetsk, officials encouraged voters with vodka, sausage and salo, or lard, a traditional Ukrainian hors d’oeuvre.
But reports of voting irregularities poured in from across the country and the Interior Ministry said it had received some 1,200 complaints detailing falsified voter registrations and illegal absentee voting.
| Government Job change - Election | January 2010 | ['(Kyiv Post)', '(BBC)'] |
Japan lowers the age of adulthood from 20 to 18, with the changes coming into effect in 2022. The revision to Japan's civil code means that 18-year-olds will be able to marry without their parents' consent, apply for credit cards and loans, and transgender people will be able to have their new gender officially recognised. The change causes confusion and concern regarding the kimono industry and Coming of Age Day. | The age change means 18-year-olds will be able to marry and apply for loans, but will still have to wait until 20 to drink or gamble
Last modified on Thu 14 Jun 2018 23.45 BST
Japan has lowered the age of adulthood from 20 to 18, but young people who reach the milestone when the change goes into effect in 2022 won’t be able to celebrate with a few glasses of sake. At least not legally.
The revision to the civil code, the first of its kind for more than 140 years, will allow all 18-year-olds to marry without their parents’ consent. Currently, men aged 18 and women aged 16 can marry, but only with the permission of both sets of parents.
They will also be able to apply for credit cards and loans, and obtain a passport valid for 10 years. Transgender men and women over 18 will be able to apply to courts to have their gender officially recognised.
But the newly recognised adults will indulge in some rites of passage at their own risk: they will still have to wait until they are 20 to drink, smoke and bet on Japan’s four legalised forms of gambling: horse, bicycle, motorcycle and motorboat races.
The change has created confusion over the annual Coming of age day, when men and women who have turned 20 during the previous 12 months put on their finest kimono, attend ceremonies and celebrate with their first legal drink.
Local media reported on concerns over the effect the new law could have on Japan’s already ailing kimono industry if ceremonies are held for those who have turned 18 rather than 20.
The coming of age celebration, held on the second Monday of January, falls around the time that many 18-year-olds are cramming for university entrance exams.
Hidemitsu Miyamoto, the president of a kimono shop, was among those who feared teenagers would be too preoccupied with their academic futures to attend the ceremony, meaning they won’t need to rent or buy one of the expensive garments.
“The coming of age ceremony has been something of a final stronghold for our industry’s survival at a time when fewer and fewer people wear kimono, presenting what is perhaps the only opportunity for young people, especially women, to wear the attire,” Miyamoto told the Japan Times.
The change in the law, first suggested by the justice ministry in 2009, is intended to encourage young people’s participation in society and the economy, especially in light of the growing number of people aged 65 and over.
Japan lowered the voting age from 20 to 18 in 2015, giving 2.4 million teenagers the right to vote in upper house elections the following year.
… | Government Policy Changes | June 2018 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The Philippines prepares for Typhoon Megi, potentially the strongest typhoon to hit the country this year. | Body of drowning victim foundBlackout hits 5 N. Luzon provinces2 more domestic flights cancelledDepEd: Class suspensions now based on Pagasa storm signalsPool calamity funds for disasters—DILG2 missing amid rains spawned by ‘Juan’—Coast GuardSuper typhoon Juan makes landfall in Sierra Madre—PagasaJuan claims 1st deathFloods and political will
Rodolfo Yunipa braves the heavy downpour as he fixes the roofing of his hut near the shoreline in Barangay Maura, Aparri, Cagayan. Super-typhoon “Juan” (international code name: Megi) is expected to strike at the northern provinces of Luzon Monday morning. EDWIN BACASMAS
Expected path of Super-typhoon “Juan” based on models plotted by various weather tracking centers.
Gov’t evacuates folk in Cagayan, Isabela
MANILA, Philippines—Authorities on Sunday began evacuating thousands of villagers in vulnerable areas hours before Super-typhoon “Juan” was to hit northern Luzon.
Packing winds of 260 kilometers per hour, Juan (international code name: Megi) was expected to make landfall in Cagayan province by 8 a.m. Monday and exit Ilocos Norte in the afternoon.
With Juan intensifying into a super-typhoon, the weather bureau hoisted Signal No. 4 over Cagayan and Isabela at 6 p.m. instead of 11 p.m.
Signal No. 4 is the highest warning signal used by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA).
PAGASA said the last time the country declared Signal No. 4 was in 2006, when “Reming” battered the Bicol region. Reming had gusts of 320 kph.
As of 4 p.m. on Sunday, Juan was spotted 390 km east of Aparri, moving westward at 22 kph, PAGASA said. The super-typhoon had sustained winds of 225 kph and gusts of 260 kph.
But in its 11 p.m. advisory on Sunday, PAGASA placed Metro Manila and nearby provinces on Signal No. 1 after the super-typhoon changed its track in the past six hours.
Juan was now moving west southwest at 20 kph, slightly slower than the 22 kph issued in the 5 p.m. forecast. As of 10 p.m., the super-typhoon was 290 km east northeast of Tuguegarao, Cagayan.
PAGASA officer in charge Graciano Yumul Jr. said Metro Manila and other parts of southern Luzon will experience rains as it was now within the typhoon's rain band.
"Just because it's Signal No. 1, it doesn't mean that we should not be prepared. Manila was only under Signal No. 1 during (Tropical Storm) ‘Ondoy’" Yumul said, referring to last year's storm (international name: Ketsana) that flooded 80 percent of the metropolis.
Under Department of Education standards, elementary classes in Metro Manila and other areas under Signal No. 1 are suspended, Yumul said.
Aside from Metro Manila, Signal No. 1 was placed over Pangasinan, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Polillio Island, Cavite, Bulacan, Pampanga, Bataan, Zambales, Rizal and northern Quezon.
The super-typhoon could uproot trees, blow away houses made of light material, damage power lines and communication services, trigger landslides and cause storm surges.
Not only did the typhoon’s wind speed and strength intensify, its radius also grew from 300 km to 350 km, said Robert Sawi, the chief forecaster at PAGASA.
Sawi said Juan’s rainfall was expected at 20 millimeters per hour, about half the volume dumped by Ondoy.
Officials said the rainfall amount was a conservative estimate, noting that the data came from the fringes of Juan.
Juan is the 10th and strongest storm to hit the country this year. The country is battered by an average of 20 storms a year.
Juan intensified into a super-typhoon with winds of over 215 kph as it approached the coast of Cagayan Sunday, PAGASA said.
Brunt
PAGASA’s Yumul said Juan would further intensify based on models used by the agency and the forecasts of other weather agencies.
“Those that will bear its brunt are northern Luzon and central Luzon,” Yumul said.
Signal No. 3 was raised over Batanes, Calayan and Babuyan Group of Islands, Apayao, Kalinga, Mountain Province, Ifugao, Quirino, Nueva Vizcaya and northern Aurora.
Signal No. 2 was hoisted over Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, Abra, La Union, Benguet and the rest of Aurora.
Evacuations
At least 700 people moved out of their homes to safer ground on Saturday in mountainous Isabela province, said Benito Ramos, executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC).
In nearby Cagayan, authorities have ordered villagers to move out of high-risk neighborhoods in 12 coastal towns.
“If nobody will budge, we may carry out forced evacuations,” said Bonifacio Cuarteros of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.
Farmers have been warned to harvest as much of their crops as possible before Juan hits or risk losses, Cuarteros said.
President Benigno Aquino III ordered all government agencies to be on high alert to prevent any casualties, while the Coast Guard was instructed to ban all fishing vessels from setting off to sea in the north.
Thousands of military reserve officers and volunteers were on stand by, along with helicopters, including six Chinooks that were committed by US troops holding war exercises with Filipino soldiers near Manila, Ramos said.
Rescue boats and thousands of food packs have been prepositioned near vulnerable areas, he said, adding that schools along the typhoon’s path would be closed.
“This is like preparing for war,” Ramos, a retired Army general, said. “We know the past lessons and we’re aiming for zero casualties.”
Command conference
An angry Mr. Aquino fired the head of the weather bureau in July for failing to predict that a typhoon would hit Manila. More than 100 people were killed in Manila and outlying provinces by that storm.
The President will preside over a command conference of the NDRRMC in Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City at 9 a.m. on Monday, his spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said Sunday night.
No instructions
In Aparri, Cagayan, residents of a coastal settlement were worried that local officials still had not given any safety instructions to them as of 6 p.m. Sunday.
Journalists and photographers stationed in Cagayan witnessed how the residents of Barangay Maura living near the sea made various attempts to fortify their houses.
As early as 2 p.m. Sunday, the skies over Aparri were dark gray and the sun was not visible for the rest of the afternoon.
Fishermen helped each other push their boats to safer areas and many residents waiting for Juan killed time watching the waves slam on the beach.
Several mothers raised fears that water from the sea might enter their houses, or worse sweep them away.
Calm before storm
Hours earlier, residents of northern Luzon woke up to a sunny morning amid preparations by local governments and disaster-response officials for what was touted to be the strongest typhoon to hit the country since January.
The weather was so good that some candidates for the Oct. 25 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections in the provinces of Ilocos Norte and Benguet found time to campaign, finding the typhoon a convenient excuse to engage their neighbors and push their bids.
But it was the proverbial calm before the storm. By mid-afternoon, reports reaching the Philippine Daily Inquirer showed that strong winds started to be felt in northern Cagayan as strong rains fell.
Norma Talosig, Office of Civil Defense director in Cagayan Valley, said her office had issued repeated warnings to residents in coastal towns and flood-prone villages to stay on alert and prioritize their safety.
“I have this warning to villagers—do not wait until tomorrow to evacuate as the typhoon’s radius is very wide ... So far, [there were no reports of] forced evacuation,” Talosig said in a text message sent at about 4 p.m. Sunday.
At least four evacuation centers in Gonzaga and Santa Ana towns in Cagayan have been readied for residents of coastal areas as officials started preemptive evacuation there.
Rescue teams
Edna Junio, provincial social welfare and development officer, said local government and rescue teams had assisted residents living near rivers and coastlines transfer to evacuation centers.
A statement from the NDRRMC said evacuation of residents had started in Aparri, Buguey, and Ballesteros towns, also in Cagayan.
The Isabela provincial government has formed a 24-hour emergency response team manned by personnel from the Department of Social Welfare and Development and trained rescue personnel.
Relief goods
Isabela Gov. Faustino Dy III ordered the delivery of relief goods to various towns on Saturday and Sunday, taking advantage of the good weather.
The Laoag City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council started mobilizing quick response teams in preparation for the typhoon.
Sirens at the Laoag City Hall were also sounded each time the weather bureau raised storm signals.
In the Cordillera Administrative Region, a warm Sunday greeted Baguio and Benguet barangay candidates, who included tips about storm preparation in their campaign spiels.
Mayor Gregorio Abalos Jr. of La Trinidad, Benguet, met with local rescue officials about the condition of houses in Barangay Puguis, where a landslide triggered by last year’s Typhoon “Pepeng” (Parma) wiped out a section of the community of Little Kibungan.
Wilted palay
In Nueva Ecija province, a sunny day frustrated farmers as they eagerly awaited rains from Juan that would feed their rice farms.
Virgilio Santaygillo, 48, a farmer from Barangay Cabu in Cabanatuan City, said news about possible heavy rains had given him hope that he could save his already wilting palay (unmilled rice).
“We fear excessive rains but we pray for water [for our crops],” he said.
Nathaniel Servando, PAGASA administrator, said Juan might not be the last destructive typhoon to hit the Philippines in 2010, a La Nińa year.
| Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | October 2010 | ['(ABC News Australia)', '(BBC)', '(Philippine Inquirer)'] |
The Likud party, led by incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wins the most seats in the Knesset, winning 30 out of 120 seats. If asked by the President to form a government, Netanyahu will become the first Prime Minister to serve a fourth term. | TEL AVIV — After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel won a clear victory in Tuesday’s elections and seemed all but certain to form a new government and serve a fourth term, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process.
With 99.5 percent of the ballots counted, the YNet news site reported Wednesday morning that Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party had captured 29 or 30 of the 120 seats in Parliament, sweeping past his chief rival, the center-left Zionist Union alliance, which got 24 seats.
| Government Job change - Election | March 2015 | ['(The New York Times)', '(The Times of Israel)', '(AP via Fox News)'] |
Singapore says the Islamist group plans to take the conflict into Southeast Asia. | Singaporehas been identified as a possible target for attack by a recent Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) posting on social media, a report this week said.
ISIS supporters from the region have also cited the Philippines and the United States as targets, the report's author, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies analyst Jasminder Singh, told The Straits Times.
This development comes as Malaysia last month nabbed a cell with explosives targeting Putrajaya and the federal Parliament, and as Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry on Wednesday announced the detention of a 19-year-old student who made plans to join ISIS in Syria and carry out attacks here.
It is not the first time Singapore has been cited by radicals. Last year, extremist English-language magazine Resurgence cited the Phillip Channel and Sembawang Naval Base in a piece on how militants could attack at sea.
The threat to Singapore and the region is set to grow as ISIS' Malay archipelago combat unit, Katibah Nusantara, formed in Syria last August for South-east Asian fighters who find it easier to communicate in Bahasa Indonesia and Malay rather than Arabic, gains ground.
There are now more than 700 fighters from Indonesia and over 200 fighters from Malaysia fighting in Iraq and Syria, Mr Singh noted in the report published this week. While they make up a small proportion of over 30,000 foreign fighters from 90 countries, the unit scored its first major combat success last month, seizing five Kurdish-held areas in Syria.
The unit is likely to gain importance in ISIS' strategic goal of setting up a worldwide caliphate, with returning fighters mobilised to undertake attacks and even declare a new branch in this region.
"The downward slide of jihadist appeal and success since 2009 has been reversed by Katibah Nusantara's success in Iraq and Syria," Mr Singh wrote.
He said Malaysian fighters have also seized on local issues like the push for an Islamic penal code to win support. More recently, ISIS sympathisers online have called on Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar to go to Syria.
Professor Rohan Gunaratna, who heads Singapore's International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, says the unit poses a severe threat to Singapore and South-east Asia.
"It has multiple functions: to train people capable of carrying out attacks in Iraq and Syria, to instigate South-east Asians to mount attacks in their home countries, and to radicalise South-east Asians online, recruit them and physically facilitate their entry into Iraq and Syria," he said.
Hence, the strategy to counter this influence has to be multi-pronged, from engaging the community to exposing ISIS' evils online. Muslim leaders worldwide are also leading the effort to counter ISIS, he added.
They include Singapore's Mufti, Dr Fatris Bakaram, who said it was a religious obligation for Muslims here to report to the authorities those who pose a threat. | Armed Conflict | May 2015 | ['(Straits Times)'] |
Record flooding along the Mississippi River and its tributaries that has closed major highways, forced evacuations, and overflowed levees, continues to threaten the Midwestern United States where at least 24 have died. The Mississippi is expected to crest in the next few days in Thebes, Illinois, at 47.5 feet, breaking the 1995 record by more than a foot and a half . And now periods of below-freezing air will cause some flooded areas to turn icy. | (Reuters) - Record flooding from rain-swollen rivers has washed out hundreds of structures in Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, forcing thousands to flee their homes, and 9.3 million Americans still face flood warnings.
At least 28 people have died in the U.S. Midwest’s extreme weather since the weekend, mostly from driving into flooded areas after storms dropped up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain, officials said.
The days of downpours have pushed the mighty Mississippi and its tributaries to record highs or levels not seen in decades, the National Weather Service and local officials said.
Southern states like Louisiana will be the next to lose homes and businesses to flooding as overflowing rivers push downstream toward the Gulf of Mexico, the National Weather Service said.
The floodwaters have closed sections of Interstate 44 and Interstate 55, both major trucking routes, along with many smaller roads near rivers, Illinois and Missouri officials said on Thursday.
Freezing temperatures in the area in the coming days will cause some flooded areas to turn icy, adding to challenges, forecasters said.
Significant river flooding is expected for the lower Mississippi River, the second-longest river in the United States, into mid-January, the NWS said.
As of Thursday morning, some 9.3 million people nationwide were in areas with flood warnings. That was down from 12.1 million on Wednesday and 17.7 million on Tuesday.
Workers in Tennessee were preparing on Thursday for the Mississippi River in Memphis to reach flood stage over the weekend.
Related Coverage
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“We’re moving things up high and we’ve got our generators out and got some extra water,” said Dotty Kirkendoll, a clerk at Riverside Park Marina on McKellar Lake, which feeds off the Mississippi River.
The U.S. Coast Guard issued a high water safety advisory on Thursday for more than 560 miles of the Lower Mississippi River from Caruthersville, Missouri, to near Natchez, Mississippi. It is expected to stay in effect for several weeks, based on NWS forecasts, the Coast Guard said.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency to prepare for flooding, and levee systems are being monitored daily.
“All that water’s coming south and we have to be ready for it,” Lieutenant Governor-Elect Billy Nungesser told CNN. “It’s a serious concern. It’s early in the season. We usually don’t see this until much later.”
Water rose to the rooftops of some structures in Missouri towns and two rivers west of St. Louis crested at historic levels, flooding towns, disabling sewer plants and forcing hundreds of residents from their homes.
Eureka, Missouri, Mayor Kevin Coffey said his town had not seen such bad flooding in 150 years and some of its oldest businesses have been damaged. The Mississippi is expected to crest in the small town of Thebes, Illinois, at 47.5 feet on Sunday, more than a foot and a half (46 cm) above the 1995 record, the National Weather Service said.
Thebes village worker Bobby White said some sewage pumps were shut down to avoid overloading and portable toilets had been supplied to affected areas. Most homes in the town, including his own, are on a hill and should be fine, he said.
“Most of the people at the bottom of the hill moved out years ago,” White said. “If [flooding] comes on the hill, all of Alexander County will be wiped out.”
Illinois officials have provided 800,000 sandbags to communities endangered by the Illinois, Sangamon, Iroquois and Mississippi rivers, said Patti Thompson, spokeswoman for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.
Some evacuees stayed with family or friends or went to hotels, while others found refuge in Red Cross shelters set up in the area.
Rick Miller, U.S. property practice leader for Aon Risk Solutions, said it was too early to comment on possible damage costs. He said the majority of the impact will be to the National Flood Insurance Program.
Miller does not expect the flooding, as bad as it has been, to be a “significant insurance industry event” and said the insurance impact of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was far greater.
Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles, Richa Naidu in Bengaluru, Mary Wisniewski in Chicago and Tim Ghianni in Nashville; Editing by Janet Lawrence, Bill Trott and Andrew Hay | Floods | December 2015 | ['(46 cm)', '(Reuters)', '(AccuWeather)', '(Chicago Tribune)'] |
An Arizona Air National Guard F-16 crashes near Safford, Arizona, killing the pilot. | Updated on: September 6, 2017 / 2:27 AM
/ AP
SAFFORD, Ariz. -- An F-16 fighter jet crashed in southeastern Arizona Tuesday afternoon, Arizona Air National Guard officials said. The pilot was killed, according to the Graham County Sheriff's Office.
The crash occurred about 20 miles northwest of Safford, Arizona, the officials said. Safford is about 165 miles southeast of Phoenix.
The Fighting Falcon was assigned to the Arizona Guard's 162nd Wing. The unit is based at Tucson International Airport and serves as the Air National Guard's lead F-16 pilot training unit.
The Air Force activated a team to investigate the crash, which was the second involving an F-16 Fighting Falcon flying from the 162nd Wing and the third F-16 crash in Arizona since mid-2015.
The 162nd Wing tweeted first word of the crash:
An F-16 training with the AZANG crashed 20 miles northwest of Safford, Az at 3 p.m. Rescue efforts are underway. More information to come.
First published on September 5, 2017 / 7:39 PM
© 2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | Air crash | September 2017 | ['(CBS News)'] |
China's State Council announces that Liu Shiyu, who had been chairman of the Agricultural Bank of China Limited, will replace Xiao Gang as head of the China's Securities Regulatory Commission. | SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has removed the head of its securities regulator following a turbulent period in the country’s stock markets, appointing a top state banking executive as his replacement, as leaders move to restore confidence in the economy.
The announcement on the official Xinhua news agency on Saturday follows a string of assurances from senior leaders following the Lunar New Year holiday that China will underpin its slowing economy and steady its wobbly currency.
Xinhua said Xiao Gang, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) since 2013, had been succeeded by Liu Shiyu, chairman of the Agricultural Bank of China Ltd (AgBank) 601288.SS1288.HK and a former deputy governor of the central bank. “Xiao’s departure is not a surprise following the recent stock disaster. This is a role vulnerable to public criticism because most Chinese retail investors are destined to lose money in such a market,” said Zhang Kaihua, a fund manager of Nanjing-based hedge fund Huyang Investment.
Reuters could not immediately reach the CSRC or Agricultural Bank of China for comment.
Xiao and the CSRC came under fire as China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets slumped as much as 40 percent in just a few months last summer.
In a further blow, a stock index “circuit breaker” introduced in January to limit stock market losses was deactivated after four days of use because it was blamed for exacerbating a sharp selloff. Online media nicknamed Xiao “Mr Circuit Breaker”.
Reuters reported in January that Xiao, 57, had offered to resign following the “circuit-breaker” failure. The CSRC said at the time the information did not conform to the facts.
The gyrations in China’s stock markets, an unexpected devaluation of the yuan in August and sharp falls in currency reserves rattled global markets, raising concerns about the health of the economy and Beijing’s ability to steer the country through both a protracted slowdown in growth and a shift away from manufacturing toward services.
Economic growth slipped last year to 6.9 percent, stellar by Western standards, but the weakest pace for China in more than two decades.
Ahead of two high-profile events for China - a meeting in Shanghai next week of G20 financial leaders and the annual gathering of China’s legislature in March - officials have announced various measures to support the economy, including funds for infrastructure projects and increased financial support to struggling industry.
China’s Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said in an interview with state television on Friday that he was confident that the country’s trade conditions would stabilize and improve in 2016.
Investors and analysts said the new chief Liu, 54, a trained economist, would bring in new policies and strategies, but it remained to be seen what direction he would take.
“Liu has a lot of experience in the financial sector, but there will be some policy uncertainty in the short term as it will take at least six months for the former banker to get used to his new role,” fund manager Zhang said.
Andrew Sullivan, managing director, sales trading at Haitong International Securities Group in Hong Kong, said that removing Xiao had been largely expected.
“But by bringing in the AgBank chairman, they are really not bringing anybody with a fresh market perspective but a political insider,” he said.
Liu spent most of his career at the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), rising to deputy governor and holding that post from 2006 until he left in late 2014 to head up AgBank.
Xiao became the CSRC head in March 2013 and was charged with attracting investment into equities and away from speculative bubbles in sectors such as real estate, while defending against endemic insider trading.
The Communist Party had described Xiao as “young, energetic, resolute”. He was also self-effacing, once saying the only thing he’d done right in life was to marry his wife.
Xiao was previously chairman of Bank of China Ltd (BoC) 601988.SS3988.HK, China's fourth-biggest lender, and had worked at China's central bank for over two decades.
Reporting by Adam Jourdan, David Lin and Samuel Shen; additional reporting from Saikat Chatterjee in Hong Kong; Editing by Tom Hogue and Neil Fullick
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | February 2016 | ['(Reuters)', '(China Daily)'] |
European Union ministers meet in Brussels and reach agreement on a plan to distribute asylum seekers. , | LONDON — After weeks of indecision, the European Union voted on Tuesday to distribute 120,000 asylum seekers among member states, a plan meant to display unity in the face of the largest movement of refugees on the Continent since World War II.
Instead, the decision — forced through by a majority vote, over the bitter objections of four eastern members — did as much to underline the bloc’s widening divisions, even over a modest step that barely addresses the crisis.
German and European Union leaders have called for European countries to share the burden of absorbing the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have poured into the continent this summer.
| Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | September 2015 | ['(The New York Times)', '(AP via Fox News)'] |
Actor Alan Rickman dies from cancer, aged 69. | Actor Alan Rickman, known for films including Harry Potter, Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, has died at the age of 69, his family has said.
The star had been suffering from cancer, a statement said. He became one of Britain's best-loved acting stars thanks to roles including Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films and Hans Gruber in Die Hard.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling led the tributes, describing him as "a magnificent actor and a wonderful man".
She wrote on Twitter: "There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death."
She added: "My thoughts are with [Rickman's wife] Rima and the rest of Alan's family. We have all lost a great talent. They have lost part of their hearts."
Emma Thompson, who appeared with Rickman in productions including Love Actually and was directed by him in The Winter Guest, said he was "the finest of actors and directors" and "the ultimate ally".
She wrote in a statement: "Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye.
"What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness.
"His capacity to fell you with a look or lift you with a word. The intransigence which made him the great artist he was - his ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view. I learned a lot from him."
She added: "He was, above all things, a rare and unique human being and we shall not see his like again."
Announcing his death on Thursday, a family statement said: "The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends."
Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe said Rickman was "undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with".
He wrote on Google Plus: "Working with him at such a formative age was incredibly important and I will carry the lessons he taught me for the rest of my life and career.
"Film sets and theatre stages are all far poorer for the loss of this great actor and man."
Sir Michael Gambon, who appeared with Alan Rickman in Harry Potter as well as on stage, told BBC Radio 4 he was "a great friend".
He added: "Everybody loved Alan. He was always happy and fun and creative and very, very funny. He had a great voice, he spoke wonderfully well.
"He was intelligent, he wrote plays, he directed a play. So he was a real man of the theatre and the stage and that's how I think of Alan."
Director Ang Lee, who cast Rickman opposite Kate Winslet in 1995's Sense and Sensibility, called him a "brilliant actor… a soulful actor… [and] a great human being."
1946-2016
41 when he played Hans Gruber in Die Hard, his breakthrough film performance 68 film credits to his name 16 awards, including an Emmy, golden globe, and BAFTA Actor Richard E Grant wrote on Twitter: "Farewell my friend. Your kindness and generosity ever since we met in LA in 1987 and ever since is incalculable."
TV star and Bafta ceremony host Stephen Fry wrote: "What desperately sad news about Alan Rickman. A man of such talent, wicked charm and stunning screen and stage presence. He'll be sorely missed."
Actor David Morrissey also paid tribute. He said: "So sad to hear the news of Alan Rickman. A wonderful actor and lovely man. Tragic news."
The London-born star began his career in theatre, including with the Royal Shakespeare Company, before winning roles in TV dramas like Smiley's People and The Barchester Chronicles in the 1980s.
His performance as the manipulative seducer the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses on Broadway in 1986 brought him the first of two Tony Award nominations.
It also brought him to the attention of Die Hard producer Joel Silver, who offered him his film debut as a result.
He went on to become best known for playing screen villains - including the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for which he won a Bafta award, and Judge Turpin opposite Johnny Depp in 2007's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
But he showed his gentler side in films like 1990's Truly Madly Deeply, in which he played Juliet Stevenson's ghost lover and which also earned him a Bafta nomination.
Further Bafta nominations came for his roles as Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility and the calculating Irish politician Eamon de Valera in 1996's Michael Collins.
The following year, he won a Golden Globe for best actor in a miniseries or television film for the title role in Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny.
Other film credits ranged from Tim Robbins' 1992 political satire Bob Roberts to Richard Curtis's 2003 romantic comedy Love, Actually, 1999's sci-fi spoof Galaxy Quest and the voice of the Blue Caterpillar in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.
He also moved behind the camera in 1997 directing Thompson and her mother, Phyllida Law, in The Winter Guest.
Two years ago, he also directed period saga A Little Chaos, in which he co-starred with Kate Winslet.
Meanwhile, he continued to be a major presence on the stage in London and New York.
Another Tony nomination came for Private Lives in 2002, in which he appeared opposite Lindsay Duncan on Broadway following a transfer from London.
He recently revealed he had married Rima Horton in secret last year. The couple had been together since he was just 19 and she was 18.
Obituary: Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman: A life in pictures
Tributes to 'magnificent' Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman: Your memories
Alan Rickman in Harry Potter
Gambon remembers co-star Rylance: Rickman 'had what you might call soul'
'He changed the way villains were portrayed'
| Famous Person - Death | January 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
In golf, world number one Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland wins the PGA Championship. It is his second consecutive major championship win, following The Open Championship, his second PGA Championship win, and fourth major overall. , | LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Rory McIlroy stood over a 10-inch putt in gathering darkness to win the PGA Championship as flashes from thousands of cameras lit up Valhalla like a rock concert.
Everyone wanted to capture a moment from golf's latest coronation.
In his biggest test, McIlroy played his best golf Sunday to win his second straight major and establish himself as golf's next star.
And what a stage.
The final major of 2014 was pure theater with an all-star cast -- Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler and Henrik Stenson all with a share of the lead on the back nine. The final two hours were filled with eagles and birdies, with tension and chaos.
McIlroy never had to sweat so much to win one of golf's biggest events. And that's what made this major so much sweeter.
"It is the most satisfying," McIlroy said. "To win it in this fashion and this style, it means a lot. It means that I know that I can do it. I know that I can come from behind. I know that I can mix it up with the best players in the world down the stretch in a major and come out on top."
The final par -- the easiest shot he faced all day -- gave McIlroy a 3-under 68 to outlast Mickelson by a stroke and beat the darkness that threatened to spoil this show. He became only the fourth player in the past century to win four majors at 25 or younger. The others were Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Bobby Jones, three of the game's greatest players.
McIlroy appears to be on his way to belonging in that group.
"I didn't think in my wildest dreams I'd have a summer like this," said McIlroy, only the seventh player to win the last two majors of the year. "I played the best golf of my life. I really gutted it out today."
McIlroy continued the celebration of his second PGA Championship win by tweeting a photo of his camp:
Flying high with the team after my 4th Major victory!!! NYC here we come!! Thanks for all the support and well wishes pic.twitter.com/zK1q8xnwA8
- Rory Mcilroy (@McIlroyRory) August 11, 2014
But one of the greatest shows on soggy turf came with a most peculiar ending.
Three shots behind as he stood in the 10th fairway, McIlroy got back in the game with a 3-wood from 281 yards into 7 feet for eagle. He took the outright lead when all three of his challengers eventually made bogey, and finally gave himself some breathing room. With a 9-iron from a fairway bunker to 10 feet for birdie on the 17th, he took a two-shot lead going to the par-5 closing hole.
Because of a two-hour rain delay earlier, darkness was falling quickly, and it wasn't certain McIlroy would be able to finish.
McIlroy was allowed to hit his tee shot before Mickelson and Fowler had reached their drives. Both were only two shots behind, still in the game. McIlroy came within a yard of hitting in a hazard right of the fairway.
Then, the PGA of America allowed McIlroy to hit his second shot. Mickelson and Fowler had to stand to the side of the green.
"We were cool with hitting the tee shot," Fowler said. "We weren't expecting the approach shots."
Fowler had a 50-foot eagle attempt to tie for the lead. He was well off the mark and missed the short birdie putt attempt that cost him his third straight runner-up finish in a major. Mickelson was short of the green, and his chip came within inches of dropping for an eagle that would have tied him for the lead.
Mickelson appeared upset that they had to wait to finish the hole -- not standard procedure in a PGA Tour event -- and he made two references in a TV interview that this is the only championship the PGA of America runs all year.
"It didn't affect the outcome of the championship at all, I don't think," Mickelson said. "It's not what we normally do. It's not a big deal either way."
Mickelson closed with a 66 and was runner-up for the ninth time in a major.
Fowler became the first player in history to finish in the top five at all four majors without winning one. He closed with a 68 and tied for third with Stenson, who fell out of a share of the lead by missing a 3-foot par putt on the 14th hole. Stenson shot a 66.
McIlroy hit his second shot into a bunker, and he had to two-putt from 35 feet for the win. He lagged the first one to tap-in range, and the major was his. McIlroy repeatedly pumped his fist before letting out a scream above the gallery that had been treated to a Sunday it won't soon forget.
McIlroy won his first two majors by eight shots at the 2011 U.S. Open and 2012 PGA Championship. Only a month ago, McIlroy took a six-shot lead into the final round of the Open Championship and completed a wire-to-wire win with only a brief scare.
This was different.
"I think I showed a lot of guts out there to get the job done," he said.
It might not have been possible without a 3-wood on the par-5 10th hole. McIlroy watched Fowler make a 30-foot birdie putt ahead of him for the outright lead and knew it was time to get going. He hit his 3-wood lower and further to the left than he wanted, but it turned out perfect.
Once he joined the leaders with a birdie on the 13th, none of the contenders made another birdie the rest of the way until it was too late.
All that was left after an exhausting day of raw emotions was for McIlroy to summon enough energy to hoist the 27-pound Wanamaker Trophy. He crouched before the presentation, trying to collect his thoughts on the past month. Not since Woods in 2008 has anyone won three straight tournaments, and they were big ones -- the Open Championship, a World Golf Championship and the PGA Championship. He played them in a combined 48 under par. | Sports Competition | August 2014 | ['(AP via ESPN)', '(AAP via Sydney Morning Herald)'] |
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is taken to hospital as a "precautionary measure" after a recurrence of a bladder infection that affected him earlier in the year. | The Duke of Edinburgh has been taken to hospital as a "precautionary measure" after a recurrence of a bladder infection, Buckingham Palace has said.
Prince Philip, who is 91, was driven by ambulance to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary while staying at Balmoral with the Queen, a spokesperson said.
The duke originally suffered the infection shortly before the Diamond Jubilee concert on 4 June.
He is likely to remain in the NHS hospital for the next few days.
Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall are at their private residence of Birkhall on the Balmoral Estate, while the Earl and Countess of Wessex are at Balmoral with the Queen, BBC correspondent Peter Hunt says.
It is not known whether other royals are there, but a palace spokesman said it was usual for members of the royal family to be in residence at Balmoral during the summer period. The duke has been seen at public engagements in Cowes over the last few days. Michael Dunkason, from Ryde on the Isle of Wight, saw him come ashore from the Galatea to Cowes at about 09:00 BST on Wednesday morning. He said Philip was "steadily walking up the steps and walked briskly along the jetty".
He told the BBC: "The duke seemed in very good spirits and gave a final wave before entering the car."
It is the third time Prince Philip has been in hospital in the last nine months: he also spent four days in hospital over Christmas, following an operation to clear a blocked heart artery.
In March, Prince Harry said the operation - which was successful - had given his grandfather a "new spurt of life".
Later, in June, after braving the elements during the Jubilee boat pageant to mark the Queen's 60-year reign, Prince Philip was forced to miss several days of festivities after being admitted to hospital for five nights with the bladder infection.
Since then he has been in apparently good health, joining the Queen at the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics on 27 July, and touring the Olympic Park.
Prince Philip had travelled to Balmoral after viewing a number of Olympic events, including his granddaughter Zara Phillips's equestrian competition on 29 July.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: "He has been resident at the castle for a short while, but whilst he has been there, he has also undertaken engagements on the Isle of Wight."
As Admiral and member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, the duke has been taking part in Cowes Week on the Isle of Wight this week.
On Tuesday, he watched races in the Solent and accompanied Lord-Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight, Major General Martin White, for a lunch on board a yacht.
The previous day, he also met members of Newport's Chamber of Commerce and visited manufacturers AJ Wells and Sons.
Earlier this month, he was at the Queen's side for engagements in Scotland, helping to host a garden party for around 3,000 guests at Balmoral, marking the end of the Jubilee celebrations.
Prince Philip is the longest-serving royal consort in British royalty.
In the Queen's Jubilee address to Parliament in March, she praised her husband for his devotion. She said: "During these years as your Queen, the support of my family has, across the generations, been beyond measure. "Prince Philip is, I believe, well known for declining compliments of any kind. But throughout he has been a constant strength and guide." | Famous Person - Sick | August 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi, who has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail for insulting Islam and for cyber crime, wins the European Union's prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The Sakharov award ceremony will be held in Strasbourg, France on December 16, 2015 while the laureate remains imprisoned. | Raif Badawi is the laureate of this year's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, following an October 29 decision by EP President Martin Schulz and the political group leaders. Badawi is a blogger from Saudi Arabia currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for insulting Islam on his website promoting social, political and religious debate. The Sakharov award ceremony will be held in Strasbourg on 16 December.
"An extremely good man"
“The conference of Presidents decided that the Sakharov Prize will go to Saudi blogger Raif Badawi,” said Schulz announcing the 2015 laureate in plenary. “Mr Badawi, an exceptionally courageous and exemplary man, had imposed on him one of his country's most gruesome punishments, which can only be described as brutal torture." The EP President added: "I therefore call on the King [of Saudi Arabia] to discontinue the execution of the punishment, to release Mr Badawi, to let him return to his wife and to enable him to collect the award here during December's plenary session."
Badawi: a prisoner of conscience
Badawi is a Saudi Arabian blogger, human rights activist and author of the website Free Saudi Liberals. He was arrested in 2012 and later sentenced to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes and a hefty fine for insulting Islamic values on his website.
He was administered the first set of 50 lashes in public in January 2015. The remainder were postponed following international protests. Earlier this week the wife of Raif Badawi, Ensaf Haidar, who is currently living in Canada with their three children, announced that the Saudi authorities have given the green light for the flogging to resume.
In February this year MEPs adopted a resolution strongly condemning the flogging of Badawi as "a cruel and shocking act” and calling on the Saudi Arabian authorities "to release him immediately and unconditionally as he is considered a prisoner of conscience, detained and sentenced solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression”.
The finalists
Raif Badawi was one of this year's three finalists. Find out more about the democratic opposition in Venezuela embodied by the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática and political prisioners and the Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov here.
The Sakharov Prize
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is awarded each year by the Parliament. It was set up in 1988 to honour individuals and organisations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms. Last year the prize was awarded to Denis Mukwege.
Nominations for the Sakharov Prize can be made by political groups or by at least 40 MEPs. Based on the nominations, the foreign affairs and development committees vote on a shortlist of three finalists. After that the Conference of Presidents, made up of the EP President and the leaders of the political groups, select the winner. | Awards ceremony | October 2015 | ['(Reuters)', '(Al Jazeera)', '(EU)'] |
A constitutional referendum takes place in Egypt. | Millions of Egyptians have voted in a referendum on constitutional reforms, a month after a popular uprising swept President Hosni Mubarak from power. If passed, it would allow Egypt to hold fresh elections within six months. Initial results are expected on Sunday.
A BBC correspondent in Cairo says that for most Egyptians, this was the first genuinely free vote in their lives.
The referendum was marred by an attack on the Nobel Peace Prize winner and opposition figure, Mohamed ElBaradei.
A crowd of angry youths pushed and threw rocks at the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency as he tried to vote in Cairo. "I went to vote with my family and I was attacked by organised thugs," Mr ElBaradei wrote on Twitter. "Top figures of Mubarak's regime still at large and undermining the revolution."
Mr ElBaradei was unable to vote at the polling station and eventually cast his ballot elsewhere, the Reuters news agency reported.
At most polling stations, however, the atmosphere was cheerful.
The BBC's Jonathan Head in Cairo says the referendum produced something most Egyptians had never seen before - people queuing patiently for hours in lines that ran around the block to cast their ballots. Under former President Mubarak, elections were stage-managed affairs with pre-determined results and turn out was very low, our correspondent says. For many people it was the first time they had ever voted, he adds.
If approved, the constitutional changes would pave the way for Egypt to hold new presidential and parliamentary elections within six months.
Among the key proposals are:
The country's two main political groups, Mr Mubarak's National Democratic Party and the Muslim Brotherhood, backed the proposals.
But pro-democracy activists said the changes did not go far enough and wanted the plan rejected.
They said the constitution needed to be entirely rewritten before elections could be held.
Mr ElBaradei, who emerged as an opposition figurehead during the uprising, said the referendum dealt only with "minutiae".
"It doesn't talk about the imperial power of the president, it doesn't talk about the distortion of the parliament, it doesn't talk about the need to have an independent constituent assembly that represents everybody."
"So we are going to say no. Most of the people who triggered the revolution are going to say no."
The scholars who drafted the changes did not radically overhaul presidential powers because they said the next parliament should rewrite entirely the constitution.
Analysts say the NDP and Muslim Brotherhood stand to benefit from early elections because dozens of smaller parties set up following the uprising have yet to fully organise themselves.
Mr Mubarak stood down in February after 18 days of popular protests, largely centred on Cairo's Tahrir Square.
Crowds of activists once again crammed Tahrir Square on Friday, this time to protest against the referendum.
| Government Job change - Election | March 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(Al Jazeera)'] |
Police and people clash in Sana'a on the third day of protests against the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen. | About 2,000 people have clashed with police in Yemen's capital Sanaa on the third day of anti-government protests.
Violence broke out as demonstrators, inspired by the Egyptian uprising, marched through the city, demanding political reform and the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Mr Saleh, in power since 1978, has already pledged to step down in 2013, but has previously promised to quit.
State media said he had postponed a trip to the US because of the unrest.
An official in Mr Saleh's office said the two countries would "communicate via diplomatic channels" to arrange a new date, according to the Saba news agency.
Demonstrators attempted to march to the presidential palace in Sanaa on Sunday, chanting: "A Yemeni revolution after the Egyptian revolution."
Witnesses said several people were hurt as police armed with batons clashed with stone-throwing protesters. At least 10 people were arrested, said reports.
Hundreds of people also took to the streets in the southern city of Aden, said witnesses.
A rights group has accused the government of colluding with thugs - armed with sticks, clubs, axes and daggers - to suppress the protests.
"The Yemeni authorities have a duty to permit and protect peaceful demonstrations," said Sarah Leah Whitson, of Human Rights Watch (HRW). "Instead, the security forces and armed thugs appear to be working together." One of the protesters, Muhamad, told HRW he had been stabbed, beaten and shocked with a Taser gun, and that other people had suffered similar treatment.
"I want the regime to treat us like humans," he said. "So it's my right to express my opinion and express what I suffer from this current regime."
On Saturday, supporters of the president routed demonstrators in the capital.
A day earlier, protesters were dispersed by security forces from Sanaa as they celebrated the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak.
The unrest comes as Mr Saleh is preparing to hold talks with opposition groups on possible political reforms, in an attempt to prevent his overthrow in the manner of Egypt and Tunisia.
He has promised he will stand down and 2013 and that his son will not replace him in office. Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, is a key ally for the US in its efforts to combat al-Qaeda in the region.
The country also faces a separatist movement in the south and an uprising of Shia rebels in the north.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | February 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(AFP via Google News)'] |
A bus accident kills 41 people and injures 33 in Kenya. | Officials revealed at least 41 people were killed in a grisly bus accident in Ntulele, early Thursday morning.
skid mark/ file photo
According to police, the bus en route to Homabay from Nairobi, crashed into a ditch around 2 am, writes The Standard Digital.
At least thirty-three other commuters were rushed to the Narok and Kijabe hospitals nearby for treatment and checkups.
The Standard Digital writes Traffic Commandant, Samuel Kimaru revealed officials suspect the driver lost control of the bus before the accident happened.
He added in a statement, "We can confirm 41 deaths and 33 are in hospitals with multiple injuries and indications are that the driver lost control of the bus. It is a sad accident. We recovered more bodies that had been trapped under the bus wreckage". | Road Crash | August 2013 | ['(MSN Kenya)'] |
The Royal Thai Army declares martial law after six months of political unrest. | Thailand's army has declared martial law "to keep law and order" after six months of violent unrest and anti-government demonstrations and one day after the country's caretaker prime minister refused to step down.
The move, which came as a surprise, was announced on the military's television channel and sparked fears that the move was part of a coup d'etat.
Thailand's army, which has staged 11 successful coups since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, said in a statement that it had taken the action to "keep peace and order" and soldiers entered several private television stations that are sympathetic to protesters.
A ticker on Channel 5, an army station, however, denied the military was taking over, saying "the invocation of martial law is not a coup."
Violence in recent months mark the latest episode in eight years of upheaval that has pitted the largely rural supporters of populist former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra against the Southeast Asian nation's traditional elites.
The crisis deepened the week before last when Thailand's constitutional court removed Yingluck Shinawatra from her position as prime minister for nepotism along with nine cabinet members in a case that many viewed as politically motivated. Protesters say Yingluck's removal is not enough. Niwattumrong Boonsongpaisan, who took over as caretaker prime minister, is from the same ruling party.
Three people were killed in explosions and a shooting attack against anti-government demonstrators last Wednesday as the country's electoral commission called for a July election rerun to be postponed. The deaths riased the nationwide toll since protests began last November to 27 dead and 800 wounded.
A senior US defence official told the Associated Press news agency last week that the US was "reasonably confident" that Thailand's military would not launch a coup, although analysts have warned the nation's political crisis could trigger armed conflict.
A spokesman for the army, Winthai Suvaree, also told Reuters last week: "The military is not planning to stage a coup and it will let politicians sort the country's problems out."
In 2006 the army sent tanks and troops into the capital to wrest power from the then prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, as he attended the United Nations general assembly in New York. It had been the army's first military intervention in 15 years.
Shinawatra fled Thailand in 2008 after being given a jail term and while a government of his allies was elected in the first post-coup polls it was later removed by the courts.
In 2010, his supporters occupied parts of Bangkok, where around 100 people died amid clashes and the following crackdown before the country entered a period of relative stability after his sister, Yingluck, came to power three years ago. | Government Policy Changes | May 2014 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Erik Solheim resigns as head of the United Nations Environment Programme over allegations of expenses abuse and a lack of accountability. | A recent draft internal audit, obtained by Britain's Guardian newspaper and seen by the BBC, said he had incurred costs of $488,518 (£382,111) while travelling for 529 out of 668 days. It said this harmed the reputation of UN Environment - a body that highlights green issues and sustainability.
There was "no oversight or accountability" to monitor this travel. Mr Solheim, a Norwegian former environment minister, says he has paid back the money where "instances of oversight" occurred.
On Tuesday, Mr Solheim himself confirmed his resignation, Norway's NRK broadcaster reported.
A formal UN announcement is expected shortly.
By Matt McGrath, BBC environment correspondent
Once news leaked about Erik Solheim's flights and expenses, he was on borrowed time at the UN. It wasn't solely because of the large sums involved - there was also an image problem. At a time when awareness of climate change has never been greater, the sight of the man dedicated to fighting global warming endlessly jet-setting around the world risked reputational damage to the UN.
The auditor's report had also upset some European countries to such an extent that they had threatened to withhold millions of dollars in funding if he continued in post. While many in UN circles will be glad to see him go, some will miss the energy and greater visibility he brought to a once-lacklustre branch of the organisation. The amount spent on travel by UN Environment, a Kenya-based agency, doubled between 2014 and 2017. The report was particularly critical of the travel undertaken under Mr Solheim, UN Environment executive director since 2016. A total about $58m was spent in the two years since then. While all UN staff are expected to complete "mission reports" within two weeks of travel, the audit found that these were often missing. When they requested reports for 596 trips undertaken by 32 managers and staff, 210 mission reports were not provided, while around 200 others were only completed after the request was made.
The audio was carried out by the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).
It says Mr Solheim's leave and travel were approved by a member of his office who reported directly to him - in contravention of UN rules. On one occasion, it says, "he made an eight-hour trip from Washington DC for a weekend in Paris, before taking another flight to New York city."
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | November 2018 | ['(BBC News)'] |
United States tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union are set to take effect at midnight. | The US is to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from key allies in Europe and North America.
The US said a 25% tax on steel and 10% tax on aluminium from the EU, Mexico and Canada will start at midnight.
The move immediately triggered vows of retaliation from Mexico, Canada and the EU, which called the tariffs "protectionism, pure and simple". The UK said it was "deeply disappointed" by the US decision, which followed weeks of negotiations.
The tariffs will hit products such as plated steel, slabs, coil, rolls of aluminium, and tubes, raw materials which are used extensively across US manufacturing, construction, and the oil industry.
EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said it was a "bad day for world trade", while European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said the move was "totally unacceptable". The EU has "no choice" but to bring a case before the World Trade Organization and impose duties on US imports, he added. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the tariffs were an "affront" to the longstanding relationship between Canada and the US, especially to the "thousands of Canadian soldiers who fought and died alongside their American comrades-in-arms" in Afghanistan. He said Canada plans to levy tariffs on American products worth about $13bn starting 1 July. It is also planning a challenge at the World Trade Organization.
He said: "We have to believe that at some point common sense will prevail but we see no sign of that in this [US] action today." Canada said it would put 25% tariffs on certain types of American steel, as well as a 10% tax on other items, including yoghurt, whiskey and roasted coffee.
Mexico's Economy Ministry said it is planning new duties for steel, pork legs and shoulders, apples, grapes, blueberries and cheese.
Europe had previously outlined a list of items, including US bourbon, cranberries and jeans, as targets for retaliation. US President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on foreign steel and aluminium in March, justifying them on national security grounds.
He has argued that global oversupply of steel and aluminium, driven by China, threatens American steel and aluminium producers, which are vital to the US.
Since the announcement, South Korea, Argentina, Australia and Brazil have agreed to put limits on the volume of metals they can ship to the US in lieu of tariffs.
The US granted temporary exemptions to the EU, Canada and Mexico amid negotiations over limits. That deadline was due to expire on 1 June, having already been extended by a month. US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced the sanctions from Paris, where he had been negotiating with EU leaders who were trying to avert the tariffs.
Mr Ross said talks had not made enough progress to warrant a further reprieve either for Europe or for Canada and Mexico, which are in negotiations with the US over North America's free trade agreement.
Mr Trump has the authority to lift the tariffs or alter them at any time, he added. "We continue to be quite willing and indeed eager to have discussions with all those parties," Mr Ross said. The Trump administration is determined to wring concessions from its trading partners around the world - and it's prepared to do so in belligerent style.
The President believes cheap imports harm US industry and cost US workers their jobs. On the campaign trail, he promised them a fairer deal - and it seems he's happy to risk a trade war to get what he wants. In fact, he has previously suggested that trade wars are "good, and easy to win".
So will it go that far? Certainly, the EU and Mexico seem prepared to retaliate - and Canada has hinted it in the past might take action as well. So it's not looking good. But if you look at Washington's dealings with China - its key target on trade - things seem less clear cut.
On several occasions the rhetoric between the two sides has been ramped up, threats have been made, then positions have softened. So far, an all-out trade war has been avoided. And China has made some concessions.
So perhaps this is simply how negotiations take place in the Trump era. Loudly - and in a blaze of publicity.
Canada, Mexico and the EU combined exported $23bn worth of steel and aluminium to the US last year - nearly half of the $48bn total steel and aluminium imports in 2017.
Since Mr Trump's announcement in March, companies in the US that buy metals have already reported higher steel prices and and complained that US producers do not have the ability to meet demand.
Economists and US companies have warned that higher metal costs will disrupt supply chains and eventually get passed on to US households. They said the tariffs are likely to lead to job losses at firms that rely on the materials. Goldman Sachs in March estimated that the tariffs would boost inflation by less than half a percentage point.
Mr Ross has dismissed the concerns about higher costs, arguing that the effects will be minimal. Shares of US steel producers gained in trading on Thursday, while companies that rely on the metals, such as Caterpillar and Boeing, declined.
UK producers, like those in mainland Europe, are worried the tariffs will cause a decline in US demand, while prompting a surge in steel imports diverted from the US.
The disruption would hit the industry hard, said Gareth Stace, director of trade association UK Steel.
The UK steel industry employs about 31,000 people and sends about 7% of its exports to the US, according to the organisation. The tariffs have faced sharp criticism in the US from businesses and lawmakers, including Republicans typically allied with the president.
Republican Kevin Brady, who shepherded last year's tax cut through Congress and chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, called on the administration to reinstate the exemptions.
He said: "The administration will need to come to Capitol Hill to provide answers about the indiscriminate harm these tariffs are causing our local businesses." The US Aluminum Association, which represents major producers, also criticised the US decision, saying tariffs would alienate allies and fail to address oversupply. France's junior trade minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne said he expects EU counter-measures to be completed by mid-June. Canada's tariffs - which target about $13bn worth of US products - are expected to start on 1 July. China has already imposed duties on $3bn worth of US goods, including wine and nuts, in retaliation for the steel and aluminium tariffs.
Europe, Canada and Mexico say that as close allies of the US they should receive exemptions from the measures.
Mr Trudeau said: "It is simply ridiculous to view any trade with Canada as a national security threat to the US." The UK said: "We will continue to work closely with the EU and US Administration to achieve a permanent exemption, and to ensure that UK workers are protected and safeguarded." | Government Policy Changes | May 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
China National Space Administration spacecraft Chang'e 5 returns to Earth carrying samples of lunar rocks and soil from the surface of the Moon. The capsule will be airlifted to Beijing for formal opening and the samples will be made available to scientists in other countries, according to the CNSA. | Unmanned Chang’e-5 probe returns to Earth after first mission in four decades to collect lunar samples
First published on Wed 16 Dec 2020 19.23 GMT
An unmanned Chinese spacecraft carrying rocks and soil from the moon returned safely to Earth early on Thursday (local time) in the first mission in four decades to collect lunar samples, the Xinhua news agency said.
The capsule carrying the samples collected by the Chang’e-5 space probe landed in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region, Xinhua said, quoting the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The director of CNSA, Zhang Kejian, declared the mission a success, Xinhua added.
With this mission, China has become only the third country to have retrieved samples from the moon, following the US and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.
Beijing is looking to catch up with Washington and Moscow after taking decades to match its rivals’ achievements and has poured billions into its military-run space programme.
The spacecraft, named after a mythical Chinese moon goddess, landed on the moon on 1 December and began its return voyage two days later. While on the moon it raised the Chinese flag.
When the probe left the moon two days later, that marked the first time that China had achieved take-off from an extraterrestrial body, CNSA said.
The module then went through the delicate operation of linking up in lunar orbit with the part of the spacecraft that brought the samples back to Earth.
Scientists hope the samples will help them learn about the moon’s origins, formation and volcanic activity on its surface.
The spacecraft’s mission was to collect 2 kgs (4.5 lbs) of material in an area known as Oceanus Procellarum, or “Ocean of Storms”, a vast, previously unexplored lava plain, according to the science journal Nature.
The capsule will be airlifted to Beijing for opening, and the moon samples will be delivered to a research team for analysis and study, the space agency said.
China will make some of the samples available to scientists in other countries, Pei Zhaoyu, deputy director of the CNSA’s Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center, has said.
Xinhua described the mission as one of the most challenging and complicated in China’s aerospace history. The probe comprised separate craft to get to the moon, land on it and collect the samples, get back up and then return the rocks and soil to Earth.
The return capsule entered the Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of about 120km (75 miles). When it was about 10km above land, a parachute opened and it landed smoothly, after which a search team recovered it, the news agency said.
This was the first such attempt since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.
Under President Xi Jinping, plans for China’s “space dream”, as he calls it, have been put into overdrive. China hopes to have a crewed space station by 2022 and eventually send humans to the moon. | New achievements in aerospace | December 2020 | ['(CNSA)', '(The Guardian)'] |
An autopsy finds that American musician Prince died of an overdose of fentanyl, an opioid painkiller 50 times more powerful than heroin. | Prince, the music icon who struggled with debilitating hip pain during his career, died from an accidental overdose of self-administered fentanyl, a type of synthetic opiate, officials in Minnesota said Thursday.
The news ended weeks of speculation about the sudden death of the musician, who had a reputation for clean living but who appears to have developed a dependency on medications to treat his pain.
| Famous Person - Death | June 2016 | ['(AP)', '(The New York Times)'] |
75–year–old author Alan Shadrake is arrested in Singapore while promoting his book about the use of the death penalty. He is charged with criminal defamation and faces two years imprisonment. | The British author of a book that seeks to expose "disturbing truths" about Singapore's use of the death penalty has been arrested on charges of criminal defamation.
Alan Shadrake, 75, was in the country to promote his book, Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, when police arrested him following a complaint by the government's Media Development Authority.
The attorney general's office in Singapore is also seeking contempt of court charges against Mr Shadrake because it alleges statements in the book, which includes an interview with a former hangman, call into question the impartiality, integrity and independence of the judiciary.
Mr Shadrake, who was arrested at his hotel on Sunday, told reporters that he had been expecting trouble when he travelled to Singapore "If they do anything, it'll just draw more attention to it all, and they have no defence," he told the AFP news agency.
Mr Shadrake's lawyer, M Ravi, said police have not allowed him to speak to his client yet, and no bail has been set. The lawyer also said that Mr Shadrake has recently been treated successfully for colon cancer. The latest charges carry a maximum jail sentece of two years.
In a letter sent to the Criminal Investigation Department, Mr Ravi asked the authorities to grant him immediate access to Mr Shadrake. He said he was concerned about Mr Shadrake's health, as he has recurring colon and hernia problems as well as high blood pressure. "His condition can worsen if he is under intense pressure," he added.
Mr Shadrake, who divides his time between Britain and Malaysia, is an investigative journalist and author. He has written for international newspapers and his first major book in his 50-year career was Yellow Pimpernels, which detailed escape stories across the Berlin Wall.
His latest book includes an interview with Darshan Singh, the former chief executioner at Singapore's Changi Prison, who, according to the author, executed around 1,000 men and women from 1959 until he retired in 2006. It also includes interviews with human rights activists, lawyers and former police officers. A flier promoting the 219-page book says it "cuts through the façade of official silence to reveal disturbing truths about Singapore's use of the death penalty", and "reveals the cruelty and imprudence of an entire judicial system".
In Singapore the death penalty is mandatory for murder, treason, drug trafficking and other crimes such as unlawful use of a firearm. Officials say it has helped to keep the crime rate low. Amnesty International said in a statement last year that Singapore was "estimated to have one of the highest per capita execution rates in the world".
"The city-state ... has executed at least 420 people since 1991," it added, but stated that the number was probably higher as "not all sentences and executions are reported publicly". Singapore officials consistently refuse to disclose any figures on executions.
Human rights groups have long criticised the Singapore government for using defamation suits to stifle political opposition. The government says restrictions on speech are necessary to preserve economic prosperity and racial and religious harmony among the population of five million. It says any statement that damages the reputations of its leaders will hinder their ability to rule effectively.
The British High Commission in Singapore said it had been informed about the detention of Shadrake and was "providing consular assistance".
The laws of Singapore
Chewing gum
Public mastication is taken very seriously in Singapore. The city-state banned gum chewing in 1992 as part of a long-standing drive against litter on its famously tidy streets. Not only is chewing gum in public banned, so too is its importation and sale. Police agents also roam the streets looking for miscreants chewing gum or littering.
Anyone brave or stupid enough to chomp on some spearmint chewy should be aware of the consequences. First time offenders can expect fines of between $500 (£330) and $1,000. Repeat offenders get an ever harder time – a fine of up to $2,000 and a Corrective Work Order, which requires the offender to clean public spaces, often while wearing a high-visibility jacket.
Homosexuality
Singapore remains rigidly backward-looking in its attitude to gay rights. Section 377A of the Singapore Penal Code bans consensual, private and adult homosexual acts and allows for such "gross indecency" to be punished with two years' imprisonment. The government allows movies with gay themes "as long as gay life is not depicted as desirable". According to the British High Commission, prosecutions under Section 377A are "relatively rare".
Smoking
Despite Singapore's reputation for social conservatism, when it comes to smoking other countries have followed where it has led. Smoking has been banned in hospitals, clinics, department stores, bowling alleys, offices and factories since the early 1990s – long before it was outlawed in other countries. The ban has now been extended to all public spaces.
Driving
Very few cars in Singapore are more than 10 years old for the simple reason that owning a decade-old vehicle incurs a tax of £15,000 or more. The measure is designed to maintain air quality and limit the total number of vehicles on the roads. The city-state was one of the first places to introduce a congestion charge by setting up a zone where drivers must pay a daily fee to enter. However, it's cheap compared to London, costing only about £1 per day.
Corporal punishment
Beating with a rattan cane remains a sanction for a number of offences, including overstaying, drug misuse, rape, rioting, vandalism and the "outrage of modesty". Any man behaving inappropriately towards a woman, including touching, is liable to corporal punishment and/or a fine and/or imprisonment. Footage from surveillance cameras in nightclubs has been used in prosecutions for outrages of modesty. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | July 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The Independent)'] |
At least three security officers are killed after riots in north Jakarta, Indonesia, over plans to bulldoze a cemetery containing a memorial to a revered Muslim scholar. | The death toll from riots in the Indonesian capital rose to three on Thursday as hundreds of protesters gathered at city hall to demand the resignation of Jakarta's top official.
More than 100 people were also injured, many seriously, in Wednesday's clashes between security forces and people protesting over plans to bulldoze part of a cemetery containing a memorial to a revered Muslim scholar.
"Three members of the security forces were killed. One died this morning while two were killed yesterday," a city official said on Thursday.
Police fired tear gas, pepper bullets and water cannon to disperse hundreds of men armed with machetes, swords and sticks who had massed to protect the empty tomb of Habib Hasan bin Muhammad Al Hadad.
The 18th-century scholar's remains were removed from the cemetery some years ago but his tomb is still considered a holy place by many people in the poor northern suburb.
Members of the city's Satpol public order force were seen beating, clubbing, kicking and stomping on injured protesters as the situation spun out of control.
Demonstrators were also seen beating and stamping on fallen Satpol officers, some of whom were badly gashed with machetes.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono criticised the security forces and demanded a peaceful resolution of the dispute, which left the Tanjung Priok neighbourhood near Jakarta's port looking like a war zone.
"The incident should and could have been avoided and a decision could have been made to stop the operations once the conditions in the field became apparent," Yudhoyono told a press conference late on Wednesday.
"Although the operations were legally justified they should not have been forcefully carried out."
About 500 people protested noisily but peacefully outside city hall as Governor Fauzi Bowo held meetings with community leaders from the affected neighbourhood in a bid to ease tensions.
"I hope that people can reflect and take lessons from this bad incident," he said, ignoring calls for his resignation.
The demonstrators shouted slogans and waved banners demanding Bowo resign and the public order force be disbanded. About 1000 police were deployed around city hall but there was no further violence.
People returned to the cemetery to pay their respects at the scholar's tomb, while scavengers picked through the remains of dozens of burned-out trucks and police vehicles which blocked access to the port.
Human rights activists called for Jakarta police chief Wahyono and Satpol chief Haryanto Badjuri to stand down, saying the force was nothing more than an undisciplined "killing machine".
Badjuri defended the force and accused the protesters of starting the violence. The ensuing bloodshed was just "part of the dynamics in the field", he told Tempo Interaktif news online.
"We were attacked first... There was (a Satpol officer) whose intestines were spilling out. And the three dead victims also came from our side, right?" he said. | Riot | April 2010 | ['(Antara)', '[permanent dead link]', '(Ninemsn)', '(Jakarta Post)'] |
A fire at a Minneapolis apartment building leaves five dead and three injured. | The blaze left 5 dead and others hospitalized and displaced. “This is the heart of our community,” a Somali-American community leader said.
By Matt Furber and Sarah Mervosh
MINNEAPOLIS — The chaos erupted in the night. Dazed residents spilled out of apartments into hallways thick with smoke. As alarms sounded, they struggled down staircase after staircase. They desperately dialed relatives on cellphones, begging for instructions about how to get out.
“We need help!” Sharmarke Ali recalled hearing his father plead in a call that came before dawn. A fast-moving, smoky fire on the 14th floor of a high-rise in a Minneapolis public housing complex left at least five people dead and three others hospitalized in the early hours of Wednesday, officials said. Residents of The Cedars apartment complex — many of them low-income older people and Somali-Americans — described a frantic, confusing evacuation. Four people were found dead in a hallway. Another person died, officials said, after being found ailing in a stairwell. The blaze struck during a significant snowstorm, leaving scores of residents gathered in coats and snow hats on Wednesday morning in the lobby of their fire-worn building. Some were still waiting for answers. A pair of brothers said they had yet to find their father. “A very tragic night at the beginning of the holiday weekend,” John Fruetel, the fire chief of Minneapolis, said at a news conference. Advertisement
The fire broke out around 4 a.m. local time in a 25-story building on Cedar Avenue South, not far from downtown. The 50-year-old building, which has 191 units and about as many residents, is home mostly to older single adults; it stands in a neighborhood known as Little Mogadishu for its many immigrants and large Somali-American community. “This is the heart of our community,” said Abdi Warsame, a City Council member who represents the area. “It’s a very difficult Thanksgiving for us. Whatever plans we had, it’s not going to be the same.” Residents said they awoke to the blare of an alarm. One resident described the alarm as making siren-like noises, but also providing spoken instructions, in English, about the presence of a fire and the need to exit the building. Some relatives of residents said that those who heard the alarm were confused about what to do, and many older residents resorted to calling relatives for help. Late on Wednesday, a local medical examiner’s office released the names of four of the people who were killed: Amatalah Adam, 78; Maryan Mohamed Mohamud, 69; Nadifa Mohamud, 67; and Jerome Stuart, 59. Officials provided few details about the building's fire prevention system, including information about alarms, sprinklers or evacuation drills. Jeff Horwich, a spokesman for the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, said the alarm system was being reviewed as part of an investigation. Advertisement
A spokeswoman for the city said that the building’s main floor and mechanical rooms had sprinkler systems, but that the rest of the building did not. A fire official said that state building codes now require sprinkler systems in high-rises, but that older buildings, like this high-rise, would not have been forced to add sprinklers. Records from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees public housing complexes, show that the building was inspected in 2015, and passed with a score of 95 points out of 100. Fire officials said they were notified of the blaze by a company that operates fire alarms for the building. By the time firefighters arrived, smoldering flames had burst through glass on the 14th floor and were whipping 10 to 15 feet out of a window, Chief Fruetel said. Inside, he said, firefighters encountered an “extreme environment of heat and wind-driven fire.” “I can’t express more how precarious that scenario was,” he said. Mr. Ali, the man whose father called him for help, said he woke up to 10 missed calls shortly after 4 a.m., and quickly called his father back. “My dad called and said: ‘Something is happening to the building. Something is going on — there is too much smoke,’” he recalled.
Mr. Ali raced to drive over to the building to find his father, he said, and encountered other distraught families, some of them sobbing. “It was emotional,” he said. Ayale Yousuf, 43, who lives nearby, said his mother-in-law called while trying to escape from the 21st floor. He rushed over to the burning building but he said a firefighter urged him to stay back.
Officials were investigating what caused the fire, which left a charred stain on the outside of the tall, brown building. Chief Fruetel said that the fire had started in one unit on the 14th floor and was believed to be accidental.
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At least nine units have been deemed uninhabitable, and the occupants were being moved to other public housing units, officials said. Other residents had begun to return to their apartments by Wednesday afternoon. Others were meeting with officials and religious leaders.
Yahye Mohamed, a community leader, said he had previously conducted training in the neighborhood about how to evacuate during emergencies, including fires. “I’m really disappointed and sad,” he said. “If there were smoke alarms or messages in English,” he said, he worried that residents might not have understood them: “They don’t know how to escape.”
| Fire | November 2019 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
The currencies of Estonia , Lithuania , and Slovenia enter ERM II, the European Union's Exchange Rate Mechanism, in a move towards joining the euro. | At the request of the Lithuanian authorities, the ministers of the euro area Member States of the European Union, the President of the European Central Bank and the ministers and the central bank governors of Denmark and Lithuania have decided, by mutual agreement, following a common procedure involving the European Commission and after consultation of the Economic and Financial Committee, to include the Lithuanian litas in the Exchange Rate Mechanism II (ERM II).
The central rate of the Lithuanian litas is set at 1 euro = 3.45280 litas.
The standard fluctuation band of plus or minus 15 percent will be observed around the central rate of the litas. Following a careful assessment of the appropriateness and sustainability of Lithuania’s currency board, it was accepted that Lithuania is joining the exchange rate mechanism with its existing currency board arrangement in place, as a unilateral commitment, thus placing no additional obligations on the ECB. The agreement on participation of the litas in ERM II is based on a firm commitment by the Lithuanian authorities to pursue sound fiscal policies which are essential for preserving macroeconomic stability and ensuring the sustainability of the convergence process. The authorities, together with the responsible EU bodies, will closely monitor macroeconomic developments. The Lithuanian government’s aim to secure a balanced budget over the medium term needs to be underpinned by a credible medium-term strategy with ambitious budgetary targets. Sound fiscal policy and a determination to contain domestic credit growth, assisted by effective financial supervision, will contribute to ensuring the sustainability of the current account position. Structural reforms aimed at further enhancing the economy’s flexibility and adaptability will be implemented in a timely fashion so as to strengthen domestic adjustment mechanisms and to maintain the overall competitiveness of the economy.
The compulsory intervention points in the exchange rate mechanism will be communicated by the ECB and the Bank of Lithuania, in time for the opening of the foreign exchange markets on 28 June 2004. | Organization Merge | June 2004 | ['(the kroon)', '(the litas)', '(the tolar)', '(BBC)', '(ECB1)', '(ECB2)', '(ECB3)'] |
Millions of Guineans vote peacefully in the West African country's second free election since gaining independence from France nearly 60 years ago. Ballot counting started; the provisional outcome is not expected until the end of this week, an official said. Incumbent President Alpha Conde is expected to win reelection. | The country's constitutional court has ruled out postponing Sunday's election despite calls from opposition parties. Incumbent Alpha Conde faces challenges from six other hopefuls but is likely to retain the top job.
Leading Guinea opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo has agreed to take part in Sunday's presidential election, despite calling for the constitutional court to delay the poll by a week.
Diallo, who is seen as a main challenge to incumbent President Alpha Conde, said he had consulted with his party and political allies before deciding whether to boycott the polls. But he maintained the election would be flawed.
"We will vote, defend our suffrage, defend our victory because there is no way we will let our victory be stolen," said Diallo, a former premier.
Former prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo said he will take part in Sunday's vote despite misgivings about its legitimacy
Six opposition parties had requested that the constitutional court delay the polls for at least one week to address what they claimed were irregularities in the process. But their calls were denied.
Guinea's capital Conakry has been rocked by several days of violence, although the city remained calm ahead of polling stations opening on Sunday.
At least three people were killed and dozens injured this week in clashes between opposition protesters and security forces.
Eighteen of the injured were members of the armed forces, state television said.
Other clashes took place in Kerouane and Kissidougou in the southeast of the country, officials confirmed.
77-year-old Alpha Condé became the country's first freely elected president five years ago after years in opposition
Conde, who came to power during Guinea's first democratic election in 2010, is favored to win re-election though a second round of voting will likely be required.
Before the polls opened, he called for calm saying in a pre-recorded message: "I ask you to go vote calmly and to preserve the peace ...Guinea is you, me, him. Avoid fighting." | Government Job change - Election | October 2015 | ['(Deutsche Welle)'] |
El Salvador arrests former congressman Raúl Mijango for allegedly attempting to smuggle banned items into prison and allegedly associating with gang members. | SAN SALVADOR, May 3 (Reuters) - El Salvador has arrested former congressman Raul Mijango, who brokered a controversial gang truce in 2012 that reduced murders in the violent Central American nation by half.
Mijango, a former guerilla commander and lawmaker with the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, was arrested on allegations of bringing banned objects into prisons and being an associate of gang members, police said on Twitter.
The truce, mediated by Mijango in 2012, lasted until 2014, and won approval from former leftist President Mauricio Funes and the Organization of American States.
The pact was broken by public criticism that the deal was too beneficial to the gangs, which took advantage of less police pressure to rearm.
The breakdown led to a record escalation of violence last year, with homicide rates skyrocketing to 103 per 100,000 inhabitants, the world's highest, because of fighting between the Mara Salvatrucha 13 and rival Barrio 18, authorities said.
At the time of his arrest, Mijango was trying to promote a new truce.
El Salvador's president, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a 71-year-old former communist guerrilla, has taken a tough line on crime, deploying anti-gang army battalions and toughening up legislation to fight the Maras and their associates. (Reporting by Nelson Renteria; Writing by Enrique Pretel; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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Copyright © 2020 Thomson Reuters Foundation. Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity registered in England and Wales (registration number: 1082139) | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | May 2016 | ['(Reuters via Trust)'] |
Cellulose plant conflict: Demonstrators again block border crossings between Argentina and Uruguay after the World Bank announces its decision to continue funding the disputed paper mills. | The demonstration was launched after the World Bank indicated it would go ahead with funding for the project.
About 300 people blocked roads leading to a bridge across the Uruguay river in the town of Gualeguaychu, 240km north of Argentina's capital Buenos Aires.
Locals fear the $1.7bn project could cause pollution and harm tourism.
Diplomatic rift
Protests against the plant in the Uruguayan town of Fray Bentos also closed a cross-border bridge upstream near the Argentinian town of Colon.
"No one in Gualeguaychu is going to tolerate that the mills belch out smoke that could hurt our children," protester Daniel Perez told Reuters.
Argentina's objections to the pulp mill have risked a diplomatic rift between the two countries after Buenos Aires took the issue to the International Court of Justice, the Hague tribunal which arbitrates cross-border issues between countries.
The court ruled in July that the project could go ahead, and on Wednesday the World Bank announced that the plant met its environmental standards.
The announcement paves the way for the World Bank's International Finance Corporation to approve $400m of loans for the project, although a final decision on the loans is yet to be made.
Lost trade
EcoMetrix, the Canadian company that conducted the World Bank environmental impact study, wrote that emissions from the mill would be "well below" accepted levels and that local industries were unlikely to face long-term problems.
The project has aroused strong passions
Argentina's environment secretary Romina Picolotti dismissed the World Bank report this week but also attacked the protesters, saying they could harm the government's attempts to resolve the issue diplomatically.
Uruguay claims an earlier round of demonstrations over the plant had caused the country $200m in lost tourism and trade.
The wave of protests against the project have already caused Ence, the Spanish company that was developing one of two pulp mills for the site, to relocate its project elsewhere in Uruguay. | Protest_Online Condemnation | October 2006 | ['(BBC)'] |
Crisis–wracked Greece is forced to hold new general elections, after efforts by major political parties to form a coalition government end in failure. | Against a backdrop of division, despondency and despair, debt-stricken Greeks head back to the polls next month amid fears the new election will do the very thing it is supposed to stop: hasten the country's economic collapse and exit from the eurozone.
After a week of political high drama after inconclusive elections, feuding party chiefs acknowledged their inability to form a unity government on Tuesday, with several blaming Alexis Tsipras, whose Left Coalition party has taken Greece by storm.
"Unfortunately the country is being led again to elections … under very bad conditions," said the socialist Pasok leader, Evangelos Venizelos, after the breakdown of the last-ditch negotiations at Athens' presidential palace. "For God's sake let's move towards something better, not something worse."
Across Europe there is no illusion that the poll, expected to take place on 10 or 17 June, is a referendum on whether the near insolvent country – kept afloat by EU and IMF rescue loans – stays in the eurozone.
Within hours of the election being announced, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, summed up the predicament Greece now faced. "If Greece – and this is the will of the great majority – wants to stay in the euro, then they have to accept the conditions," he told reporters at a meeting of European finance ministers in Brussels. "Otherwise, it isn't possible. No responsible candidate can hide that from the electorate."
Enter Tsipras, who says the spending cuts and structural reforms outlined in a "memorandum of understanding" Athens signed with its creditors are not only "barbaric", but must be revoked.
Until 6 May, when Syriza – his alliance of far-left socialists, Trotskyists, Maoists and greens – took a surprise second place in the vote, the 38-year-old former communist held little sway over Greece's decision-making apparatus.
But now his opinion accounts. Among the under 50s who have been worst hit by galloping unemployment and deepening poverty – the most visible byproducts of austerity measures many Greeks blame Berlin for imposing – Tsipras is seen as a saviour, the man who tells it as it is.
In the nine days since the country's general election, his ratings have risen further with surveys indicating Syriza would easily emerge on top in a new ballot – another blow to the political establishment whose two main parties, Pasok and New Democracy, were punished by the electorate for pursuing deeply unpopular policies in return for aid.
Although next month's election is also expected to result in a hung parliament with no party securing enough votes to form a government, the radical leftists would likely hold the reins to power. Greece would then be on a collision course with Europe as Tsipras, an unabashed populist, is likely to step up his fiery anti-austerity oratory. It is a toxic mix. And in Athens the panic is almost palpable.
"Tsipras will be handed the opportunity to fulfil the left's dream of taking power democratically," said Brady Keisling, a prominent Athens-based analyst likening the young radical to the late socialist strongman Andreas Papandreou, who also put Greece on a collision course with the international community with his anti-European, anti-Nato rhetoric.
"Papandreou promised to give Greeks things they never had. Tsipras has made a much more dangerous promise, to restore things they recently had and still remember, their old jobs, wages and pensions."
Thirty-one years after the country joined the then EEC and 11 since it signed up to the common currency, anxiety is widespread that Syriza's likely election will mark the turning point in relations between the two.
Tsipras, who was born days after the collapse of military rule in 1974 and is the country's youngest politician, denies that he has peddled false promises. On the eve of the last election he told the Guardian he was not opposed to the euro but the "policies pursued in the name of the euro".
But with EU partners saying in no uncertain terms that cash instalments will stop if Athens fails to adhere to its tough austerity and reform programme, fears are high that Greece is hurtling towards default and with it the collapse of an economy now on its knees.
With coffers running dry, the country barely has enough money to survive until the election, officials in the outgoing government say.
Many worry that ahead of the poll Greeks, who still have vivid memories of a bloody left-right civil war, are going to become increasingly polarised in a climate already electrified by an ever deepening sense of fury and loss. | Government Job change - Election | May 2012 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The Philippines braces for the impact of Typhoon Rammasun which is expected to pass over the capital Manila causing flooding. Thousands have fled to evacuation centres and ports and airports in the country are closed , | Thousands of people living in coastal areas of the Philippines are evacuating as the first major storm of the rainy season barrels towards the archipelago.
Typhoon Rammasun is expected to make landfall tonight in the eastern Philippines, and pass over the capital Manila of more than 12 million people. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration says Rammasun has intensified into a Typhoon, and is moving slowly west toward the Bicol region.
At 4am local time, it was around 270 kilometres east of Legazpi City, Albay, and packing peak winds of up to 120 kilometres an hour and gusts of up to 150 km/h.
Rammasun, known locally as Glenda, is expected to hit fishing communities in the eastern Philippines late Tuesday and then bring heavy rain to Manila and other heavily populated northern areas, civil defence officials said.
The Philippine Red Cross says the typhoon has strengthened as it crosses the western Pacific Ocean, but may weaken after making landfall.
Secretary General Gwendolyn Pang has told Radio Australia the Red Cross is preparing for the impact of the typhoon and its after-effects.
"In the past, as we have observed, even with slight rain we have flooding in central Manila," he said.
"So this one, if it's brought by a typhoon, we're expecting heavy flooding, because with slight rain we are experiencing flooding already."
For more information, see ABC Emergency's storm plan page
Even the central Philippines province of Leyte which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan late last year with more than seven thousand people killed or missing, has been placed under a storm alert. Several tents of Haiyan survivors have been damaged by rains from Typhoon Rammasun. Food and other items have been readied by government agencies. Schools are closed today, and thousands of passengers have been stranded as sea travel, and several domestic and international flights have been cancelled in the northern and eastern regions.
The Philippines is hit by about 20 major storms a year, many of them deadly, and Rammasun will be the first to make landfall since the rainy season began last month.
Authorities said they were taking every precaution to avoid fatalities, after Super Typhoon Haiyan left about 7,300 people dead or missing when it tore across the central Philippines in November last year.
"We are already warning the public to be on alert for possible effects of the weather disturbance: landslides, flash floods, strong rains and winds," said Alexander Pama, head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.
Miguel Villafuerte, governor of Camarines Sur province in southern Luzon which is expected to be hit hard by the storm, said many people in vulnerable areas were already being urged to flee.
"We are extra-cautious because of what happened with Yolanda last year," he said, using the local name for Haiyan.
The disaster management council said it had already alerted over 1,300 villages susceptible to floods or landslides they were in Ramassun's direct path and residents should be prepared to shelter in evacuation centres.
The second level of a three-step storm alert has been raised over the Bicol archipelago southeast of Manila, where the storm is expected to first hit. Classes on all levels have already been suspended.
Storm alerts have also been posted for the more than 12 million people in Manila.
The new storm is expected to bring 7.5 to 15 millimetres of rainfall per hour, the disaster council said.
Council spokeswoman Mina Marasigan warned that the storm could become even more powerful as it moves across the sea.
She said there were concerns it might bring rainfall comparable to Typhoon Xangsane in 2006, which killed more than 200 people and displaced nearly two million due largely to widespread and heavy flooding.
| Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | July 2014 | ['(Glenda)', '(ABC News Australia)', '(AAP via SBS)'] |
The Iraq Prime Minister fires 24 Interior Ministry officials while the Islamic State kills at least 15 police officers near the border with Syria. | By Associated Press Published: 19:20 BST, 1 December 2014 | Updated: 19:20 BST, 1 December 2014 BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's prime minister said Monday he retired 24 officials from the Interior Ministry as part of efforts to restructure the country's security apparatus and remove those who failed to confront the crisis caused by the Islamic State group's onslaught.
Haider al-Abadi's announcement came as the Sunni extremist group attacked a police checkpoint near Iraq's border with Syria, killing at least 15 Iraqi policemen in an assault that underscored the depth of the country's turmoil.
In Syria, the U.S. Central Command said a U.S. airstrike struck a target associated with the so-called Khorasan group, which Washington says is a special cell within the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front that is plotting attacks against Western interests. CENTCOM said the attack took place near Aleppo, and was among 27 airstrikes since Friday that mainly targeted Islamic State group militants in Kobani and Raqqa in northern Syria.
FILE - In this Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2014 file photo, an Iraqi man reacts at the site of a car bomb explosion, in the Shaab neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq in a crowded marketplace that killed and wounded civilians. More than 1,200 Iraqis were killed in November by acts of terrorism and violence as militants with the Islamic State group continued its rampage across the country, the United Nations said Monday, Dec. 1, 2014.(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)
The strike on the Khorasan group marked the fifth time the U.S. has targeted Nusra, al-Qaida's Syria branch, as part of its broader campaign against the IS group in Syria and Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister al-Abadi's move to send two dozen Interior Ministry officials into retirement is part of his efforts to "restructure the security forces and make them more effective in the face of terrorism," according to statements on his official Twitter and Facebook pages.
Al-Abadi, who became prime minister in September, has already retired a number of senior military officials in a push to reform the force. Monday's statements did not identify the individuals or the ranks of officials sent into early retirement.
The June fall of Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, was a turning point in the war against the jihadi group that calls itself the Islamic State. The U.S.-trained Iraqi military, harassed for months by small-scale attacks, buckled almost instantly when militants advanced on the city. Commanders disappeared, pleas for more ammunition went unanswered and in some cases, soldiers stripped off their uniforms and ran from the fight.
Since then, U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have served to reinforce Iraqi and Kurdish security forces as they battle the Sunni militants, but major victories have been sparse.
Many have blamed the army's poor performance on al-Abadi's predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki, saying he replaced top officers with inexperienced or incompetent political allies in order to monopolize power. From 2010 until his resignation in August, al-Maliki had also held both the interior and defense portfolios, in part because lawmakers could not agree on nominees for them.
Once al-Abadi was sworn in and his government approved, it took six weeks to fill the critical posts of interior and defense ministers.
Monday's deadly attack on the checkpoint near the Syrian border took place in the town of al-Walid, according to a senior army official. At least 15 Iraqi border policemen were killed, the official said, and at least five officers were wounded. A government official in Iraq's Anbar provincial council confirmed the report. Further details were not immediately available.
In its blitz earlier this year, the Islamic State group seized most of the border crossings between Iraq and Syria. It also overrun a large part of Iraq's Anbar and Ninevah provinces and now controls about one-third of both Iraq and Syria.
Also Monday, the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq said that 1,232 Iraqis were killed and 2,434 were wounded in violence and terror attacks in November. Of those killed, at least 296 were members of Iraqi and Kurdish forces, as well as militias who fight alongside the troops.
The figures were a slight decrease from October, when the U.N. said at least 1,273 Iraqis had been killed.
Also last month, at least 402 people were killed in western Anbar province, according to the provincial Health Directorate, the U.N. mission said. Most of the victims died in the provincial capital of Ramadi, a battleground between the IS group and Iraqi troops. In Baghdad province, at least 332 people were killed in November, the U.N. said.
And in the Shiite town of Balad, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad, at least eight people died and 20 were wounded Monday after mortar shells hit a cluster of homes and a small market, police officials said.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.
Those killed in Balad included a woman and a child. The town has lately seen heavy clashes between Islamic State militants and Iraqi forces.
FILE - In this Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014 file photo, civilians inspect the aftermath of a car bomb explosion in Sadr city, Baghdad, Iraq after a series of bombings in and around the capital killed at least 43 people. More than 1,200 Iraqis were killed in November by acts of terrorism and violence as militants with the Islamic State group continued its rampage across the country, the United Nations said Monday, Dec. 1, 2014 (AP Photo/Karim Kadim, File) | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | December 2014 | ['(AP via Daily Mail)'] |
Moldovan Prime Minister Ion Chicu announces that he will resign ahead of President–elect Maia Sandu's inauguration. | Ion Chicu, who led a pro-Russian gov’t since November 2019, steps down a day before new pro-Western president takes office.
Moldova’s pro-Russian prime minister said he has resigned to pave the way for an early parliamentary election and “bring normalcy” to the tiny former Soviet state.
Prime Minister Ion Chicu, who led a pro-Russian government since November 2019, tendered his resignation on Wednesday, a day before the country’s newly elected pro-Western president, Maia Sandu, was due to take office.
Chicu is a close ally of outgoing pro-Russian President Igor Dodon. His government controlled only 51 of 101 seats in the Moldovan Parliament.
The new president can dissolve Parliament if the prime minister resigns and there are two failed attempts to find a successor.
Chicu, who announced his resignation after a meeting with Dodon, said an early parliamentary election was the “priority objective in order to bring normalcy to Moldova”.
Moldova’s presidential election in November was seen as a referendum on two divergent visions for the future of the Eastern European nation of 3.5 million people that is sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania.
Sandu, a former World Bank economist who favours closer ties with the European Union, and Dodon, who Russian President Vladimir Putin identified as his preferred candidate, have been rivals since Dodon narrowly defeated Sandu in the 2016 presidential race.
Sandu’s decisive victory over Dodon in November’s election was widely seen as a signal that Moldova was tilting towards closer cooperation with the European Union.
Since the presidential election, thousands have attended protests demanding the resignation of Chicu’s government. However, Dodon insisted on Wednesday that Chicu was not resigning because he succumbed to public pressure.
“This was a decision taken at the right time and not under the pressure of protests,” Dodon said.
Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe with nearly 1.2 million of its people estimated to be living abroad.
It relies heavily on remittances, and closer ties with the EU are generally seen as more likely than those with Moscow to lead to long-elusive political stability.
In 2014, while it was run by a pro-European coalition, Moldova signed a deal on closer political and economic ties with the EU, now a bloc of 27 nations.
However, Brussels has since been increasingly critical of Moldova’s progress on reforms.
People & Power investigates the shocking abuse of disabled people at EU-funded care homes across Eastern Europe.
In the first-round vote earlier this month, pro-European Maia Sandu won a surprise victory.
Putin-backed Dodon concedes after the presidential election results were published, congratulates Sandu.
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | December 2020 | ['(Al Jazeera)'] |
Colombian Ministers of Defense, Foreign Affairs and Health meet with their Brazilian counterparts to coordinate a joint response to the increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases in the border region between both countries. | - Colombia will work with hard-hit Brazil to increase the military presence along their Amazonian border and share information in an effort to fight an increasing number of coronavirus cases in the area, Colombian President Ivan Duque said on Friday.
The series of measures was agreed during a virtual meeting between Colombia’s health, defense and foreign ministers and Brazilian officials, Duque said.
He made no reference to the resignation on Friday of Brazil’s health minister, whose predecessor was fired last month.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has been widely criticized for shrugging off the severity of the pandemic, telling Brazilians to ignore quarantine restrictions and pushing for the states to re-open their economies.
Brazil’s Amazonas state said in April its health system was overwhelmed by the pandemic, with all available intensive care beds and ventilators occupied.
State capital Manaus, a city of 2 million people located in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon, has been hit particularly hard by the virus, with mass burials needed to keep up with soaring deaths.
Across the border, Colombia’s identically named Amazonas province - one of its most sparsely populated with just 66,000 inhabitants - has around 1,000 reported cases of coronavirus and at least 30 deaths.
Colombia has already put in strict quarantine measures in the province, requiring people there to stay home even as it allows some industries to return to work in other parts of the country.
“We had already strengthened military presence on the border in Amazonas province, now the authorities in Brazil are going to join that effort to have controls and special supervision above all of informal crossings,” Duque said during his nightly television broadcast.
The two countries have established daily communication protocols and a system for coordinating with local authorities along the border, Duque added.
Overall Brazil has registered 218,223 confirmed coronavirus cases and 14,817 deaths. The country confirmed 15,305 new cases on Friday, a record for a 24-hour period, as well as 824 related deaths, according to data from its health ministry.
Colombia has more than 14,200 cases and more than 540 deaths. It began a nationwide lockdown in late March which is set to end on May 25. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | May 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Argentina defeats The Netherlands 4-2 after a penalty shootout to advance to the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final. | For all his individual brilliance, one of the knocks against Lionel Messi has always been that he’s only as good as the players around him.
Surround him with an all-star team like he has at Barcelona and he wins six La Liga titles, three Champions League crowns, is named the world player of the year four times and becomes the best-paid soccer star on the planet.
Send him home to play for Argentina and ... well, not so much.
But on Wednesday he might have finally found what he was missing in Sergio Romero, a down-on-his-luck goalkeeper who played the game of his life to lift Argentina into the World Cup final.
After 120 scoreless minutes against the Netherlands, Romero stopped two of four attempts in the penalty-kick shootout, sending Argentina on to challenge Germany for soccer’s most important prize Sunday in Rio de Janeiro.
All of Argentina’s penalty shooters, led by Messi, made their shots in the 4-2 tiebreaker, which qualifies the South Americans for their first World Cup final in 24 years. But it was Romero, who isn’t a starter for his French club team Monaco, who made the difference.
And afterward he singled out Argentina Coach Alejandro Sabella for showing confidence in him at a time when few others were doing the same.
“I told him on the field when this was over that my gratitude to him was huge because he helped me in the most difficult time of my career,” said Romero, a World Cup starter four years ago. “It was the first year that I was sitting on the bench. So I have to thank Alejandro for everything that he’s done for me.”
Sabella wasn’t the only coach Romero thanked for making him a World Cup star, though. Moments after ending the Netherlands’ hopes of reaching a second consecutive final, Romero stepped into the silent Dutch locker room and shook hands with Coach Louis van Gaal.
“I taught Romero how to save penalties,” Van Gaal joked. “So that hurts.”
But he taught him other things too — things Romero, then a 20-year-old away from home for the first time, said helped ease the transition from Argentina to the Dutch Eredivisie, where he also learned his craft under Van Gaal.
“I was in a completely different country with different customs where they spoke a completely different language,” Romero said. “He helped me a lot. So just as I’m grateful to Alejandro I’m grateful to Van Gaal for everything he did for me.”
Romero found a strange way to show his appreciation, stopping a shot by Ron Vlaar to start the shootout, then guessing right against Wesley Sneijder and making a leaping, acrobatic save. That proved to be the difference when second-half substitute Maxi Rodriguez made his penalty to seal the win for Argentina.
The shootout lasted only four minutes — yet it was far more dramatic and featured much more action than the previous 120 minutes. In fact, although the Dutch enjoyed a modest edge in possession during the game, they put more shots on target in the tiebreaker then they did in the two hours that preceded it.
Neither team attacked as if it wanted to win, especially in a tentative first half. But there may have been reasons for that. The Dutch were a bit fatigued and might have been lacking a bit of confidence after taking 20 shots but failing to score in an extra-time draw with Costa Rica in the quarterfinals. The Netherlands advanced that time on penalty kicks.
And Argentina was hurt by the loss of injured midfielder Angel Di Maria. That allowed the Dutch to collapse around Messi, making him a nonfactor for long stretches of the game.
Still, Argentina had two chances to win the game outright, with Gonzalo Higuain coming within inches of a goal in the 75th minute, sliding into the six-yard box and deflecting a cross with a raised foot into the side of the net, and again in the second 15-minute extra time, when Rodrigo Palacio’s header was snatched out of the air by Dutch keeper Jasper Cillessen.
Cillessen wasn’t as good in the shootout. In the win over Costa Rica, Van Gaal subbed Cillessen out in the final seconds of extra time because he felt backup Tim Krul was better against penalties. And Krul proved him right.
Van Gaal wanted to do that again Wednesday, but he had already used his three substitutions when the extra time ended — one of them to take out his best penalty shooter, Robin Van Persie, who was sick.
“We didn’t lose to them,” a defiant Van Gaal said. “But then the penalty sequence is always a matter of luck. It is a terrible scenario to lose with penalties.”
Argentina will take it just the same.
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Kevin Baxter writes about soccer and other things for the Los Angeles Times, where he has worked for 24 years. He has covered five World Cups, three Olympic Games, six World Series and a Super Bowl and has contributed to three Pulitzer Prize-winning series at The Times and Miami Herald. An essay he wrote in fifth grade was voted best in the class. He has a cool dog.
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The Arena Football League announces that it has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and will immediately cease operations. This marks the effective end of the 32–year–old league, and the second liquidation bankruptcy in its history. | A month after shutting down operations for all six of its teams, the Arena Football League filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Wednesday — officially ceasing all operations after more than three decades in existence.
"We simply weren't able to raise the capital necessary to grow the League, resolve the substantial legacy liabilities and make it financially viable," league commissioner Randall Boe said in a statement. "We're all disappointed that we couldn't find a way to move forward, and we wanted to thank our fans, our players, coaches, everyone who loved Arena League Football."
The Arena Football League was one of the longest-running indoor football leagues in the country, beginning in 1987. The six remaining teams were Albany, Atlantic City, Baltimore, Columbus, Philadelphia and Washington. The league was well known for launching the career of Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner, among other figures.
The league suspended local business operations in October and had been evaluating potential strategic operations before Wednesday's decision. The league was mostly hurt by a lawsuit filed by one of its insurance carriers.
The league, re-branded as Arena Football One in 2009, was the second well-known league to close down this year after the Alliance of American Football, which began its first season in February, ended midway through the season in April as a result of financial concerns. The XFL, another league, begins its season in February 2020.
| Organization Closed | November 2019 | ['(USA Today)'] |
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran announces it has activated the research and development of new uranium enrichment centrifuges. It is the third breach of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement from which the United States withdrew last year, reimposing U.S. sanctions on Iran. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has recently stated his country will reimplement the agreement only if the remaining parties also do so, giving them two extra months. | Iran has begun work on advanced centrifuges to boost enriched uranium for its controversial nuclear program. It is the third time in the past few months that Tehran has reduced its commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal.
The spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said Saturday that the Islamic Republic had activated 20 IR-4 and 20 IR-6 centrifuges to boost its stockpile of enriched uranium.
"The centrifuge machines, as they are engaged in research and development, will help with increasing the stockpile," Behrouz Kamalvandi said.
"The capacity of these machines is many times more than the previous machines. This started as of yesterday [Friday]," he told reporters.
The spokesman said the latest move would not hinder the UN monitoring of Iran's nuclear program.
"Regarding the monitoring and accesses of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] ... so that everything is clear [Iran's] commitments regarding transparency will be followed as before," he said.
Read more: Iran to develop centrifuges in further step away from nuclear deal
US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters in Paris that Iran's latest move was expected.
"It's no surprise that the Iranians are going to pursue what the Iranians have always intended to pursue," Esper said at a news conference with his French counterpart, Florence Parly.
Parly said that France would focus on keeping Iran in the 2015 deal.
Iran denies it is seeking to develop a nuclear bomb, insisting that its atomic program is aimed at fulfilling its energy needs.
Third breach
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced Wednesday that his country would soon begin researching and developing improved centrifuges to speed up the process of enriching uranium.
"All limitations on our research and development will be lifted on Friday," Rouhani said.
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The long-signaled move marks Iran's third breach of the international deal it signed in 2015, under which it agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for economic sanctions relief.
In July, Iran abandoned two of its commitments under the deal by allowing its stockpile of enriched uranium to exceed the 300-kilogram limit and breaching the cap on the purity of its uranium stocks.
The 2015 deal was struck after concerns from the US and its allies that the nuclear program, which Iran insisted was for civilian use, aimed to produce weapons. US President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord last year and reimposed sanctions.
European powers opposed the US implementation of sanctions and have sought to keep the deal alive, in part by trying to shield Iran from the impact of the US penalties.
The new measures from Iran would be peaceful, watched over by the United Nations and could be reversed if European powers kept their promises, Rouhani said. He gave the parties to the deal another two months to fully implement its terms, saying if that happened Iran would return to implementing the agreement.
Iran has said it could again fully comply with the deal if it secures an agreement with France on a proposed $15 billion (€13.6 billion) credit line, to be repaid once it resumed oil exports. | Tear Up Agreement | September 2019 | ['(Deutsche Welle)'] |
The death toll rises to 9 as protesters ask for Jovenel Moïse to step down as president of Haiti. The protest started February 7. | Opposition demonstrators in Haiti have burnt tyres and thrown stones, urging President Jovenel Moise to step down.
At least four people have been killed and dozens injured in four days of protests in the capital Port-au-Prince and other cities.
Many Haitians accuse Mr Moise and other officials of corruption. Thousands have taken to the streets this week.
The unrest has forced mayors in several cities to cancel carnival festivities due in early March.
Mr Moise - who has been in power since 2017 - has called for talks with the opposition, to no avail so far.
Opposition groups called for protests after a court report alleged that officials and former ministers had misappropriated development loans made by Venezuela to Haiti after 2008.
The report also suggested that President Moise had been involved in irregularities.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Caribbean and 60% of the population live on less than $2 (£1.53) a day. | Protest_Online Condemnation | February 2019 | ['(BBC)', '(TIME)'] |
After two months of negotiations, Angela Merkel is elected the first female Chancellor of Germany by a coalition of the CDU/CSU and SPD delegates in the Bundestag. | Mrs Merkel, a conservative, will head a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), who ruled before. She is also the first chancellor to have grown up in the former communist eastern part of the country.
In the Bundestag 397 MPs voted for her, but 51 members of the governing coalition voted against her.
The BBC Berlin correspondent says this is a sign of the problems she will face in the future.
During a handover ceremony on Tuesday Mrs Merkel paid tribute to her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, who is preparing to leave politics.
NEW BUNDESTAG
1. Christian Democrats/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU): 2262. Social Democrats (SPD): 2223. Free Democrats (FDP): 614. Left Party: 545. Greens: 51
"You can be sure that I will handle with responsibility the things that made you a German chancellor whom people will remember fondly," she said, after Mr Schroeder presented her with a bouquet of flowers.
Mrs Merkel will make her first foreign trip as chancellor on Wednesday, visiting Paris and Brussels, followed by a visit to London on Thursday.
Her foreign policy stance is more pro-US than that of Mr Schroeder, who opposed the war in Iraq.
Reforms
Mrs Merkel has pledged to revive the faltering German economy.
But plans to cut taxes for high earners have been shelved, as have plans to liberalise employment law and introduce regional wage negotiations.
The parties have agreed to work to cut Germany's budget deficit with spending cuts and moderate tax increases.
KEY CABINET POSTS
Vice Chancellor/Labour: Franz Muentefering (SPD)
Foreign Affairs: Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD)
Interior: Wolfgang Schaeuble (CDU)
Defence: Franz Josef Jung (CDU)
Finance: Peer Steinbrueck (SPD)
Economy/Technology: Michael Glos (CSU)
Agriculture: Horst Seehofer (CSU)
Health: Ulla Schmidt (SPD) Justice: Brigitte Zypries (SPD)
The BBC's William Horsley says there is less disagreement over foreign affairs, where Mrs Merkel hopes to smooth relations with the US, boost Germany's profile within Nato and promote fair dealing within the European Union.
But she has been forced to make concessions to trade unions and accept Social Democrats in key cabinet roles.
Mrs Merkel's CDU and their Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), were denied a clear majority in September's elections. The new "grand coalition" of left and right boasts broad support within the Bundestag.
With 448 seats, Mrs Merkel easily passed the threshold of 308 votes needed to be confirmed as chancellor.
But correspondents say her power is likely to be diluted, as SPD figures will run a string of key ministries.
The SPD has the top jobs in eight ministries, including those of foreign affairs, finance and labour. The CDU and CSU head six ministries, including defence and economic affairs. Their eight cabinet posts include that of the chancellor herself and one other minister in her office. | Government Job change - Election | November 2005 | ['(BBC)'] |
2 Yemenis are released from custody in Amsterdam, having been arrested after being suspected by the United States of plotting a terrorist act. No evidence was found against the men. | Two Yemenis arrested in Amsterdam on suspicion of planning a terror attack have been released, prosecutors in the Netherlands have said.
An investigation failed to find any evidence against the two men, the Dutch national prosecutor's office said.
They were arrested on Monday upon arriving at Amsterdam airport on a flight from the US after a request from US authorities.
US officials later said they did not believe they were planning an attack.
"Two men from Yemen in custody since Monday on suspicion of possible involvement in the planning of a terrorist act, were freed this evening," the Dutch prosecutor's office said in a statement.
"From investigations in the United States and in the Netherlands there has been no indication of the men's possible involvement in any criminal act," the statement continued.
The two men have been identified as Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al-Soofi and Hezam al-Murisi.
They had both been travelling to the Yemeni capital Sanaa, and were arrested on arrival at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on-board a United Airlines flight from Chicago. They were not sitting together.
They had checked luggage onto an internal flight in the US that they did not then take. Officials in the US say it appears they missed the flight and were re-routed by United Airlines to travel via Amsterdam.
That flight, from Chicago's O'Hare to Washington Dulles International Airport, was called back once it was found they were not on board.
US officials believe the two men did not know each other and were not travelling together.
One of the men had earlier been stopped by airport officials on a connecting flight from Birmingham, Alabama.
He was found to be carrying $7,000 (£4,500) in cash and when his luggage was searched, officials found a mobile phone strapped to a medicine bottle, as well as knives and watches.
The luggage was cleared for the flight after it was not judged to be a threat but there was speculation that the chain of events could have been a dry-run for a terror attack, testing the US flight security operations. Customs authorities said it was not uncommon for people travelling to the countries like Yemen to be carrying large amounts of cash and that valuable items are often found bundled together. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | September 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
Syrian city of Homs "boiling" after deaths of 25 protesters. | Homs protesters were reportedly shot 'in cold blood'; deaths come a day after three mourners were killed after attending a funeral of a man killed by Syrian security forces.
Syrian forces killed 12 protesters overnight in the central city of Homs in clashes after the death of a tribal leader in custody, a rights campaigner in Homs said on Monday.
"Homs is boiling. Security forces and the regime thugs have been provoking armed tribes for a month now. But civilians in large numbers also took to the streets in different areas of Homs last night and they were shot at in cold blood," the rights campaigner told Reuters.
. | Protest_Online Condemnation | April 2011 | ['(Haaretz)'] |
David Duckenfield, the former South Yorkshire Police chief superintendent who was in charge of the 1988–89 FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool F.C. and Nottingham Forest F.C. at Hillsborough Stadium, is cleared of manslaughter by gross negligence relating to the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans who were crushed to death during the match. The verdict sparks outrage from the families of victims. | Bereaved Hillsborough families have reacted with outrage to the not guilty verdict delivered in the prosecution for manslaughter of the former South Yorkshire police chief superintendent David Duckenfield, who was in command of the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at which 96 people were fatally injured.
The verdict followed a 30-year campaign for justice by the families, which in 2012 led to the quashing of the original 1991 inquest and its verdict of accidental death, and a new legal process.
Margaret Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, whose son James, 18, was one of the 96 people who received fatal injuries at the semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on 15 April 1989, said after the verdict: “I blame a system that’s so morally wrong within this country, that’s a disgrace to this nation.”
The jury at the retrial at Preston crown court returned a not guilty verdict by a 9-1 majority after three full days of deliberation. Duckenfield, who the judge, Sir Peter Openshaw, had allowed to sit in the courtroom rather than the dock throughout, to make allowances for his medical conditions including post traumatic stress disorder, was hugged after the verdict by his wife, Ann, who supported him at the court throughout the trial.
Christine Burke, one of three siblings whose father, Henry Burke, 47, was killed at Hillsborough 30 years ago, stood up sobbing after the verdict. She cried out to the judge that, as 96 people had been unlawfully killed according to the 2016 verdict of the new inquest: “I want to know who is responsible for the death of my father, because somebody was.”
Openshaw did not respond; he addressed the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) barrister Christine Agnew QC, told her there were “matters to sort out”, and the court was cleared.
During the trial, Aspinall had written in a personal capacity to Openshaw to say that she was “deeply concerned about what I perceive to be a lack of impartiality in your dealings with the defendant in front of the jury”.
It followed Openshaw describing Duckenfield as “poor chap” as he told the jury that the defendant had been ill with a chest infection. Aspinall said she was worried “in the light of what we consider to have been a one-sided summing up” at the first trial.
“I have not fought the justice system in this country for 30 years to see my fight for my son culminate in yet another unbalanced legal process,” she added.
Families of the 96 who sat through the retrial in Preston, and a live broadcast to the Cunard building in Liverpool, felt that Openshaw’s summing up in the retrial was also favourable to Duckenfield, giving undue weight to his defence case rather than the prosecution and his previous admissions of failure.
Openshaw had replied to Aspinall’s letter via his clerk, that he would follow the “strong convention, soundly based on public policy, that judges do not enter into correspondence or discussions about cases they are hearing or have heard”.
The prosecution of Duckenfield for manslaughter by gross negligence of 95 of the victims followed the verdict of the jury at the new inquests in 2016 that the 96 had been unlawfully killed, and that no behaviour of Liverpool supporters had contributed to the disaster. The jury had been directed that they could reach that unlawful killing verdict only if they found that the deaths had been caused by the gross negligence manslaughter of Duckenfield.
During his evidence, Duckenfield made admissions of multiple failures in his preparation for the match, his knowledge of the Hillsborough stadium, and his management of the arriving 24,000 people with tickets to support Liverpool at the Leppings Lane end. At the end of his evidence, he accepted the assessment when questioned by his own barrister, John Beggs QC, that his “professional failings led to the deaths of 96 innocent men, women and children”.
Audio recordings of Duckenfield’s admissions at the inquests were played to the jury at his criminal trial effectively over the same issues. They also included his admission that he told a “terrible lie” even as the disaster was happening, at 3.15pm on the day, falsely blaming Liverpool supporters for forcing open a gate and rushing in. That false account began years in which South Yorkshire police officers blamed the victims, rather than their own mismanagement, for the disaster.
The truth, established in Lord Justice Taylor’s original public inquiry report in August 1989, was that Duckenfield himself had ordered a large exit gate to be opened, to alleviate a crush at the Leppings Lane turnstiles. He failed to take any steps to direct almost 2,500 incoming people away from the crowded central “pens” of the terrace, and the 96 people were fatally injured in a crush from the resulting overcrowding in pens 3 and 4.
Duckenfield was charged in relation to only 95 of the people who died. The 96th victim, Tony Bland, was critically injured in the crush and died in 1993 after life support was lawfully withdrawn. According to the law in 1989, a criminal charge relating to a death could not be brought if the victim died longer than a year and a day after the acts that allegedly caused it.
The CPS, following the direction of the coroner at the inquests, Sir John Goldring, alleged that Duckenfield was culpable of gross negligence manslaughter due to his failure to identify hazards at the turnstiles, monitor the numbers waiting to come in, relieve the pressures outside, monitor the numbers in the central pens and direct people away from the tunnel leading to the central pens.
At the first trial, which concluded in April, and at the retrial, Duckenfield’s barrister, Benjamin Myers QC, consistently raised allegations again that supporters misbehaved. He argued that Duckenfield was unfairly made a scapegoat for the failures of others, whom he identified as those responsible for safety flaws in Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium, and other police officers more junior to Duckenfield. Myers argued that those officers should have acted on their own initiative and did not need direction by Duckenfield in the crucial moments after the gate was opened, and that the risk of crushing in the pens was not foreseeable.
Myers also argued that Duckenfield’s admissions at the inquests had been taken “out of context” and were “wrung out of him” after days of questioning by barristers. In his summing up, Openshaw did not tell the jury that several of the admissions were made on the first two days, in response to Christina Lambert QC, counsel to the inquests, and to Beggs, Duckenfield’s own barrister.
Stephanie Conning, whose brother Richard Jones, 25, and his partner, Tracey Cox, 23, were killed, said after the verdict: “My family and I have done everything we can to try and seek justice and accountability for the deaths of our loved ones. This has been done at great personal cost to us but we owed it to Rick and Trace.
“They were lovely people who simply went to watch a football match. To reach this stage has been 30 years in the making, and once again the families have been let down by the establishment.” | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | November 2019 | ['(BBC)', '(The Guardian)'] |
American actor Jimmy Bennett accuses Italian actress Asia Argento of having sexual relations with him when he was 17 years old and then paying him $380,000 to keep silent. | Asia Argento paid off a former child actor who accused her of sexual assault. The Italian actress paid Jimmy Bennett $380,000 for an incident that occurred in May 2013. Argento was one of the first and most vocal accusers of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. By Abid Rahman
International Editor
Asia Argento, the Italian actress who was one of the first to publiclyaccuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, secretly paid off a young male actor accusing her of sexual misconduct in the months after her revelations about the disgraced movie mogul.
According to a report in The New York Times, Argento paid former child actorJimmy Bennett $380,000. Bennett claims that in 2013, a then 37-year-old Argento assaulted him in a California hotel only two months past his 17th birthday. The age of consent in California is 18.
The Times reports that it has seen the legal documents that lay out Bennett’s assault claims and the payments arranged between his lawyers and Argento’s.
Bennett’s lawyers sent a notice of intent to sue Argento in November, claiming thatthe sexualassault was so traumatic that it affected his mental health and stymied his acting career. The notice was sent to Richard Hofstetter, the late Anthony Bourdain’s longtime lawyer, who was representingArgento at the time.
The legal documents outlining the accusations against Argento were sent not long after she went public with her own sexual assault allegations against Weinstein. Argento accused Weinstein of raping her when she was 21 in an incident that took place in 1997 in a bombshell New Yorker report published on Oct. 10.
The avalanche of sexual assault allegations against Weinstein by dozens of women sparked the global #MeToo and Time’s Up movement that exposed sexual harassment by men in the entertainment industry and wider society. Since the Weinstein allegations became public, Argento, with the support of Bourdain who was her boyfriend until his suicide in June, has spoken out about sexual harassment both in Hollywood and her home country of Italyand also gave high profile talks on the subject at Harvard University and at the Cannes Film Festival.
Shortly after the report was made public on Monday, Argento’s ally Rose McGowan publicly distanced herself, tweeting, “I got to know Asia Argento ten months ago. Our commonality is the shared pain of being assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. My heart is broken. I will continue my work on behalf of victims everywhere.” She later asked followers to be “gentle,” tweeting, “None of us know the truth of the situation and I’m sure more will be revealed.”
Weinstein, through his lawyer Ben Brafman, later weighed in on what he called a “stunning level of hypocrisy” in a statement.“What is perhaps most egregious, is the timing, which suggests that at the very same time Argento was working on her own secret settlement for the alleged sexual abuse of a minor, she was positioning herself at the forefront of those condemning Mr. Weinstein, despite the fact that her sexual relationship with Mr. Weinstein was between two consenting adults which lasted for more than four years,” read the statement, in part.
The Times reports Bennett’s account of the incident, as laid out in the documents. He claims that he arrived at the Ritz-Carlton inMarina del Rey to meet Argento in her hotel room on May 10, 2013, with a family member. Argento asked to be alone with Bennett and the family member left. Bennett claims Argento gave him alcohol and also showed him notes she had made on hotel stationery. She then proceeded to kiss him and perform oral sex before having intercourse with him.
The documents say that Argento then asked to take a number of photos with him. Photos of Argento and Bennett semi-clothed in bed, as well as an Instagram post of their faces taken on that day, were included in the notice of intent to sue.
Bennett’s lawyers claim that Argento presenting herself as a victim of sexual assault as well as taking a prominent role in the #MeToo movement triggered memories of his own assault, according to the legal documents.
Argento and Bennett worked together on the 2004 filmThe Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, which Argento also wrote and directed. Bennett, a 7-year-old at the time, played Argento’s son, who is neglected and sexually assaulted by a boyfriend of Argento’s character.
The two seemingly kept in touch on Twitter up until August 2012 (see tweets below) and Instagram until May 2013, though Bennett’s Twitter account is no longer active. Argento and Bennett referred to each other on social media as mother and son, a reference to their The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things characters, and he claims she was a mentor in the legal documents.
Now 22, Bennett was a prolific child actor and notably starred as a young James T. Kirk in the 2009 Star Trek reboot. He also had roles in Poseidon, Evan Almighty and Firewall. His lawyers claim that the assault affected him emotionally and was detrimental to his career. Since the incident, Bennett only has a few film and TV credits to his name.
Bennett’s attorney, Gordon K. Sattro, issued a statement on Monday, saying, “Jimmy is going to take the next 24 hours, or longer, to prepare his response. We ask that you respect our client’s privacy during this time.”
Argento responded to the report on Tuesday. In a statement, she denied the assault allegation.Argento said Bennett tried to extort her and that her then-boyfriend, the late Anthony Bourdain, offered the payoff to make the situation disappear.“I am deeply shocked and hurt having read the news that is absolutely false,” she said, in part. “I have never had any sexual relationship with Bennett.” Read her full response here.
Aug. 20, 1 p.m. Updated with Weinstein lawyer statement.Aug. 21, 9 a.m. Updated that Argento released a statement. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | August 2018 | ['(The Hollywood Reporter)'] |
Adam Yauch, founding member of the influential hip hop group the Beastie Boys, dies aged 47. | Beastie Boys rapper Adam Yauch has died at the age of 47, his publicist has confirmed to the BBC.
The musician, director and Tibet activist was diagnosed with salivary gland cancer in 2009.
Yauch underwent surgery and radiation therapy but said in 2011 reports he was totally cancer-free were "exaggerated".
Under the alias MCA, he formed part of the band that eventually became the Beastie Boys, selling 40 million albums worldwide with Mike D and Ad Roc.
Tributes have already been paid to the star on Twitter, with the likes of De La Soul, Ice T, Joe Satriani and Common passing on their condolences.
Rapper Biz Markie
, who collaborated with the Beastie Boys on their Ill Communication album, wrote: "My brother, you are truly going to be missed. My heart is heavy."
Fellow New Yorker Moby added
: "I'm very, very sad to hear of Adam Yauch's passing. He was a wonderful, generous, remarkable, and inspiring man and friend."
In a nod to the scope of the group's fame, New York Senator Chuck Schumer
also tweeted his condolences: "Born and Bred in Brooklyn, U.S.A., they call him Adam Yauch, but he's M.C.A. RIP Adam."
Justin Timberlake said he was "crushed"
by the news, while Nirvana's bassist Krist Novoselic thanked Yauch
for his "Sabotage bass riff and many other great grooves".
The Beastie Boys started out as a hardcore punk outfit called The Young Aborigines in 1979 but switched to hip hop in 1984.
Two years later they launched their critically-acclaimed debut album Licensed To Ill, which spawned the hit singles (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) and No Sleep Till Brooklyn.
Fusing rock guitars with lo-fi hip-hop beats, Licensed To Ill was one of the first rap records to cross over to a mainstream audience - and the first to top the US charts.
But the band became equally well-known for their bratty, bad-boy personas.
They were lambasted in the British press for their stage show, which featured giant inflatable phalluses and cage dancers. And, when they began to wear the Volkswagen emblem on chains around their necks, it reportedly led to a rise in vandalised cars.
Their obnoxious behaviour undoubtedly started as an in-joke but became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy as their fame increased.
Over the years, however, the Beastie Boys rehabilitated their image. Their second album, Paul's Boutique, was retrospectively considered a masterpiece, its genre-bending sound collages paving the way for the likes of Beck and The Avalanches.
Later records saw them play their own instruments and expand their horizons beyond hip-hop.
In 1996, they released The In Sound From Way Out! - a collection of jazz and funk instrumentals, while the group collaborated with reggae legend Lee "Scratch" Perry on 1998's Hello Nasty.
But they are best remembered for their hardcore rap tracks - Sure Shot, Sabotage and the crossover hit Intergalactic.
Yauch was the band's filmographer, directing several of their videos under the pseudonym Nathaniel Hornblower.
He also directed the band's concert movie Awesome... I Shot That, which stitched together footage from dozens of audience-members.
The rapper grew up in Brooklyn, and was fascinated by electronics and explosives at a young age, building small home-made bombs from fireworks he had hoarded at home.
Aged 14, he removed himself from a Quaker school to join a public high school in New York. "I felt I was leading too much of a sheltered life," he told Rolling Stone in 1998.
There he taught himself bass guitar, after discovering punk through The Clash's debut album. His new schoolfriends also introduced him to his future bandmates for the first time.
In addition to his rap career, Yauch was heavily involved in the Free Tibet movement, and co-organised several fundraising concerts in the 1990s.
"I think that movies and CDs... they affect the way people think," he told PBS
in 1997. "I know they've radically affected the way I think."
He revealed he had cancer in a salivary gland in his neck in July 2009, which led to the scrapping of a tour and an album - Hot Sauce Committee, Pt 1.
In an email to fans later that year, he said the tumour had been removed and he was feeling "healthy, strong and hopeful".
Yauch travelled to a Tibetan community in Dharamsala in India after surgery.
He told fans: "I'm taking Tibetan medicine and at the recommendation of the Tibetan doctors I've been eating a vegan/organic diet." But in January 2010, he was forced to deny press reports that he was fully recovered.
"I'm continuing treatment, staying optimistic and hoping to be cancer free in the near future," he said in a statement.
The Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last month, but Yauch was not able to attend. On the night, The Red Hot Chili Peppers dedicated their performance to Yauch.
He is survived by his wife, Dechen Wangdu, and their daughter, Tenzin Losel, as well as his parents Frances and Noel Yauch.
Obituary: Adam 'MCA' Yauch
In Pictures: Adam Yauch 1964-2012
Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch: Your memories
Beastie Boys reveal 2011 comeback
Cancer delays Beastie Boys album
Beasties promise 'strange' record
Beastie Boys win sampling battle
BBC Music - Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys
Setback for EU in legal fight with AstraZeneca
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Le Pen set for regional power with eye on presidency
How the Delta variant took hold in the UK. VideoHow the Delta variant took hold in the UK | Famous Person - Death | May 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
The United States Senate votes 51–40 to confirm U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior, thereby making her the first Native American to head the department and the first to be confirmed to a Cabinet post. Haaland is an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo. | Rep. Debra Haaland, D-New Mexico, testifies before a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing on her nomination to be Secretary of the Interior on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2021. (Sarah Silbiger/Pool via AP)
Aliyah ChavezIndian Country Today
A fierce Indigenous woman is now the caretaker of the nation’s public lands and waters for the first time in U.S. history. Deb Haaland was confirmed as the nation’s 54th Secretary of the Interior in a 51-40 vote Monday, making her the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency. Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan broke from party lines to vote to confirm Haaland, a notable choice given other Republican senators publicly saying she was not the right candidate. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and several other Western senators missed the vote, citing a severe winter storm that dumped 3 feet of snow on parts of Colorado and Wyoming, causing multiple flight cancellations. Fellow Wyoming Republican Cynthia Lummis and Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado also missed the vote.
Haaland will be sworn into office either Wednesday or Thursday by Vice President Kamala Harris, she said at a public watch party hosted by IllumiNative and NDN Collective. When she is sworn in, Haaland will become the highest ranked Indigenous person in an executive office across the country. The incoming interior secretary will sign her resignation letters Monday and send them out Tuesday, officially removing her as a member of Congress. Her daughter, Somáh, plans to livestream the swearing-in ceremony from her Instagram account, @coffeequeer. “She's ready to make sure that we share that moment with the world,” Haaland said.
Incoming Interior Secretary Haaland stands eighth in line to the presidency. She is also only the third woman to serve in the position — a low number in stark comparison to the 50 men who have served — and in an accomplishment fitting for March’s National Women’s History Month.
Haaland is a citizen of Laguna Pueblo, and has ties to Jemez Pueblo through her grandfather, which she frequently cites. She spent her career in New Mexico as a former small business owner, organizer and tribal administrator before running for Congress. In November, Haaland was reelected for a second term in Congress representing New Mexico’s first Congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2018, she made history as one of the first two Native women elected to Congress.
Now Haaland will be at the helm of the Interior, a sprawling government agency in charge of 70,000 employees, one-fifth of the nation’s land, and key offices in natural resources. The agency also oversees national parks, wildlife refuges and works with endangered species conservation. A key role of the Interior’s duty is to respectfully manage the government’s federal trust responsibilities promised to tribal nations. She will also be leading the most important government agencies affecting Indian Country, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education. All eyes are on Haaland at the helm who has frequently vowed tribal consultation, inclusivity and collaboration in her work. (Related: Deb Haaland faces momentous questions at Interior)
President Joe Biden, who ran on a presidential platform with goals to “restore the soul of America” to “build back better” has already confirmed a diverse and record-breaking Cabinet. Some notable confirmations include Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, the first woman to lead the department; Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the first Black person to lead the Pentagon; and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member.
Haaland’s path to the Interior department has included wide support from Indigenous leaders, advocates and allies.
For months, hundreds of tribal leaders have submitted letters of support for her confirmation. Some of the nation’s most prominent Native organizations came together in a way they never had before to support Haaland. (Related: ‘There's just gonna be no stopping my sister’)
Organizations like the National Congress of American Indians, IllumiNatives, NDN Collective and others created online campaigns, social media tool kits and “tweet-storms.” Frequently celebrities, including Mark Ruffalo, lended their star power and social media platform to support Haaland. “If an Indigenous woman from humble beginnings can be confirmed as Secretary of the Interior, our country and its promise still holds true for everyone,” Haaland said in her opening statement of her hearing before the Senate energy committee last month. Haaland was born to a Marine veteran father and a Navy veteran mother. She has described herself as a single mother who sometimes had to rely on food stamps and is still paying off student loans after college and law school.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Indian Country Today is a nonprofit news organization. Will you support our work? All of our content is free. There are no subscriptions or costs. We have hired more Native journalists in the past year than any news organization ─ and with your help we will continue to grow and create career paths for our people. Support Indian Country Today for as little as $10.
Aliyah Chavez is from Kewa Pueblo and works as a reporter-producer at Indian Country Today. Follow her on Twitter: @aliyahjchavez or email her at achavez@indiancountrytoday.com
All of our content is free. There are no subscriptions or costs. And we have hired more Native journalists in the past year than any news organization ─ and with your help we will continue to grow and create career paths for our people. Support Indian Country Today for as little as $10. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | March 2021 | ['(CNBC)', '(Indian Country Today)'] |
A police sniper accidentally fires his weapon while changing position and injures two people during a speech by French President François Hollande in Villognon. | A French police sniper has accidentally shot and injured two people during a speech by President Francois Hollande in western France. The shot was fired as the officer moved position on a roof about 100m (328ft) from a tent where Mr Hollande was speaking in the town of Villognon.
The bullet went through the canvas of the tent, where drinks were being made. It passed through a waiter's thigh and lodged in another person's calf.
The injuries were not life-threatening.
Mr Hollande was inaugurating a new stretch of railway when a gunshot was heard. He interrupted his speech for a few moments but reports say there was no panic.
"I hope it's nothing serious - I think not," Mr Hollande said as he paused his address to ask whether anyone had been hurt. The president later visited the injured - the head waiter of a local hotel and an employee of a railway maintenance company. One local report said the safety catch of the sniper's weapon had been unlocked, allowing the gun to be discharged accidentally.
Local government chief Pierre N'Gahane said a judicial investigation had been launched.
Asked if the officer had fired accidentally, he was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying: "Yes, without doubt."
The marksman is based with a special protection unit in nearby Poitiers, officials said.
| Famous Person - Give a speech | February 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
Niger is suspended by the Economic Community of West African States after its President Tandja Mamadou went ahead with a parliamentary election it had asked to be postponed over boycotts. | West Africa's trade grouping Ecowas has suspended Niger after President Mamadou Tandja went ahead with a controversial parliamentary election.
Ecowas had called on Mr Tandja to postpone the vote indefinitely to allow talks with opposition politicians - who have boycotted Tuesday's election. They are angry at the president's attempts to extend his time in power. Mr Tandja dissolved parliament earlier this year and had the constitution changed to let him seek a third term. After talks at the weekend, Ecowas had warned the 71-year-old president to delay the election or face "full sanctions". 'Pariah' status
On Tuesday the bloc's political director, Abdel Fatau Musa, told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme it was clear Mr Tandja had rejected the decision of Ecowas. He defended the decision to suspend the nation, saying it would affect Mr Tandja. "If you are considered a pariah, an outcast, from an organisation you have ratified the conditions of, then psychologically it will affect you," he said. He warned that the issue could end up in the UN Security Council, and Niger could be left in international isolation unless Mr Tandja backed down. The president's move to stay in power in the uranium-rich nation sparked international outrage and dismay among opposition groups. He had been due to stand down in December after serving two five-year terms. But his supporters say the people want him to stay in power because he has brought financial stability to one of the world's poorest nations. In January, French company Areva signed a deal to develop what it said would become the world's second biggest uranium mine. The mine is in the semi-desert north, where ethnic Tuareg rebels have been fighting for more autonomy. President Tandja has signed a peace deal with several Tuareg groups. Six million people are eligible to vote to elect a new 113-member parliament, but correspondents say the campaign has been marked by indifference among residents. | Government Job change - Election | October 2009 | ['(ECOWAS)', '(BBC)', '(Reuters)'] |
Hillary Clinton is nominated as the Democratic Party candidate for this year's presidential election. She becomes the first woman ever to be nominated for president by a major party in the United States. | Follow NBC News PHILADELPHIA — Hillary Clinton is now officially the Democratic presidential nominee, making history as the first woman ever to secure the backing of a major American political party.
Clinton was formally nominated on the second evening of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, more than nine years after launching her first presidential bid. It was largely an evening of unity after an opening night marked by resistance from die-hard supporters of Democratic runner-up, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
In a culmination of days' worth of efforts to unify the party, Sanders himself moved at the conclusion of the lengthy state-by-state roll call vote — after Clinton had won a majority of delegates but before her formal nomination was announced to the thousands gathered in the Wells Fargo Center — to select Clinton as the nominee.
"I move that all votes cast by delegates be reflected in the official record, and I move that Hillary Clinton be selected as the nominee of the Democratic Party for president of the United States," he announced from the convention floor as delegates roared their approval.
A former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state, Clinton enters the general election with a lengthy resume of public service, nearly universal name recognition, and historically high negative favorability ratings after failing to shake recurrent scandals over her handling of a private email server during her tenure at the State Department.
She will face an even more unpopular Republican nominee — political novice and real estate mogul Donald Trump — in the general election.
Clinton finally becomes the nominee of her party after a pair of grueling primary contests stretching over two election cycles. Her first run for the presidency, announced in January 2007, ended in a bitter loss to then-Sen. Barack Obama in a Democratic primary that stretched into the summer of the election year.
After serving as her former rival's Secretary of State, Clinton began her long-planned second White House run as the prohibitive favorite last year. But any hopes of a quick coronation were derailed by fervor on the political left for Sanders, whose significant wins in early northeastern contests and caucus states fueled backers' hopes that he could erase Clinton’s substantial delegate lead.
Those dreams faded after a series of decisive wins by the former first lady late in the primary calendar. Ultimately, Clinton bested Sanders by over 380 pledged delegates and secured about 55 percent of the total primary votes cast.
Still, Sanders declined to endorse Clinton for over a month as he pushed the presumptive nominee to make major changes to the Democratic Party's platform and primary rules.
Even after Sanders endorsed the presumptive nominee in a joint rally earlier this month, some of his most vocal supporters at the Democratic National Convention continued to resist Clinton’s candidacy, booing her name on the floor Monday afternoon and successfully calling for the ouster of Democratic National Committee head Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
But calls for Democratic unity Monday night from first lady Michelle Obama, progressive hero Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sanders himself served to calm all but the Vermont senator's most inconsolable backers.
Still, the evening was not without notes of disunity, A group of Sanders supporters marched out of the Wells Fargo Center as celebrations were underway. | Government Job change - Election | July 2016 | ['(CNN)', '(The Guardian)', '(NBC News)'] |
The International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant against Mahmoud al-Werfalli for the war crime of murder following the circulation of several videos in which he appears to oversee the execution of over 30 prisoners. | THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for a Libyan National Army (LNA)commander accused over the alleged execution of dozens of prisoners.
Prosecutors at the world’s permanent war crimes court are seeking Mahmoud al-Werfalli’s hand-over to face charges of murder during the armed conflict in Libya.
According to the ICC, Werfalli “is alleged to have directly committed and to have ordered the commission of murder as a war crime” during seven incidents, involving 33 persons in June and July 2017 in and near Benghazi.
The LNA, which controls the eastern part of Libya, has been pushing to expand its presence in the central and southern part of the country where it has been vying for control with forces linked to the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli and other groups.
The United Nations called for the LNA to suspend Werfalli after a video in March allegedly showed Werfalli shooting dead three men who were kneeling and facing a wall with their hands tied behind their backs.
The LNA said it would investigate any potential war crimes but has not released any details of such a probe.
In June, two further videos appeared to show summary executions carried out by LNA fighters on his orders.
The ICC has jurisdiction over war crimes in Libya after a referral by the United Nations Security Council in 2011 and has been investigating alleged atrocities there.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | August 2017 | ['(Al Jazeera)'] |
Dr. Jack Kevorkian is released from prison after serving 8 years for assisting terminally ill patients with suicide. | COLDWATER, Mich., June 1 -- Jack Kevorkian, the retired pathologist dubbed "Dr. Death" for claims that he had participated in at least 130 assisted suicides, left prison Friday after eight years still believing people have the right to die.
A smiling Kevorkian, 79, said it was "one of the high points in life" as he walked out with his attorney.
Mike Wallace, the correspondent for CBS News's "60 Minutes," whose airing of a Kevorkian-aided suicide led to the charges and Kevorkian's prison term, met Kevorkian outside the prison with an embrace and the words "What do you say, young man?" Kevorkian is to appear in a "60 Minutes" segment Sunday.
"He thanks the thousands who have supported him, have written to him and the enormous amount of people who have really been comfortable in supporting him," said his attorney, Mayer Morganroth. "He just wants a little privacy for the next few days."
Throughout the 1990s, Kevorkian challenged authorities to make his actions legal -- or stop him. He burned state orders against him and showed up at court in costume.
"You think I'm going to obey the law? You're crazy," he said in 1998 shortly before he was accused -- and then convicted -- of murder after injecting lethal drugs into Thomas Youk, 52, a suburban Detroit man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. Kevorkian had videotaped Youk's death and sent the tape to "60 Minutes."
The conviction earned Kevorkian a 10-to-25-year sentence for second-degree murder, but he earned time off for good behavior.
He is expected to move to Bloomfield Hills, just outside Detroit, where he will live with friends and resume the artistic and musical hobbies he missed in prison. His lawyer and friends have said he plans to live on a small pension and Social Security while writing and making speeches.
Kevorkian has promised never to help in another suicide. But Ruth Holmes, who has worked as his legal assistant and handled his correspondence while he was in prison, said his views on the subject have not changed.
In a recent interview, Kevorkian also made it clear that his support for letting people decide when they want to die has not wavered.
"It's got to be legalized. That's the point," he told WJBK-TV in Detroit. "I'll work to have it legalized. But I won't break any laws doing it."
The Michigan Catholic Conference says it will oppose any effort to renew a push for legalizing assisted suicide in Michigan, where it has been banned since 1998. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | June 2007 | ['(Washington Post)'] |
The chief minister of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa, dies of cardiac arrest after being hospitalized since 22 September 2016. | After many tense hours following initial reports that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalithaa had passed away, Apoll Hospital confirmed that the AIADMK supremo had breathed her last at 11.30 pm. Earlier, the hospital denied media reports that Jayalalithaa passed away on Monday evening, saying that doctors from both AIIMS and Apollo continue provide her with “life-saving measures”. Dismissing the reports as “totally baseless and false”, Apollo asked news channels to rectify their “mistake”. Confusion gripped Tamil Nadu as news of Jayalalithaa’s “death” was flashed by Tamil news channels and picked up by the national media. Soon, a scuffle broke out between AIADMK supporters and police with the former throwing stones and upturning barricades outside Apollo Hospitals in Chennai. Police, deployed in large numbers to preempt any untoward incident, were forced to resort to lathicharge. Even the party flag was seen flying at half mast at the AIADMK headquarters in Royapettah after the reports of her death, but it was hoisted once again after the hospital issued a denial. The chief minister, who has been in Apollo since September 22, had suffered the cardiac arrest on Sunday evening.
WATCH | Jayalalithaa Medical Report Self-Explanatory, No Info Held Back, Says Tamil Nadu Health Secretary
The party MLAs are scheduled to meet later this evening, apparently to chalk out the next course of action. Though party sources did not reveal the agenda of the meeting scheduled in the evening, they, however, confirmed that the legislators would discuss key matters.
#WATCH: Party flag hoisted again at AIADMK HQs in Chennai #jayalalithaa pic.twitter.com/8dAqqTwjSc
— ANI (@ANI_news) December 5, 2016
The AIADMK chief suffered the cardiac arrest hours after her party told media that she has fully recovered and will be returning home soon. Born in 1948, Jayalalithaa started her career as an actress in South Indian films. In 1982, she joined the AIADMK, which was founded by her mentor MG Ramachandran. She first became the chief minister of Tamil Nadu in 1991. She has ruled the state for over 15 years. | Famous Person - Death | December 2016 | ['(The Indian Express)'] |
Libyan interior minister Fawzi Abdelali resigns after harsh criticism due to the Mausoleum attack. An aide says he resigned "to defend the revolutionaries". It becomes known that deputy PM Mustafa A.G. Abushagur on Saturday, referring to Friday's desecrations, sent a tweet saying "I have asked the interior and defence ministers to intervene yesterday but did not do their duty to protect these sites." | Libya's interior minister has quit in the wake of a series of attacks on Sufi Muslim shrines and other violence that has rocked the country.
Fawzi Abdelali resigned in protest at criticism from Congress over his handling of the violence, an aide said.
The latest incidents include attacks on two Sufi shrines that were blamed on ultra-conservative Salafi Islamists.
Attacks on shrines of sects have risen since the end of the eight-month civil war that toppled Col Muammar Gaddafi.
There has also been a recent double car bombing in Tripoli and clashes between rival tribes in Zlitan.
Fawzi Abdelali's aide said: "He submitted his resignation to protest against congressmen criticising the government and to defend the revolutionaries."
The newly elected General National Congress had accused the interior ministry's High Security Committee of failing to prevent the destruction of shrines.
The committee includes rebels who fought Gaddafi's forces last year and were then integrated into the interior ministry.
On Saturday, a shrine in Tripoli venerating Sufi Muslim saint al-Shaab al-Dahmani was partly destroyed by men with bulldozers.
A day earlier, a group attacked the tomb of 15th-Century Sufi scholar Abdel Salam al-Asmar in Zlitan, about 160km (100 miles) south-east of Tripoli.
Hardline Salafists regard the shrines of the Sufi sect - which practises a mystical form of Islam - as idolatrous. The destruction in Zlitan followed two days of clashes between rival local tribes there which left at least three people dead.
A week ago in Tripoli, two people were killed by a double car bombing as people celebrated the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | August 2012 | ['(BBC)', '(Google Translate)'] |
In response to multiple rockets being fired across the border, Israel launched four air strikes. Two militants from a Salafist jihadist group are killed and another wounded in the northern Gaza Strip. | Four Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip at the weekend killed five militants, Palestinian officials say.
Two militants died and two other people were injured near Deir al-Balah on Sunday, ruling Hamas officials said.
Israel's military said it had targeted a "terrorist rocket squad".
On Saturday evening, an air strike killed the leader of a Gaza-based Salafist group and another militant in Jabalia and, a few hours later, another militant was killed in Khan Younis.
The Salafist leader killed in Jabalia, Hisham al-Saedni, was hit on a motorcycle. Israel said it was responding to a rocket attack on southern Israel.
Saedni, 43, is said to have headed the Mujahideen Shura Council.
On Friday, a rocket apparently fired by the same group landed in the courtyard of a residential building in the southern Israeli town of Netivot. No-one was injured.
There has been a flare-up in violence across the border recently, with Palestinian militant groups firing rockets into Israel and Israel carrying out a series of air strikes against targets across the Gaza Strip.
| Armed Conflict | October 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Quebec National Assembly passes legislation banning individuals who cover their faces to receive or give public services, including riding public buses. | Montreal, Canada – Quebec has passed a contentious law that would make it illegal for Muslim women, and other individuals, who cover their faces to receive public services, including riding public buses.
Members of the provincial legislature voted 65-51 in favour of the legislation on religious neutrality, known as Bill 62, on Wednesday morning.
The law forces citizens to uncover their faces in order to receive or give public services in the French-speaking province.
It applies to provincial and municipal employees – including doctors, nurses, teachers and daycare workers – and public transit workers.
Shaheen Ashraf, a board member of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women based in Montreal, said she was “disturbed and unsettled and upset” that the legislation was passed.
Muslim women in Quebec “are feeling targeted” by the law, which is the latest in a series of attempts by the provincial government to “raise the issue of Muslim women’s attire”, Ashraf told Al Jazeera.
“The message they’re sending to those women is that you stay home and don’t come out of your house because they are choosing to cover their faces and they cannot board a bus or use any public transportation or receive any services,” she added.
“So what are they supposed to do?”
Quebec Justice Minister Stephanie Vallee first tabled the bill in 2015 after several years of contentious debates in the province over religious symbols in the public sphere and the issue of religious accommodation for minorities.
Vallee has defended the legislation, telling CBC News this week that it was about “living together in harmony”.
“It’s a bill about guidelines and clearly establishes neutrality of the state,” Vallee said.
The Liberal Party, which holds a majority in the provincial legislature, backed the bill, while opposition parties voted against it because they said it did not go far enough.
The ban will go into effect immediately, but the provincial government has not provided clear guidelines for how public agencies should respond when individuals seek services with their faces covered. The government is expected to form a committee to provide advice soon.
Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said in a statement that the legislation is “an unjustified infringement of religious freedoms” that runs contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Gardee added that the advocacy group will be looking into legal avenues “to defend the fundamental rights and freedoms of Canadian Muslims and, by extension, those of all Canadians”.
The government has said individuals would be able to apply for an exemption based on religious accommodation.
It plans to release guidelines before July on how such religious accommodation exemptions will be allocated. Currently, the bill states that accommodation is possible for a handful of reasons, including as long as it “does not compromise the principle of State religious neutrality”.
But legal experts and mayors across the province have questioned how such an exemption, and the law itself, would be implemented.
Denis Coderre, the mayor of Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, has accused the provincial government of overstepping its authority by telling municipalities how they can administer public services.
Coderre has said Bill 62 will be impossible to implement.
“Are we going to say to the driver, ‘I’ve become the burqa or niqab police, and I’ll decide who gets on the bus or not?'” Coderre was quoted as saying in August by the Globe and Mail.
“And if the driver says you can come in, will we have citizens who take the law into their own hands?”
Meanwhile, Maxime Pedneault-Jobin, the mayor of Gatineau, Quebec, recently told CBC the legislation is “a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist except in principle”.
Haroun Bouazzi, co-president of AMAL-Quebec, an association that works on issues of secularism and citizenship in the province, said many Muslims in the province are afraid to speak out against the legislation.
“People are scared because the debate is extremely violent,” he told Al Jazeera.
Bouazzi said that by passing the legislation, Quebec has affirmed that it can “take away fundamental rights with no real nor urgent reason”.
“It’s a sad day for democracy in Quebec.”
Only 100 or so Muslim women wear the face veil but Austria has joined other European countries in outlawing the garment.
News media say law due to take effect soon also prohibits import and marketing of garment in “all cities and towns”.
| Government Policy Changes | October 2017 | ['(Al Jazeera)'] |
The mother and the brother of American actress and singer Jennifer Hudson are murdered. | Police are seen near a home on Chicago's South Side, Friday, Oct. 24, 2008, where they are investigating the deaths of two people whose bodies were found at a home that is listed under the same name as the mother of Oscar-winning actress and singer Jennifer Hudson. (AP Photo/Mark Carlson)
By RUPA SHENOY – 3 days ago CHICAGO (AP) — Authorities investigating the shooting deaths of Jennifer Hudson's mother and brother were searching for the missing 7-year-old nephew of the Oscar-winning actress.
A suspect in the deaths was in custody Friday night, but young Julian King had not been seen since the bodies of Darnell Donerson, 57, and Jason Hudson, 29, were found Friday afternoon.
A family member entering Donerson's South Side home Friday afternoon found the woman shot on the living room floor. Responding officers later found Hanson shot in the bedroom, police said.
At least one of the victims suffered defensive wounds, said authorities who described the shooting as domestic violence.
William Balfour, a man suspected in the deaths, was arrested Friday but had not been charged, law enforcement sources told the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.
Police spokeswoman Monique Bond said investigators were talking to "a number of people in custody" but she declined to elaborate. An Amber Alert issued Friday said Balfour was a suspect in the double homicide.
Records from the Illinois Department of Corrections show Balfour, 27, is on parole and spent nearly seven years in prison for attempted murder, vehicular hijacking and possessing a stolen vehicle. Public records show one of Balfour's addresses as the home where Donerson and Jason Hudson were shot.
The Cook County medical examiner's office said autopsies for Donerson and Jason Hudson were pending.
Balfour's mother, Michelle, said her son had been married to Hudson's sister, Julia, for several years, but they were separated. She also said Donerson had ordered him to move out of the family's home last winter.
Jennifer Hudson's personal publicist, Lisa Kasteler, said the family wanted privacy.
The tragedy comes as Hudson, who grew up in Chicago, continues to reach new heights in her career. Her song "Spotlight" is No. 1 on Billboard's Hot R&B;/Hip-Hop charts and her recently released, self-tiled debut album has been a top seller. She was featured in this year's blockbuster "Sex and the City" movie and is also starring in the hit film "The Secret Life of Bees."
She won an Academy Award for best supporting actress in 2007 for her role in "Dreamgirls." In an interview last year with Vogue, Hudson credited her mother with encouraging her to audition for "American Idol," which launched her career.
The singer, whose father died when she was a teenager, described herself as very close to her family. In a recent AP interview she said her family, which includes older siblings Julia and Jason, helped keep her grounded.
"My faith in God and my family, they're very realistic and very normal, they're not into the whole limelight kind of thing, so when I go home to Chicago that's just another place that's home," she said. "I stand in line with everybody else, or, when I go home to my mom I'm just Jennifer, (so she says), 'You get up and you take care of your own stuff.' And I love that; I don't like when people tell you everything you want to hear, I want to hear the truth, you know what I mean."
Hudson recently announced her engagement to David Otunga, best known for his stint on VH1's reality show "I Love New York."
Hudson's representatives would not disclose her whereabouts Friday. She had been scheduled to appear Monday in Los Angeles to collect an ensemble cast honor at the Hollywood Awards for "The Secret Life of Bees" with co-stars including Alicia Keys, Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning.
AP Music Writer Nekesa Moody in New York and AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang in Los Angeles contributed to this report. | Famous Person - Death | October 2008 | ['(AP via Google News)'] |
Federal prosecutors lay out additional charges for three men suspected of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The new charges, which include conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, relate to an alleged related plot by the men to detonate explosives at a bridge in order to slow down responding law enforcement. | A federal grand jury has added weapons of mass destruction charges against three suspects accused ofplotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmerin an alleged plan that involved blowing up a bridgeto slow down the cops.
The new charges carry life sentences.
Theywere added Wednesday in what is known as a superseding or new indictment against the accused ringleader, Adam Fox, 40, of Wyoming, and two of his alleged cohorts: Barry CroftJr., 45, of Bear, Delaware, and Daniel Joseph Harris, 23, of Lake Orion.
All three are chargedwith plottingto blow up a bridge near Whitmer's vacation home last fall to essentiallyhinderthe governor’s security detail and any responding law enforcement officers.
The new charges come six months after undercover informants and federal agents helped foil an alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer from her vacation home and leave her stranded in a boat in Lake Michigan. The undercover informants and agents had embedded themselves in the group, which allegedly met and schemed in the basement of a vacuum shop in the Grand Rapids area and held training exercises at various locations across the state.
Six suspects were charged in federal court; eight in state court where they are facing domestic terrorism charges.
Prosecutors allege that thedefendants targeted Whitmer because they were angry over her pandemic stay-at-home orders and mask mandates. Thesuspects not only talked about kidnapping her, prosecutors have argued, but cased Whitmer's vacation home multiple times, drew maps, and tried to buy explosives that would help them carry out their plan.
According to courtroom testimony, the suspects talked about leaving Whitmer out on a boat in the middle of the lake, or possibly taking her to another state to stand trial for treason.
Defense lawyers have maintained that their clients were not part of any real plot to harm anyone, and that they were merely engaged in puffery and tough talk. They have argued that the government has produced only snippets of conversations in the case and that there is no evidence that the accused had any real plan to kidnap Whitmer. They have saidthat it remains to be seen what roles the undercover informants and FBI agents played in the case, and whether they pushed the others into carrying out the plan, which in the end was foiled when FBI agents arrested five men during a setup.
On Oct. 6, five suspects were arrested near Ypsilanti while going to make what they thought was a down payment on explosives and other gear. When they arrived, FBI agents lay in waiting and arrested them.
More:Family reveals inside life of Adam Fox, alleged mastermind in Whitmer kidnapping plot
The superseding indictment also alleges that Croft and Harris possessed anunregistereddestructive device, which violates federal law and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Harris allegedly had asemiautomatic rifle with a barrel of less than 16 inches in length, that was not registered to him.
To date, 14 people have been charged in state and federal court. Onefederal defendant, Ty Garbin, 25, of Hartland Township, pleaded guilty in December to conspiracy to kidnap Whitmer. Garbin, who faces up to life in prison for his conviction, has not yet been sentenced and is expected to testify against the others.
Defendants Fox, Croft, Kaleb Franks, Harris and Brandon Caserta each also face potential life sentences if convicted of thekidnapping conspiracy.
More:Feds: Trump supporter on FBI's Most Wanted list was Googling Gretchen Whitmer
The new charges arose from an ongoing investigation conducted by the FBI as it seeks to crack down on extremist groups that have popped up across Michigan and the country. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | April 2021 | ['(CNN)', '(Detroit Free-Press)'] |
A fire in a circuit board factory in Taoyuan City, Taiwan, kills seven people including five firefighters. It is the city's third major industrial fire this year. | The inferno raged through the eight-floor building of a circuit board maker, located in an industrial district in Taoyuan City.
Published: 29th April 2018 03:52 PM |
Last Updated: 29th April 2018 03:52 PM
| A+A A- Image used for representation| Albin Mathew
TAIPEI: Seven people -- five of them firefighters -- died in a fire that broke out late Saturday in an electronics factory in northern Taiwan, the local fire department said.
The inferno raged through the eight-floor building of a circuit board maker, located in an industrial district in Taoyuan City.
Seven firefighters were trapped by large fallen objects as they tried to search for people inside the factory.
They were rescued early Sunday but only two survived. The two others killed were factory workers from Thailand.
Seven other firefighters were injured, five of them suffering burns from an unidentified liquid, according to the fire department.
Traces of diesel and toxic chemicals were also found at the scene, it said.
The disaster follows a string of recent accidents in Taiwanese factories, raising questions about safety standards.
A huge fire broke out at a refinery of the state-run CPC Corporation in January, also in Taoyuan. There were no injuries in that incident.
In December, six Vietnamese workers were killed in another Taoyuan factory blaze that erupted in the middle of the night.
The workers were found to have been staying in an illegal dormitory at the factory, highlighting the often sub-standard living conditions for migrant workers on the island | Fire | April 2018 | ['(The New Indian Express)'] |
The leaders of the United Kingdom's three main political parties take part in the first of three televised debates ahead of the 2010 General Election. | Live television has frequently been more dramatic. The moon landing. OJ Simpson. Diana's funeral. Have I Got News For You, scheduled head-to-head by the BBC, probably posted record ratings. As a broadcasting milestone, however, the party leaders' election debate was up there with the Coronation and the Speaker's first televised "Order, Order" from the House of Commons. When, just after half past eight, Alastair Stewart announced "Tonight, history in the making" another defence of the old political order crumbled, never to be rebuilt.
The early exchanges were full of tension. Nick Clegg will have savoured the chance to go first. Gordon Brown soon showed a command of orderly detail. David Cameron got his apology for the expenses scandal in first and was best at empathy. Gerard Oliver's opening question on immigration was hardly an easy place to start. But British elections are in a new place now. Better get used to it. Televised debates are here to stay.
Three questions matter in judging tonight's event. The first, inevitably, is how each of the leaders did – who won and lost, if you must. The second is whether the debate was good or bad for election turnout on May 6. The third is whether the format can be improved, either in the two remaining debates, which seems unlikely, or, more importantly, at future elections.
Clegg, treated fairly by the system for once and not barracked by backbench bullies from the other parties, had most to gain and duly gained it. "We need to be clear with you and straight with you" may sound like political blah but voters like honesty.
This was a huge evening for the Liberal Democrats. Clegg was helped merely by being there. But he also had to prove he was worthy of his equality with Brown and Cameron. There's not much doubt that he succeeded. No one event on its own is going provide the Liberal Democrats with the quantum boost they crave in order to be on level terms with the other parties. You don't become a credible prime minister overnight. But Clegg, who has often been damned with faint praise as a rather disappointing party leader since he succeeded Menzies Campbell, rose to the big occasion.
His final pitch was significant. Yes, he said, there is an alternative. It's not true that the parties are all the same. There's another option which Labour and the Tories will never give you. Liberal Democrats always say that, of course. But here was a Lib Dem leader saying it to a volatile electorate at a moment when, if he makes the sale, could change a lot of assumptions in the 2010 contest.
The initial polling looked good for the Lib Dems. The party would be gutted if it was anything else. But it will be some days before the dust – political as well as Icelandic – settles. Even so, I think this performance by Clegg will change the campaign. The other two parties know they have a dangerous enemy out there.
They are faced with a choice between ganging up against the Lib Dems or trying to be the Lib Dems' best friend. The Tories will certainly choose the former course because they are more at risk from a boost to Lib Dem fortunes than Labour is. Labour will be tempted to cuddle up to Clegg a bit, partly because a lot of Labour people think it's right to do so, partly because they think Clegg may be the key to keeping them in office. In the end, though, Labour can't afford to be too friendly.
So stand by for the two large parties to take the gloves off on everything from tax to immigration to Trident. Jo Grimond once asked the old Liberal party to march towards the sound of the gunfire. Nick Clegg's party can expect the gunfire to head their way. Things will get rough for them now. But a concerted turn against Clegg will play into his narrative of the way the other parties behave – making the same promises and breaking the same promises, as he put it. It is hard to predict the impact. But this could be exciting.
Cameron was the evening's disappointment. He also had the hardest hand to play. He looked less at ease and some watchers thought he talked down to them. Never underestimate the Conservative leader. He may have been kicking himself after last night, but the Tory party is a formidable machine, well funded, with important media allies and ruthless. Don't underestimate, either, how issues like immigration and nuclear defence play to Tory strengths with the public, whatever the liberal consensus may be. But expect to see the first "Panic at Tory HQ" and "Knives out for Cameron" stories this weekend.
Brown did OK. His people had been good at massaging the expectations. He went into the debate as the avowed underdog – it's the reason he agreed to take part in the first place – and he did solidly well. The Labour leader will have surprised those who thought he was simply a grumpy old political boss. Yes, he produced too many lists. Yes, he has not been able to make good on his claim to be "in the future business". But Brown played to his strengths last night. He sounded competent and experienced. He was right, from a tactical point of view, to attack Cameron, who remains unquestionably the Labour party's largest threat.
Even if the debate does not decisively shape the result on May 6, it may nevertheless help to boost the number of people who vote. This was both a large shared political event and most people's first exposure to the 2010 campaign. If today the debate turns into what Americans call a water-cooler moment – a subject that people discuss in the office – it could give turnout the single biggest kick up the backside it is likely to get in the coming weeks. In this context, forget Twitter. What matters, as researchers on both sides of the Atlantic have found, is old-fashioned local campaigning, talking face-to-face, in the home and on the doorstep.
The two things most likely to get people out of their homes and down to the polling station nowadays are a close race and the belief that there is a sharp divide between the main parties. By those yardsticks, 2010 is doing its best to oblige and the debate last night undoubtedly helped. The result on May 6 is more uncertain now than it was before and the argument over the role of the state and the role of society is a large one. If nothing else, the debate did credit to our much maligned politics while confirming that our political parties also have something serious to argue about. Roll on the next debate. This election has come alive at last. | Government Job change - Election | April 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The Guardian)'] |
French mathematician Yves Meyer wins the Abel Prize for his work on the mathematical theory of wavelets. The Guardian | Frenchman wins prestigious prize for theory that links maths, information technology and computer science Last modified on Tue 6 Jun 2017 18.34 BST
French mathematician Yves Meyer was today awarded the 2017 Abel Prize for his work on wavelets, a mathematical theory with applications in data compression, medical imaging and the detection of gravitational waves.
Meyer, 77, will receive 6 million Norwegian krone (about £600,000) for the prize, which recognises outstanding contributions to mathematics and is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
The Abel Prize has been awarded annually since 2003 and was last year won by Briton Andrew Wiles for his work on solving Fermat’s Last Theorem. It is considered by many to be a maths equivalent of the Nobel Prize, which has no prize for mathematics.
The Norwegian Academy released the following biography of Meyer this morning, written by Philip Ball, which explains his work in an accessible way. I’m reprinting it here in full.
A biography of Yves Meyer
Yves Meyer, professor emeritus at the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay in France, proves that, in contrast to what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about American lives; in mathematics a life can indeed have a second act, and perhaps even several more. Having made important contributions in the field of number theory early in his career, Meyer’s boundless energy and curiosity prompted him to work on methods for breaking down complex mathematical objects into simpler wavelike components – a topic called harmonic analysis. This led him in turn to help construct a theory for analysing complicated signals, with important ramifications for computer and information technologies. Then he moved on again to tackle fundamental problems in the mathematics of fluid flow.
That tendency to cross boundaries was with him from the start. Born on 19 July 1939 of French nationality, he grew up in Tunis on the North African coast. “The Tunis of my childhood was a melting pot where people from all over the Mediterranean had found sanctuary,” he said in a 2011 interview. “As a child I was obsessed by the desire of crossing the frontiers between these distinct ethnic groups.”
Meyer entered the élite École normale supérieure de la rue d’Ulm in Paris in 1957, coming first in theentrance examination. “If you enter ENSUlm, you know that you are giving up money and power,” he later said. “It is a choice of life. Your life will be devoted to acquiring and transmitting knowledge.”
After graduating, Meyer completed his military service as a teacher in a military school. But despite his deep commitment to education and his students, he wasn’t suited to the role. “A good teacher needs to be much more methodical and organised than I was,” he admits. Moreover, he was uncomfortable with being the one who was “always right”.“To do research,” Meyer has said, “is to be ignorant most of the time and often to make mistakes.” Nevertheless, he feels his experience of high school teaching shaped his life: “I understood that I was more happy to share than to possess.”
He joined the University of Strasbourg as a teaching assistant, and in 1966 he was awarded a PhD there – officially under Jean-Pierre Kahane, but Meyer assertsthat, like some others in France at that time, he essentially supervised himself. He became a professor of mathematics first at the Université Paris-Sud (as it is now known), then the École Polytechnique and the Université Paris-Dauphine. He moved to the ENS Cachan (recently renamed the ENS Paris-Saclay) in 1995, where he worked at the Centre of Mathematics and its Applications (CMLA) until formally retiring in 2008. But he is still an associate member of the research centre.
Searching for structure
Yves Meyer’s work has, in the most general terms, been concerned with understanding mathematical functions with complex and changing forms: a character that can be described by so-called partial differential equations. Fluid flow, for example, is described by a set of such equations called the Navier- Stokes equations, and in the 1990s Meyer helped to elucidate particular solutions to them – a topic that ranks among the biggest challenges in maths.
Meyer’s interest in what might be called the structures and regularities of complicated mathematical objects led him in the 1960s to a theory of “model sets”: a means of describing arrays of objects that lack the perfect regularity and symmetry of crystal lattices. This work, which arose from number theory, provided the underpinning theory for materials called quasicrystals, first identified in metal alloys in 1982 but prefigured by quasi-regular tiling schemes identified by mathematical physicist Roger Penrose in 1974. The discovery of quasicrystals by materials scientist Dan Shechtman earned him the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Meyer has sustained his interest in quasicrystals, and together with Basarab Matei in 2010 he helped to elucidate their mathematical structure.
In the 1970s Meyer made profound contributions to the field of harmonic analysis, which seeks to decompose complex functions and signals into components made of simple waves. Along with Ronald Coifman and Alan McIntosh, he solved a long-standing problem in the field in 1982 by proving a theorem about a construction called the Cauchy integral operator. This interest in harmonic decomposition led Meyer into wavelet theory, which enables complex signals to be “atomised” into a kind of mathematical particle called a wavelet.
Wavelet theory began with the work of, among others, physics Nobel laureates Eugene Wigner and Dennis Gabor, geophysicist Jean Morlet, theoretical physicist Alex Grossmann, and mathematician Jan-Olov Strömberg. During a conversation over the photocopier at the École Polytechnique in 1984, Meyer was handed a paper on the subject by Grossmann and Morlet, and was captivated. “I took the first train to Marseilles, where I met Ingrid Daubechies, Alex Grossmann and Jean Morlet”, he says. “It was like a fairy tale. I felt I had finally found my home.”
Breaking down complexity
From the mid-1980s, in what he called a “second scientific life”, Meyer, together with Daubechies and Coifman, brought together earlier work on wavelets into a unified picture. In particular, Meyer showed how to relate Grossmann and Morlet’s wavelets to the work of Argentinian mathematician Alberto Calderón, which had supplied the basis for some of Meyer’s most significant contributions to harmonic analysis. In 1986 Meyer and Pierre Gilles Lemarié-Rieusset showed that wavelets may form mutually independent sets of mathematical objects called orthogonal bases.
Coifman, Daubechies and Stéphane Mallat went on to develop applications to many problems in signal and image processing. Wavelet theory is now omnipresent in many such technologies. Wavelet analysis of images and sounds allows them to be broken down into mathematical fragments that capture the irregularities of the pattern using smooth, “well-behaved” mathematical functions. This decomposition is important for image compression in computer science, being used for example in the JPEG 2000 format. Wavelets are also useful for characterising objects with very complex shapes, such as so-called multifractals, and Meyer says that they prompted his interest in the Navier- Stokes equations in the mid-1990s. In the past twenty years Meyer’s passion for the structure of oscillating patterns has led him to contribute to the success of the Herschel deep-space telescope mission, and he is working on algorithms to detect cosmic gravitational waves. Meyer’s contribution to image processing is also wide-ranging. In 2001 he proposed a mathematical theory to decompose any image into a “cartoon” and a “texture”. This “cartoon plus texture” algorithm is now routinely used in criminal investigations to extract digital fingerprints from a complex background.
In such ways, Meyer’s work has a relevance extending from theoretical areas of mathematics such as harmonic analysis to the development of practical tools in computer and information science. As such, it is a perfect example of the claim that work in pure mathematics often turns out to have important and useful real-world applications.
An intellectual nomad
Meyer is a member of the French Academy of Science and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His previous prizes include the Salem (1970) and Gauss (2010) prizes, the latter awarded jointly by the International Mathematical Union and the German Mathematical Society for advances in mathematics that have had an impact outside the field. The diversity of his work, reflected in its broad range of application, reflects his conviction that intellectual vitality is kept alive by facing fresh challenges. He has been quoted as saying that when you become too much an expert in a field then you should leave it – but he is wary of sounding arrogant here. “I am not smarter than my more stable colleagues,” he says simply. “I have always been a nomad – intellectually and institutionally.”
Some feel that Meyer has not yet had the recognition his profound achievements warrant, perhaps because he has been so selfless in promoting the careers of others and in devoting himself to mathematical education as well as research. “The progress of mathematics is a collective enterprise,” he has said. “All of us are needed.”
He has inspired a generation of mathematicians who have gone on to make important contributions in their own right. His collaborator on wavelet theory Stéphane Mallat calls him a “visionary” whose work cannot be labelled either pure or applied mathematics, nor computer science either, but simply “amazing”. His students and colleagues speak of his insatiable curiosity, energy, generosity and openness to other fields. “You must dig deeply into your own self in order to do something as difficult as research in mathematics,” Meyer claims. “You need to believe that you possess a treasure hidden in the depths of your mind, a treasure which has to be unveiled.”
I blog about maths for The Guardian here. I also have a puzzle blog for The Guardian, in which I set a puzzle every two weeks. Here’s the last one. My puzzle book Can You Solve My Problems? is just out in the US. It is already out in the UK with a slightly different subtitle. | Awards ceremony | March 2017 | [] |
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Published November 21, 2011
(Photo: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Seattle Mariners outfielder Greg Halman was stabbed to death early Monday and his brother was arrested as a suspect, Dutch police said.
Rotterdam Police spokeswoman Patricia Wessels said police were called to a home in the port city in the early hours of the morning and found the 24-year-old Dutch player bleeding from a stab wound.
The officers and ambulance paramedics were unable to resuscitate Halman.
Wessels said the officers arrested Halman's 22-year-old brother. She declined to give his name, in line with Dutch privacy rules.
"He is under arrest and right now he is being questioned," Wessels told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "It will take some time to figure out what exactly happened."
No charges have been filed in the case.
Halman hit .230 in 35 games and made starts at all three outfield positions for the Mariners in 2011 before being optioned to Triple-A Tacoma.
Mariners Chairman Howard Lincoln, President Chuck Armstrong and general manager Jack Zduriencik paid tribute to Halman on behalf of the club.
"Greg was a part of our organization since he was 16 and we saw him grow into a passionate young man and talented baseball player," they said in a statement. "He had an infectious smile that would greet you in the clubhouse, and he was a tremendous teammate. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Greg's family."
Because he played professionally in the United States, Halman was not part of the Netherlands team that won the Baseball World Cup in Panama last month. The Dutch beat Cuba 2-1 in the final to become the first European team to win the title.
"The loss of a talented 24-year-old young man like Greg, amid such tragic circumstances, is painful for all of us throughout the game," Commissioner Bud Selig said in a statement. "On behalf of Major League Baseball, I send my deepest condolences to the entire Mariners organization and to all those whose lives were touched by Greg."
Born in the city of Haarlem, Halman played in the Dutch Pro League and was part of the gold-medal winning Dutch squad at the 2007 European Championship and played for the Netherlands at the 2009 World Baseball Classic.
Former major leaguer Robert Eenhorn, the technical director of the Dutch baseball association, said he was devastated by the news.
"The only thing I can say right now is we are deeply shocked," Eenhorn, who played for the New York Yankees and Anaheim Angels in the 1990s, told the AP. "All our thoughts are with his family and how they are going to have to deal with this tremendous loss."
Michael Weiner, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, also paid tribute to the slain player.
"Greg was passionate about the game of baseball and generously gave of himself to share his passion with others in an attempt to help grow the sport's popularity across Europe," Weiner said. "He will be sorely missed."
Written by Mike Corder, Associated Press
TRENDING IN
NEWS
| Famous Person - Death | November 2011 | ['(AP via BET)'] |
The Liberal Party win a pluralty of seats, and will remain in government, albeit as a minority and having lost the popular vote to the Conservative Party. The Bloc Québécois resurge from a 10-seat rump at dissolution to take third place and regain official party status. | Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau faced a barrage of attacks throughout the 40-day election campaign, but in the end, he did enough to earn back Canadians’ trust for another term as prime minister.
By the time the dust settled on the election, Trudeau lost the popular vote and more than 20 seats in the House of Commons, but was able to maintain a minority government and will remain prime minister.
“It has been the greatest honour of my life to serve you for these past four years and tonight you’re sending us back to work for you,” Trudeau said during his victory speech early on Tuesday. “We take this responsibility seriously and we will work hard for you, for your families and for your future.” | Government Job change - Election | October 2019 | ['(CBC News)', '(CTV News)', '(CNBC)'] |
Other French court in Bonneville finds 13 people and companies guilty of manslaughter for the March 24 1999 Mont Blanc tunnel fire. Gerard Roncoli, the French head of security, received six months in jail and 24 months of suspended sentence | Among them, Gerard Roncoli, the head of tunnel security, was given a six-month jail term, plus 24 months suspended.
Gilbert Degrave, the Belgian driver of the lorry in which the blaze started, got a four-month suspended sentence.
The court dropped the charges against Sweden's Volvo Group, which made the lorry, which was carrying foodstuffs.
The court had heard that there was no evidence of a design fault in the Volvo lorry.
Two individuals were also acquitted.
Fines
Remy Chardon, the former president of the French company running the tunnel was given a two-year suspended jail term and fined 15,000 euros (£10,355).
Michel Charlet, mayor of the town of Chamonix, was given a six-month suspended term and the same fine.
According to French news agency AFP, six other people received suspended jailed terms and fines and three French and Italian firms received fines of up to 150,000 euros (£103,550).
The fire apparently started in Mr Degrave's truck carrying flour and margarine. The blaze trapped cars, lorries and people and burned for more than two days. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | July 2005 | ['(Euronews)', '(BBC News)', '(IHT)'] |
A Thai appeals court rules to extradite alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to the United States; Russia expresses its disagreement with the ruling. | BANGKOK, Aug 20 – An alleged Russian arms dealer, so-called ‘Merchant of Death’ Viktor Bout, jailed for nearly two-and-a-half years in Bangkok after his arrest in a US-led sting operation in March 2008, will appeal today’s ruling by a Thai appeals court reversing a lower court decision made one year ago to not extradite him to the United States to face prosecution as a terrorist.
In an highly emotional courtroom scene, Mr Bout’s lawyer stood by his client and his family promising to appeal to Their Majesties the King and Queen and other Thai authorities to reject the decision. With international media suggesting that the US government has leaned heavily on the Thai government and courts to find for a criminal rather than a political ruling, the appeals court said the case was not political and that extradition under an existing Thai-US treaty could be granted.
One year ago Bangkok Criminal Court rejected the extradition bid by the United States, saying that in Thailand’s understanding that Mr Bout’s alleged attempted sale of US$700 million in arms to Colombian rebels was not political, but clearly a criminal case.
Overturning the lower court ruling, Thailand’s appeals court ruled that Mr Bout should go to New York City to face criminal charges within three months under the terms of Thailand’s extradition legislation.
With his wife and daughter looking on the detainee, shackled in leg irons, wept as he heard the verdict, resulting from US agents posing as Colombian rebels arranged to buy arms for their war against their central government.
Mr Bout is alleged to have supplied arms to numerous civil wars in Africa, South America and other place during a colourful career which began after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
A retired Soviet air force pilot, Mr Bout reputedly speaks six languages and has operated air transport services and sold aircraft acquired through extensive connections and specialised knowledge of military weaponry. (MCOT online news, agencies) | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | August 2010 | ['(The Independent)', '(AP via CBS)', '[permanent dead link]', '(Thai News Agency)', '(BBC)'] |
A Mexican Drug War–related march inspired by the killing of seven people, one of whom was the son of prominent poet and journalist Javier Sicilia, occur in more than 20 Mexican cities, with marchers chanting "No more blood!". | Protests in more than 20 Mexican cities against drug-related violence have been interrupted by news of the discovery of 59 bodies.
The bodies were found in Tamaulipas state by police investigating the abduction of bus passengers. The area is a hotspot in the violence related to drug trafficking that is ravaging parts of Mexico.
The violence was condemned by protesters in the main square in Mexico City, who chanted: "No more blood!"
Some called for President Felipe Calderon to resign, saying his strategy had exacerbated the bloodshed. About 35,000 Mexicans have died in drug-related violence since the president began deploying the army to fight the cartels in December 2006. The demonstrations were inspired by poet and journalist Javier Sicilia, whose son was killed last week. Mr Sicilia has blamed Mexican politicians as well as criminal gangs for the violence, saying they have "torn apart the fabric of the nation".
Small demonstrations were also held in New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, Madrid and other cities around the world. The bodies were found in eight separate graves in the area of San Fernando, police said - with 43 corpses found in a single grave. Authorities in Tamaulipas said they had found the graves while investigating reports that, late last month, buses in the area had been stopped and passengers pulled off and kidnapped .
In a raid, 11 people were arrested, while five others being held captive by the alleged kidnappers were freed. A state minister told the Associated Press news agency two of the dead were women, and many of the victims appeared to have died between 10 and 15 days ago - dates that would roughly match the bus abductions.
It appears to be the largest single discovery of bodies since 72 Central and South American migrants were found dead in the same town last August, after drug gangs killed them for refusing to work for them. After that incident, President Calderon deployed more troops to fight criminals who use the area as a route to traffic narcotics into the US. And our correspondent in Mexico City, Julian Miglierini, says this most recent discovery will come as an embarrassment for him.
The Mexican government says it is making progress against the drug cartels, and has captured or killed many of their top leaders. It says much of the bloodshed is the result of fighting between rival criminal gangs. This view was echoed by the head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, Michele Leonhart, at an international conference in the Mexican City of Cancun on Wednesday. "It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs," the DEA chief said. The cartels "are like caged animals, attacking one another," she added. Wednesday's protests were called by Mr Sicilia after his 24-year-old son, Juan Francisco, was found dead inside a car along with six other people in the city of Cuernavaca last week. In an open letter to Mexico's politicians and criminals published in Proceso, he said President Calderon's campaign against the drugs gangs was "badly planned, badly carried out and badly led". "The citizenry has lost confidence in its governors, its police, its army, and is afraid and in pain".
Mr Sicilia also condemned the criminals as "subhuman, demonic and imbecilic".
"We have had it up to here with your violence, your loss of honour, your cruelty and senselessness," he wrote. Before joining the demonstrations, Mr Sicilia met President Calderon in Mexico City. He said the president offered his condolences and briefed him on efforts to find his son's killers. Mexican Presidency
Nuestra Aparente Rendicion (in Spanish)
| Protest_Online Condemnation | April 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(LA Times)'] |
Syrian uprising: At least 20 civilians are killed in the Syrian province of Idlib after security forces open fire on a funeral procession. | At least 20 people have been killed by Syrian security forces in the north-western town of Khan Sheikhoun during a visit by UN observers, activists say.
Unconfirmed reports say the deaths occurred when security forces opened fire on a funeral procession in the town in Idlib province.
Three of the monitors' cars were damaged in a blast in the town, but the observers were not hurt, the UN said.
This comes despite the UN-backed ceasefire in place since last month.
The Syrian government has so far not publicly commented on the incidents.
In a separate development, the head of Syria's election committee announced that turnout in last week's parliamentary elections was more than 50%. The committee did not say who had won, but it is clear that the ruling Baath party has secured a substantial majority of the seats, the BBC's Jonathan Head in neighbouring Turkey reports. This was the first election in which the Baath party was not, in theory, guaranteed a majority, our correspondent says.
Opposition parties - which boycotted the election - have dismissed the vote as a sham.
As the parliament's powers are poorly defined, he adds, there was no chance that the poll would dilute President Bashar al-Assad's power, our correspondent says. "The Syrian regime committed a massacre [on] Tuesday during a visit by UN monitors to Khan Sheikhoun," the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday, according to the AFP news agency.
The group also called for an international investigation into the attack. Separately, a spokesman for the UN-Arab Union envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, said the UN vehicles were damaged in Khan Sheikhoun. Spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said the UN convoy was struck by "an explosion from an improvised explosive device".
He added that the UN mission in Syria sent a patrol team to the area to evacuate the monitors.
The team of seven UN observers was in the town to observe a demonstration by opposition supporters at the funeral.
UN monitors were also hit by gunfire during an intense battle in the town of al Rastan on Monday, and the convoy of another UN team was struck by an explosion in Deraa last week. The BBC's Jonathan Head, in neighbouring Turkey, says that despite the announced ceasefire the levels of violence are steadily creeping up and may reach the level when the UN monitors can no longer operate.
The UN said over the weekend that it had 189 observers in Syria, some two-thirds of the total intended for deployment as part of a six-point peace plan mediated by Mr Annan.
Earlier this week, at least 30 people - including 23 soldiers - reportedly died in clashes in central Syria, in what would be one of the deadliest suffered by security forces in the 14-month-long uprising against President Assad.
The government in Damascus says it is fighting organised gangs.
The UN estimates at least 9,000 people have died since pro-democracy protests began in March 2011. | Armed Conflict | May 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong files a lawsuit against ExxonMobil for their products contributing to the emissions that cause global warming and climate change. | Attorney General William Tong, at the Canal Dock Boathouse in New Haven on Monday, announced the lawsuit his office has filed against ExxonMobil for knowingly contributing to the emissions that cause climate change and hiding it from the public.
Connecticut on Monday joined a growing list of states and local governments using litigation to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for causing climate change, employing a strategy it says may tap into evidence off limits in many other cases.
Attorney General William Tong is filing suit in Hartford Superior Court against ExxonMobil, considered the grandaddy of the companies now accused of knowing for decades their products contributed to the emissions that cause global warming and climate change, but hiding it from the public.
“ExxonMobil sold oil and gas, but it also sold lies about climate science. ExxonMobil knew that continuing to burn fossil fuels would have a significant impact on the environment, public health and our economy. Yet it chose to deceive the public,” Tong said.
The state is seeking compensation for past, present and future harm from climate change, including for investments already made, and is going after some of the company’s profits.
Connecticut is suing under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, the law the state used to make a similar successful claim against the tobacco industry. It alleges an ongoing, systematic campaign of lies and deception. The three-year statute of limitations for private actions under the law does not apply to the state government. That will allow the attorney general to access documents going back to the 1950s that some previous lawsuits may not have been able to use.
“So we can tell the whole story,” Tong said.
Tong announced the lawsuit on a deck overlooking New Haven Harbor, a fuel tank farm across the water forming a backdrop. He was joined by officials in the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont, whom Tong says is “150%” in support.
Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org
Tong announced the lawsuit surrounded by state and city officials. Behind him to the left is New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker.
ExxonMobil dismissed the suit as a waste of resources.
“Legal proceedings like this waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money and do nothing to advance meaningful actions that reduce the risks of climate change,” said Casey Norton, a company spokesman. “ExxonMobil will continue to invest in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while meeting society’s growing demand for energy. The claims are baseless and without merit. We look forward to defending the company in court.”
Documents detailing Big Oil’s understanding of the industry’s role in climate change go back decades. They were first shown to exist in 2015 in stories by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times. Tong said that his case “draws heavily from Exxon’s and Mobil’s own historical internal memos, which plainly convey the companies’ firm understanding of the connection between fossil fuel consumption and climate change.”
Tong and the head of his environmental unit, Matthew Levin, said the lawsuit was based on evidence already in the public record, but they declined to cite specific sources. Tong expects they are only “the top of the iceberg” and pre-trial discovery will uncover more evidence.
Since 2015, nearly two-dozen lawsuits have been filed by a few states and a number of counties and cities, with another dozen states including Connecticut supporting some of those suits. The most recent lawsuit was filed by Hoboken, N.J. earlier this month.
Tong, a Democrat elected in 2018, said he took office seeking a role for Connecticut.
“We tried to think long and hard about what our best and most impactful contribution would be,” Tong said. “And what we settled on was a single defendant with a very simple claim: Exxon knew, and they lied.”
Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, left, and Attorney General William Tong talk before the announcement.
In some cases, multiple companies have been sued, including Chevron, BP and Shell as well as ExxonMobil. Baltimore sued 26 companies, and Rhode Island went after 21.
But progress has been slow as big oil has fought to have the cases heard in federal court instead of state court, where nearly all have been filed.The exception has been New York State, which has now lost two cases against ExxonMobil, both in federal court. It’s widely believed the companies’ goal is to get the cases to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Connecticut’s tactics, which focus on the consumer fraud angle, are similar to arguments currently being used in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. cases. They also harken back to the big tobacco legal battle of the 1990s, in which Connecticut played a large role under then-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.
Roger Reynolds, now senior legal counsel for Save the Sound (formerly Connecticut Fund for the Environment), worked on the tobacco case as an attorney under Blumenthal, who is now a U.S. senator. He said the premise here seems to be the same.
“Corporations are responsible for their statements and can be held accountable. A corporation can’t be having knowledge something is harmful, and in public arguing the opposite,” he said. “It’s basic consumer fraud; unfair advertising.”
And while it might not appear to be quite the same as someone putting a cigarette directly in their mouth, Reynolds believes it is. The companies, he said, are putting more carbon dioxide in the air.
“The science is just as clear on that as it is that smoking is bad for your health,” he said. “We suffer the damage to planet earth. We’re the ones caught in wildfires. We’re the ones caught in the floods.”
“I think they have an excellent shot at it,” he said of the potential for winning the case.
Patrick Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at Vermont School of Law, has been following the many big oil cases and has filed an amicus brief in Rhode Island’s. He finds it curious that Connecticut is only going after ExxonMobil.
“The real problem with these cases is how do you single out any one company for the damage climate change is doing, which is global,” he said.
Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org
Betsey Wingfield, Deputy Commissioner for Environmental Quality at the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, answers a question from the press Monday.
He also wondered whether acknowledgments by ExxonMobil of its past activitieswill make the Connecticut case more difficult. “Failure to warn theory is a stronger one,” he said of the various cases he’s seen.
That argument uses documents that show Exxon was actually making changes to its own business model and infrastructure like elevating oil platforms to accommodate sea level rise. “Exxon not only understood the climate science but it was lying to the public, lying to shareholders, lying to the government,” Parenteau said.
Tong’s interest in applying the big tobacco litigation blueprint to big oil and climate change was evident from his first months in office, when he told the CT Mirror that he was already thinking about it.
“Like tobacco, like our work in generic drug price fixing, our job is to hold wrong-doers accountable and to hold them to account to pay for the social damages that they cause,” he said. “I feel very good about the prospects for our involvement in some of these climate-related suits and in holding big oil accountable for their role in climate change and for remediating climate change.”
“There was no more powerful industry than tobacco,” he said. “If anybody thought a merry band of state attorneys general would fundamentally change the face of the worst public health crisis in the history of this nation as lawyered-up and well-resourced as they were, the prospects for success were pretty dim. And they did it.” | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | September 2020 | ['(CTMirror)'] |
The passing of the United States generation that fought in World War I is marked by the funeral of Frank Buckles, who died on 27 February 2011, aged 110, and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. , , (The Washington Post}, | A lowly corporal of long ago was buried Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery, ushered to his grave with all the Army’s Old Guard solemn pomp.
Frank Woodruff Buckles lived to be 110, the last of nearly 5 million U.S. veterans of a dimly remembered war — a generation now laid to rest.
In a late-day chill, after hundreds of strangers had paid their respects in public viewings since the weekend, soldiers carried the former doughboy’s flag-draped coffin partway up a knoll and set it on polished rails above his plot, a stone’s toss from the grave of his old supreme commander, Gen. John J. “Blackjack” Pershing.
A chaplain commended his soul to God; rifle volleys cracked; a bugler sounded taps below the gentle rise. With flags at half-staff throughout the U.S. military and government, it was a fine send-off for the country’s last known veteran of World War I, who died peacefully Feb. 27 in his West Virginia farmhouse.
Yet the hallowed ritual at grave No. 34-581 was not a farewell to one man alone. A reverent crowd of the powerful and the ordinary — President Obama and Vice President Biden, laborers and store clerks, heads bowed — came to salute Buckles’s deceased generation, the vanished millions of soldiers and sailors he came to symbolize in the end.
Who were they? Not the troops of “the Greatest Generation,” so celebrated these days, but the unheralded ones of 1917 and 1918, who came home to pats on the back and little else in an era before the country embraced and rewarded its veterans. Their 20th-century narrative, poignant and meaningful, is seldom recalled.
“I know my father would want me to be here,” said Mike Oliver, 73, a retiree from Alexandria, leaning on a cane near the cemetery’s amphitheater hours before the burial. Inside, a hushed procession of visitors filed past Buckles’s closed coffin in the chapel.
“I’m here for Mr. Buckles, and I’m here for what he represents,” Oliver said. On his left lapel, he wore a tiny gold pin, the insignia of his long-dead father’s infantry division in World War I, the Army’s 80th. “I’m here to say goodbye to my dad,” he said.
Buckles, who fibbed his way into the Army at 16, was a rear-echelon ambulance driver in war-ravaged France, miles behind the battlefront. More than 116,000 Americans died, about half in the fighting, most of the rest from illnesses, in the nation’s 19-month engagement in a conflict that scorched Europe for four years.
Now the veterans who survived are gone. What’s left is remembrance — the collective story of 4.7 million lives, an obituary for a generation.
Arriving stateside in 1918 and 1919, many of them scarred in mind and limb, they were met by a postwar recession and joblessness.
A lot of veterans thought that they were owed a boost, that they ought to be compensated for the good civilian wages they had missed. But lawmakers, year after year, said no.
“Oh, the YMCA did give me a one-month free membership,” Buckles recalled when he was a very old fellow. Except for the $60 that most veterans got from the government when they mustered out, the YMCA gift was “the only consideration I ever saw given to a soldier after the war,” the last doughboy said.
What he and other veterans finally received, in 1924, were bonus certificates redeemable for cash in 1945. And Congress had to override a veto to secure even that.
With the 1920s roaring by then, the young veterans tucked away their certificates and went about their lives. Buckles became a purser on merchant ships, traveling the globe.
Then the Depression hit, and their generation’s legacy took on another aspect, one of activism that helped propel a reshaping of the nation’s social landscape.
Thousands of ruined veterans were left with nothing of value but the promise of eventual bonuses. In 1932, while Buckles was at sea, a ragtag army of ex-servicemen descended on Washington with their wives and kids to lobby for early redemption of the certificates, and a disaster ensued that would long reverberate.
Living for weeks in a sprawling shantytown on mud flats in Anacostia and in tents and hovels near the U.S. Capitol, the dirt-poor “Bonus Army,” numbering more than 20,000, defied orders to disperse. So the White House unleashed the military.
Infantrymen, saber-wielding cavalry troops and a half-dozen tanks swept along the avenues below the Capitol, routing the veterans and their families in a melee of blood and tear gas. Then soldiers cleared out the Anacostia shacks and set them ablaze.
Two veterans died, and hundreds were injured. Four years later, after a Florida hurricane killed 259 destitute veterans at a makeshift federal work camp, political support tipped for the bonuses, and the generation that fought World War I finally got a substantial benefit.
“I think mine was $800,” Buckles said of his bonus, equal to $12,000 today. He said he gave it to his father, an Oklahoma Dust Bowl farmer barely hanging on.
The Bonus Army debacle weighed on Congress and the Roosevelt administration during World War II. With 16 million Americans in uniform — more than three times the World War I total — policymakers feared massive unrest if the new veterans got the same shabby treatment that Buckles’s generation had received.
The result, in 1944, was the GI Bill, widely viewed as the most far-reaching social program in U.S. history. It made college and homeownership possible for the great wave of returning World War II veterans, when such opportunities were considered luxuries, and spurred a vast, decades-long expansion of America’s middle class.
Unfortunately for the veterans of Buckles’s era, the bill wasn’t retroactive.
Tuesday’s hours-long viewing in the amphitheater chapel was a consolation. Buckles’s family and members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation had wanted him to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, but the Senate and House leaders said no. The old corporal just didn’t rate it.
So the people came to Arlington to say goodbye.
When Murial Sue Kerr met Buckles, in the 1970s, she was a secretary at the Alexandria headquarters of Veterans of World War I of the USA, which had a large office staff at the time, scores of chapters across the country and a quarter-million members out of 750,000 surviving veterans of the war.
“The commander,” Kerr calls Buckles, who got that title in 2008 when the only other living member, a Florida man, passed away.
The group was formed in 1948 after millions of World War II veterans swelled the ranks of the American Legion and similar organizations, pushing agendas that were tailored more to their needs than to the needs of the older veterans, Kerr said.
“The World War II guys had business loans, home loans, education, all kinds of things,” she said. “My World War I guys? Nothing. So they said, ‘Okay, you young whippersnappers, we’ll go start our own bunch.’ ”
Which included Buckles, who had been captured by the Japanese while working in Manila at the outbreak of hostilities in the Pacific. Although he spent World War II in an enemy prison camp, he was a civilian, so the GI Bill didn’t extend to him.
In 1974, when Kerr was hired, most of the men were retirees.
“Every year they’d come to Washington, bus loads of them, and testify before Congress,” she recalled. They wanted money for eyeglasses, hearing aids, dentures. “And a little pension,” she said. “Good ol’ H.R. 1918 — it was a bill they were always putting in to give them $50 a month. But, of course, it never, ever passed.”
Just a lot of memories now — the lobbying, the quarterly magazine, the big annual conventions in Hot Springs and Daytona Beach. Time ran out for all but the heartiest of the Veterans of World War I of the USA, and they died fast. By 1993, when the office shut for good, Kerr, then in her 40s, was the only staff member left.
And occasionally she got phone calls from some of the few remaining members, whose frail voices broke her heart. “The typical sad things you’ll hear from the elderly,” she said. “I had one of my guys, he was absolutely in tears. He was from Nevada, and his new nurse wouldn’t cut the crust off of his sandwich.”
They were buried with honors Tuesday as scores of somber onlookers crowded the hillside, a distant generation borne to the grave with the last old veteran, who was cared for lovingly by his family to the end.
In the waning afternoon, the soldiers of the burial detail strode in formation up the avenue from the grand marble amphitheater to Section 34 of the cemetery, escorting the horse-drawn caisson with Buckles’s metal coffin, the procession slow and deliberate, like the march of time. After the prayer and the echoes of the bugle and the rifles had faded, the Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, knelt before Buckles’s daughter, seated by the grave, and handed her a tri-folded American flag. He whispered words of comfort, then stood and walked away.
No more doughboys now.
So long. Rest in peace.
| Famous Person - Death | March 2011 | ['(The Sydney Morning Herald)', '(The Los Angeles Times)', '(The Daily Mail)'] |
A magnitude 4.0 earthquake is reported in Northeast Ohio. No damage has been reported. | CLEVELAND — The United States Geological Survey reports a 4.0-magnitude earthquake was centered in Lake Erie, just north of Eastlake at 10:50 a.m.
Residents across a wide swath of Northeast Ohio reported feeling an earthquake Monday morning. Many said it felt like a car hit their homes.
RELATED: Watch the incredible moment cameras captured an earthquake outside of Cleveland
Recent Stories from news5cleveland.com
Preliminary reports by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources indicate the naturally-occurring earthquake took place about half a mile off the coast of Eastlake along the southern edge of Lake Erie in Lake County and had a 4.2 magnitude. A series of aftershocks followed, ranging in magnitude from 2.1 to 2.5.
"Seismic activity of 2.5 and above can generally be felt," stated ODNR Public Information Officer David Roorbach. "This is a known epicenter of natural earthquakes, due to the geologic history of the area. Seismologists from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources continue to monitor the seismic activity."
Jeff Fox, a seismologist with the ODNR Division of Geological Survey, said the slight discrepancy in magnitude numbers is due to different agencies and different stations reporting the earthquake. No reports of damage
There was no damage reported at FirstEnergy's Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Perry Township.
"Perry Nuclear Power Plant employees completed a visual inspection inside and outside the Perry Plant this morning after the earthquake," said Senior Communications Representative Christopher Eck. "No damage was reported. The plant continues to operate at 100 percent power."
There are no reported power outages at this time.
A representative for Cargill Salt said team at their mine under Lake Erie is safe and the mine is operating as usual. "We constantly monitor the mine and have rigorous safety protocols in place to ensure a safe environment for our team at all times," said Justin Barber with Cargill Salt.
Cellular Interruption
While the earthquake caused no damage, it appears to have been the cause of some cell phone services being interrupted. The Geauga County Sheriff's Office reported the cellular interruption on Monday evening. Deputies said they had contacted the cell phone companies, who assured them that they were working towards restoring full service as quickly as possible. USGS Explains
News 5 meteorologist Bryan Shaw spoke to an expert at the USGS shortly after the quake. "The most you would typically see from a quake like this is something knocked from a shelf or a picture that wasn’t on the wall very well might fall...something like that," said USGS geophysicist Don Blakeman. "But we don’t expect to see structural damage to buildings in the U.S. anyway until about magnitude 5, because we have pretty good building codes everywhere."
Blakeman explained why those in the upper floors of buildings around the area may have felt the quake when those on the ground level did not.
"The higher the building is, the more waves tend to be amplified in general," he said. "So oftentimes people in high-rise buildings will feel an earthquake some distance away, whereas people on ground level or lower floors don’t feel it, and it’s just a matter of getting the building kind of shaking or swaying. So, oftentimes, the taller the building is the more likely it is that a quake will be felt. And it also depends on how well the building is built, how close you are to the earthquake, what the ground or rocks are like under the building. There are a lot of factors that determine how strongly something’s felt."
Blakeman encouraged anyone who felt the quake Monday morning to go on to the USGS website and fill out a "Did You Feel It?" report.
Residents react
A News 5 viewer in Mayfield Village said it felt like her whole house was shaking. Viewers felt it as far away as Strongsville. News 5 journalist Bob Fenner reported feeling a "rumble" in Mentor.
4.0 magnitude earthquake was centered just NW of Eastlake#Cleveland #Weather #WEWS pic.twitter.com/SmdfDPw5L4
Areas included Euclid and Mentor, both of whose fire departments confirmed feeling a rumbling.
The Lake County Sheriff's Office says no damage has been reported.
We also felt the shaking. We suspect that it was an earthquake but are awaiting further information. No reports of damage but getting lots of calls asking what it was.
In a tweet, the City of Mentor said dispatch is overwhelmed with 911 calls.
We are waiting for the experts to affirm what was probably an earthquake here in NEO but please tune in to the news. Dispatch is being overwhelmed with 911 calls - we don't know anymore than you do at this point.
According USGS, 220 people reported feeling the earthquake.
Earthquakes in Ohio
Since 1836, Northeastern Ohio has experienced more than 100 earthquakes, many of them beneath Lake Erie offshore from Lake County. While many of the earthquakes caused little to no damage, an earthquake on January 31, 1986, in southern Lake County, shook the state and was felt in 10 other states and southern Canada, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
The 1986 earthquake had a magnitude of 5.0 and caused minor to moderate damage, including broken windows and cracked plaster.
ODNR says little is known about Ohio's earthquakes. Those in Ohio appear to be associated with ancient zones of weakness in the Earth's crust that formed during rifting and collision events about a billion years ago, according to ODNR. | Earthquakes | June 2019 | ['(News 5 Cleveland)', '(NBC News)'] |
The Pirate Party enters a state parliament for the first time while the Free Democrats achieve 2% of the vote. | German Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition has been dealt a blow after losing ground in Berlin regional polls.
Preliminary results show the Free Democrats, junior partners in the coalition, saw its support collapse, gaining only 2% of the vote.
Correspondents say the FDP's loss could make it more anti-euro and destabilise Mrs Merkel's government.
The polls come ahead of a key eurozone vote in parliament on 29 September.
The FDP plunged from 7.6% in 2006 to 2%, falling below the 5% threshold needed to give them seats in the Berlin legislature.
The FDP's deputy party leader Christian Lindner described the result as a "wake-up call".
"We would be wise to show humility about this result. It's a low point but also a wake-up call. We knew it was going to be a difficult year and that's been dramatically confirmed," he told Reuters. The SPD - who have been in opposition nationally since 2009 - won around 29% of the vote, down from 30.8% in 2006. Mrs Merkel's Christian Democratic Union gained just over 23%, up slightly from 21.3% in 2006, while the Greens won 18%, up from 13.1%. The Left party vote fell from 13.4% in 2006 to 11.5%.
Meanwhile, the little-known Pirate Party, a libertarian party whose programme includes greater personal data protection and the legalising of cannabis, garnered more than 8% of the vote.
The Social Democrats already held control of the government of Berlin, but they are now expected to replace their current partners, the Left party, with the Greens. The real bad news for Mrs Merkel's national government, he says, is the collapse of the vote of the FDP.
Our correspondent says the FDP's failure matters for the national government because there is a widespread belief that this haemorrhaging of support might push it nationally into a much more anti-euro stance. Last week, national leaders toughened their rhetoric against German help for struggling eurozone governments.
If the FDP walked out of the national coalition on an anti-euro stance, Mrs Merkel's government would fall, our correspondent adds. The vote comes less than a fortnight before a crucial eurozone vote in the parliament which will propose giving the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) more powers.
Pressure mounts on Merkel at home
Merkel 'loses key state election'
Ill winds blow Merkel's party away
| Government Job change - Election | September 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese hold mass rally to protest against the People's Republic of China's anti–secession law. | Participants at the 326 rally stand between two balls, the red one symbolizing China掇 missiles and the white one symbolizing Taiwan. (rick yi, taiwan news)
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) led hundreds of thousands of Taiwan citizens through the streets of Taipei City yesterday afternoon in a "March for Democracy and Peace to Protect Taiwan" to protest against the anti-secession law enacted by China on March 14.
Initiated by the governing Democratic Progressive Party along with over 500 non-governmental and civic organizations, the march and following "democratic festival" at Ketagalan Boulevard attracted at least several hundred thousand participants.
Although Taipei City police estimated the number of participants at 240,000, a spokesman for the Taiwan Democratic Alliance for Peace, the coalition organizing the march, rejected the figure as a "serious underestimate" and said that the total number of participants may have topped one million.
"People at the assembly points for most of the 10 lines of marches were still just starting their march when the front of their column arrived at Ketagalan Boulevard," said Alliance spokesman Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) , who is also director of the DPP Culture and Information Department.
Cheng said that registered persons transported into Taipei from locations across the island by tourist buses along topped 250,000 and added that the turnout from people in Taipei City and Taipei County was huge and reflected in the extremely heavy use of the city's mass transit system. Escorted by a tight guard of security officers, the president, his mother, his daughter and her husband and the eldest of their two sons joined the "Want Unity" Group, one of 10 lines of march, at the corner of Renai Road and Hangchou South Road.
Waving to an enthusiastic crowd, Chen and his family walked at the head of the group for 500 meters before arriving at the final rally point at Ketagalan Boulevard at 3:40 pm.
Besides being the first time that a serving Taiwan president had marched in a demonstration, Chen's walk was his first march in public since the failed election-eve assassination attempt on him and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) in Tainan City March 19, 2004.
Numerous other senior officials of the Democratic Progressive Party government also took part in the massive demonstration, which featured 10 lines of marchers who began walking toward Ketagalan Boulevard at between 2:00 pm to 2:30 pm and arrived approximately an hour later bearing a diverse assortment of banners.
Diverse identities
Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) marched together with a group of blind friends and seeing-eye dogs with the "Anti-Intimidation" Group Eight from National Taiwan University, while Presidential Secretary-General Yu Shyi-kun (游錫??) walked with "Oppose Missiles" Group Six from the site of the former Sungshan Tobacco Plant.
During the march, Hsieh stated that Taiwan is a peace-loving country and is opposed to China's anti-secession law, which he said has jeopardized peace across the Taiwan Strait.
The premier said the peaceful march "will make the voices of the Taiwan people heard by the whole world."
At one point, Hsieh carried a Republic of China flag together with the "Democracy and Peace to Protect Taiwan" flag of the march and commented that "identity with Taiwan and identity with the Republic of China both show identity with the country."
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) marched for a brief section with "Anti-Aggression" Group Seven from Da An Forest Park.
Wearing a brown hat inscribed with the characters for "Taiwan Nation," Lee walked with other elders of the overseas Taiwan independence movement while being protected by security officers. On the same route were Research, Development and Evaluation Commission Chairman Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) and DPP Legislator and former Mainland Affairs Council chairwoman Tsai Ying-wen.
Although he was only slated to walk about 500 meters, Lee, evidently in good spirits, walked for about a kilometer before boarding a car.
Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), who was in the front line of the "Oppose Annexation" Group Five which departed from Tunhua Elementary School, told Taiwan News that he felt it was appropriate to participate in the march despite his position as "this will attract greater attention from the international media to our appeals for democracy and peace."
Also attending the march was former DPP chairman Shih Ming-teh (施明德), who broke with the party in opposition to Chen's leadership in mid-2000.
Shih told reporters that he did not participate to "protest" but to join the Taiwan people "to tell the Chinese authorities that they have made a great error."
A festival of peace
After arriving at Ketagalan Boulevard, the massive crowd was treated to performances of Taiwan popular songs by a "Democratic Alliance for Peace" jazz band and by Taiwanese folksingers Chen Ming-chang and Tsai Chen-nan.
The stage, which faced east, was flanked by green banners for "Peace" and had five green balloons as backdrops, bearing the slogans "freedom", "democracy", "unity", "peace" and "protect Taiwan."
In front of the stage on the left was a huge white balloon emblazoned with the English word "Peace," while a massive red hedgehog was placed on the right, symbolizing a "Chinese virus."
At about 4:30 pm, Yu, Hsieh, Su and mayors, legislators and social and civic leaders who participated in the march together jointly read a "Prayer for Peace, Democracy and to Protect Taiwan."
The prayer stressed that the "one million people who are standing here are not defending their personal interests or the interests of any party or faction or of any generation."
"What we are defending is the desire for freedom of all of Taiwan's ethnic groups and their ancestors who came over the Taiwan Strait and our democratic achievements which we gained at the cost of decades of white terror," said the prayer. "In the hearts of 23 million people there is only one sound, that is safeguard democracy, love peace and protect Taiwan! We will absolutely never abandon the right to determine our own destiny," the prayer declared.
After reading the prayer, the assembled leaders then participated in a "Ethnic One Million Person Chorus" to sing songs, including the Taiwanese Hokho "My Precious Treasure," the Mandarin "Friends," the Hakka-language "Hakka Character," the aborigine "We Are All One Family" and, the unofficial hymn of the civil rights movement in the U.S., " We Shall Overcome."
The climax of the stage events came with march leaders pushed give five giant red balloons with slogans "oppose annexation," "oppose intimidation," "oppose war," "oppose missiles" and "oppose aggression" into the crowd.
Ironically, the balloons bearing these slogans were tossed and rolled by the audience toward the headquarters of the Kuomintang, which declined to support or participate in yesterday's march.
Vice President Annette Lu appeared on stage at 5:10 p.m. and tied a cotton headband to a group of multicolored balloons "to send to the other side " Taiwan's hopes for democracy and peace."
At the end of the program, President Chen joined with the participants to show the slogans of "Democracy, Peace and Protect Taiwan" repeatedly while the red hedgehog symbolizing China's missiles and virus was emptied of air and shrank with a white balloon symbolizing the "Pearl of Peace, expanded symbolizing "the power of democracy and peace."
Chen and the leaders of the march bowed to the people at the conclusion of the event to "express gratitude to the Taiwan people."
The people are the stars
"Today, the people are the main actors and have come out at a decisive time in Taiwan's history," said DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), who stated that he was "very moved" and described the event as "successful."
"We see over one million people in front of the Office of the President on Ketagalan Boulevard and we were truly democratic, peaceful and protecting Taiwan," Su said. "The love of the people for Taiwan was the main motive force behind today's success."
Taiwanese folksinger Chen Ming-chang said that he believed Beijing had made a "huge mistake" by enacting the anti-secession law which has "induced a tense reaction internationally and united the Taiwanese people."
"This action shattered the illusion held by many people that Beijing would not attack us so long as we kept the name of the Republic of China," Chen stated. Citing the diversity of yesterday's program and the participants, he stated that Taiwan society was reacting to the pressure from China with "openness" and "peace" instead of "narrow nationalism."
"Taiwan has too many ethnic groups, including more people from other countries who are now coming here, to have a narrow nationalism," said Chen, who added that "Taiwan belongs to everyone who wants to live here."
Taiwan Solidarity Union Chairman Shu Chin-chiang (蘇進強), who estimated the crowd at over 500,000, said that after yesterday's demonstration the Beijing authorities "will pay more attention to the Taiwan people."
"China will see that the Taiwan people are not numb and unfeeling but stand up for themselves. Since we are now a global village, they cannot ignore the international reaction and the reaction by the Taiwan people," stated Su.
The TSU chairman said that the law essentially defined Taiwan's domestic democratic development and consolidation as "Taiwan independence" not just "the Republic of Taiwan."
Taiwan Democracy and Peace Alliance executive director and DPP Secretary-General Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) told The Taiwan News that the Alliance had tried to persuade the Falungung members to remove banners denouncing the Chinese Communist Party and "Evil China" and urge advocates of rectification of Taiwan's name proponents to shift the location of a large balloon to the rear in order to maintain the "integrity of our march" and avoid compromising the message of "democracy and peace." Barriers to peace
But the DPP secretary-general stated that the only major regret of the day's events was the refusal of Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to remove barbed wire barriers blocking participants from the center of Ketagalan Boulevard between the Office of the President on Chungching South Road to Kungyuan Road.
Lee related that Interior Minister Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全), Executive Yuan Secretary-General Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) and National Police Administration Director-General Hsieh Ying-tang had obtained an agreement from the city police to remove the barbed wire barriers at 4:00 p.m, but Ma vetoed the agreement.
Lee said Ma "had completely violated his earlier and open promise to remove the barbed wire barriers." "For there to be barbed wire on a day when the Taiwan people united for Taiwan and express our voice to the world has caused great harm to Taiwan's image as a country with democracy, freedom and human rights, especially in front of the international media," said Lee.
Responding to criticism from KMT politicians that the march was unnecessary, Lee stated that "if the Taiwan people did not issue their voices to China and the world, we could be seen as tacitly agreeing that we are part of China."
"We need to let our voices to be heard in Beijing and the rest of the world that we are not part of China but are sovereign and that we desire peace, cherish our democracy and will not allow our democracy to be taken away," said Lee.
Lee said that Ma's actions may have aimed to consolidate his support among hard-core KMT members in the run-up to the anticipated election for the former ruling party's chairmanship.
But Lee said that such a tactic would be short-sighted as it would alienate independent and centrist voters.
Surrounded by thousands of marchers, the KMT headquarters was surrounded with barbed-wire barriers and protected by police, who witnessed sporadic verbal confrontations with KMT supporters and demonstrators. | Protest_Online Condemnation | March 2005 | ['(USA Today/AP)', '(Taiwan News)'] |
Amnesty International reports Nigerian security forces have killed more 150 proBiafra demonstrators since August 2015. | The Nigerian security forces, led by the military, embarked on a chilling campaign of extrajudicial executions and violence resulting in the deaths of at least 150 peaceful pro-Biafra protesters in the south east of the country, according to an investigation by Amnesty International published today.
Analysis of 87 videos, 122 photographs and 146 eye witness testimonies relating to demonstrations and other gatherings between August 2015 and August 2016 consistently shows that the military fired live ammunition with little or no warning to disperse crowds. It also finds evidence of mass extrajudicial executions by security forces, including at least 60 people shot dead in the space of two days in connection with events to mark Biafra Remembrance Day.
“This deadly repression of pro-Biafra activists is further stoking tensions in the south east of Nigeria. This reckless and trigger-happy approach to crowd control has caused at least 150 deaths and we fear the actual total might be far higher,” said Makmid Kamara, Interim Director of Amnesty International Nigeria.
“The Nigerian government’s decision to send in the military to respond to pro-Biafra events seems to be in large part to blame for this excessive bloodshed. The authorities must immediately launch an impartial investigation and bring the perpetrators to book.”
Since August 2015, there has been a series of protests, marches and gatherings by members and supporters of IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra) who have been seeking the creation of a Biafran state. Tensions increased further following the arrest of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu on 14 October 2015. He remains in detention.
By far the largest number of pro-Biafra activists were killed on Biafra Remembrance Day on 30 May 2016 when an estimated 1,000 IPOB members and supporters gathered for a rally in Onitsha, Anambra State. The night before the rally, the security forces raided homes and a church where IPOB members were sleeping.
On Remembrance Day itself, the security forces shot people in several locations. Amnesty International has not been able to verify the exact number of extrajudicial executions, but estimates that at least 60 people were killed and 70 injured in these two days. The real number is likely to be higher.
Ngozi (not her real name), a 28-year-old mother of one, told Amnesty International that her husband left in the morning to go to work but called her shortly afterwards to say that the military had shot him in his abdomen. He said he was in a military vehicle with six others, four of whom were already dead. She told Amnesty International: “he started whispering and said they just stopped [the vehicle]. He was scared they would kill the remaining three of them that were alive... He paused and told me they were coming closer. I heard gunshots and I did not hear a word from him after that.”
The next day Ngozi searched for her husband and finally found his body in a nearby mortuary. The mortuary attendants told her that the military had brought him and six others. She saw three gunshot wounds: one in his abdomen and two in his chest, which confirmed her fear that the military had executed him.
Amnesty International has also reviewed videos of a peaceful gathering of IPOB members and supporters at Aba National High School on 9 February 2016. The Nigerian military surrounded the group and then fired live ammunition at them without any prior warning.
According to eyewitnesses and local human rights activists, many of the protesters at Aba were rounded up and taken away by the military. On 13 February 13 corpses, including those of men known to have been taken by the military, were discovered in a pit near the Aba highway.
“It is chilling to see how these soldiers gunned down peaceful IPOB members. The video evidence shows that this was a military operation with intent to kill and injure,” said Makmid Kamara.
Eyewitness testimony and video footage of the rallies, marches and meetings demonstrate that the Nigerian military deliberately used deadly force.
In many of the incidents detailed in the report, including the Aba High School protest, the military applied tactics designed to kill and neutralize an enemy, rather than to ensure public order at a peaceful event.
All IPOB gatherings documented by Amnesty International were largely peaceful. In those cases where there were pockets of violence, it was mostly in reaction to shooting by the security forces. Eyewitnesses told Amnesty International that some protesters threw stones, burned tyres and in one incident shot at the police. Regardless, these acts of violence and disorder did not justify the level of force used against the whole assembly.
Amnesty International’s research also shows a disturbing pattern of hundreds of arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment by soldiers during and after IPOB events, including arrests of wounded victims in hospital, and torture and other ill-treatment of detainees.
Vincent Ogbodo (not his real name), a 26-year-old trader, said he was shot on Remembrance Day in Nkpor and hid in a gutter. When soldiers found him they poured acid on him. He told Amnesty International:
“I covered my face. I would have been blind by now. He poured acid on my hands. My hands and body started burning. The flesh was burning… They dragged me out of the gutter. They said I’ll die slowly.”
A man who was detained in Onitsha Barracks after the Remembrance Day shooting on 30 May 2016 told Amnesty International: “Those in the guard room [detention] were flogged every morning. The soldiers tagged it ‘Morning Tea’.”
Despite this overwhelming evidence that the Nigerian security forces committed gross human rights violations including extrajudicial executions and torture, no investigations have been carried out by the authorities.
A similar pattern of lack of accountability for gross violations by the military has been documented in other parts of Nigeria including the north east in the context of operations against Boko Haram.
“Amnesty International has repeatedly called on the government of Nigeria to initiate independent investigations into evidence of crimes under international law, and President Buhari has repeatedly promised that Amnesty International’s reports would be looked into. However, no concrete steps have been taken,” said Makmid Kamara.
In the very rare cases where an investigation is carried out, there is no follow up. As a result of the apparent lack of political will to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of such crimes, the military continues to commit human rights violations and grave crimes with impunity.
In addition to investigations, the Nigerian government must ensure adequate reparations for the victims, including the families. They should end all use of military in policing demonstrations and ensure the police are adequately instructed, trained and equipped to deal with crowd-control situations in line with international law and standards. In particular, firearms must never be used as a tool for crowd control.
The findings of this report involved an analysis of 87 videos and 122 photographs showing IPOB gatherings and members of security forces in the process of committing violations and victims of these violations. 193 interviews were conducted.
On 30 September 2016, Amnesty International shared the key findings of this report with the Federal Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Chief of Defence Staff, Chief of Army Staff, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Interior, Inspector General of Police and the Director-General of the state Security Services. Responses were received from the Attorney General and Inspector General of Police but neither answered the questions raised in the report.
IPOB emerged in 2012 and campaigns for an Independent Biafran state. Almost fifty years ago, an attempt to establish Biafra state led to a civil war from 1967 to 1970.
TAKE ACTION
If you are talented and passionate about human rights then Amnesty International wants to hear from you. | Armed Conflict | November 2016 | ['(BBC)', '(Amnesty)'] |
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