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Polish Energy Minister Krzysztof Tchórzewski announces the ruling Law and Justice party plans to pass new laws to enable more coal mines to be built. |
JASTRZEBIEZDROJ, Poland (Reuters) – Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party plans to introduce legislation that will allow the government to open new coal mines without the approval of local authorities, its energy minister said on Wednesday.
PiS wants to build new mines as it expects half of the country’s electricity to be generated from coal by 2050. That would be down from 80% coal-powered electricity currently but goes against European Union calls for member states to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050.
“This special legislation, which is being prepared by lawmakers is related to the fact that local authorities are not interested in new mines being built in their areas while we will need new coal deposits to secure supplies for the energy industry,” Energy Minister Krzysztof Tchorzewski told reporters at the opening of a new coking coal mine at state-run miner JSW <JSW.WA>.
Tchorzewski said the new legislation would help Poland develop the planned lignite open-pit mine Zloczew, which environmentalists say would be the country’s deepest ever open-pit mine and would displace 3,000 people from their homes. The Zloczew lignite project is owned by state-run energy group PGE <PGE.WA> and would guarantee supplies for PGE’s power plant in Belchatow, one of Europe’s biggest polluters. Tchorzewski said that the proposed legislation will be discussed in parliament after next month’s national election.
Coal has become a hot issue ahead of the parliamentary vote on Oct.13, with PiS trying to secure coal miners’ votes while facing criticism from environmentalists for not doing enough to improve air quality. PiS is leading in opinion polls ahead of the vote. The biggest opposition party Civic Coalition wants to cut out coal completely by 2040.
In June Poland led a handful of eastern EU states in blocking a push by France and other member states to commit the bloc to net zero emissions by 2050.
Tchorzewski said that reducing coal’s use in power production to 50% by 2050 from around 80% now is all Poland can do without extra funds. “We were told that we should have more ambitious goals when it comes to renewable energy. But my response is – there is nothing more we can do as a country, because the energy transformation depends also on the extent the European Commission will help us,” he said. “We cannot do the transformation faster than what we announced.” (Reporting by Wojciech Zurawski; Writing by Agnieszka Barteczko; Editing by Susan Fenton)
| Government Policy Changes | September 2019 | ['(Reuters via Euronews)'] |
Ariya Jutanugarn of Thailand wins the Women's British Open for her first major championship. | MILTON KEYNES, England -- Ariya Jutanugarn was flirting with another Sunday meltdown, her six-stroke lead down to one after a double bogey on the par-4 13th at tree-lined Woburn.
Her late collapse in the ANA Inspiration nearly as recent as her three straight LPGA Tour victories, the 20-year-old Thai player held on to win the Women's British Open for her first major title.
"I think everything in the past is good for me, because I learned a lot from that," Jutanugarn said. "I know how to come back. I know how to be like patient. Feels like everybody going to have like bad times in their life and I think I have that already."
Jutanugarn played the final five holes in 1 under for an even-par 72 and a three-stroke victory over American Mo Martin and South Korea's Mirim Lee. The winner finished at 16-under 272 on the Marquess Course, the hilly, forest layout that is a big change from the usual seaside layouts in the tournament rotation.
The long-hitter left driver out of the bag and hammered 3-wood and 2-iron off the tee.
"It's in my locker. Hope nobody steal it," she said.
In April at the ANA in the California desert, Jutanugarn -- at the time, best known for blowing a two-stroke lead with a closing triple bogey at age 17 in the 2013 LPGA Thailand -- bogeyed the final three holes to hand the major title to Lydia Ko.
"After ANA, I'm still really nervous," Jutanugarn said. "But I'm pretty sure I learned a lot from that, also, because like after I feel nervous, I know what I have to do. Like last few holes, I tried to be patient and to commit to my shots."
Jutanugarn rebounded in a breakthrough May, running off the three straight victories to become the LPGA Tour's first Thai champion. Now, she's the first Thai major champion.
"I think it's really important for me and for Thai golf, also," Jutanugarn said. "After my first tournament on tour, my goal is I really want to win a major. I did, so I'm very proud of myself."
Jutanugarn had a six-stroke lead over Lee at the turn, but Lee picked up five strokes on the next four holes with three straight birdies and Jutanugarn's double bogey on the 13.
"I think I got mad after that hole," Jutanugarn said. "I'm like, `Oh, what's wrong with me.' But after that, I'm really like be patient and I can come back really good."
Jutanugarn made a 25-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th to take a two-shot advantage to the final hole. Jutanugarn closed with a par, and Lee made a bogey for a 73.
Lee matched the tournament record Thursday with an opening 62 and also led after the second round.
"I really had fun," Lee said. "That was the most important thing. I had fun throughout the whole thing."
Martin, the 2014 winner at Royal Birkdale, shot a 70.
"That was my heart and my soul out there," Martin said. "That's all I had. I gave it everything I could."
After opening with rounds of 65 and 69, Jutanugarn shot a bogey-free 66 on Saturday to pull two strokes ahead of Lee and break the tournament 54-hole record of 201.
Jutanugarn is projected to jump from sixth to third in the world ranking Monday. A year ago, she was 52nd.
She will return to Thailand for rest and practice before the Rio Olympics.
"I'm really looking forward to it," Jutanugarn said. "I can't wait. I'm really excited about that."
DIVOTS: Jutanugarn's older sister, Moriya, had a 75 to tie for 43rd at 3 over. ... The top-ranked Ko tied for 40th at 1 under after a 74. ... Stacy Lewis was fourth at 11 under after her third straight 70. The American won in 2013 at St. Andrews. She's winless in 57 starts since June 2014. | Sports Competition | July 2016 | ['(AP via ESPN)'] |
Two openly gay candidates are elected to the Anchorage Assembly, becoming the first openly LGBT elected officials in Alaska. Approximately 20 percent of the city's population voted, a notably low turnout. | Anchorage’s 2017 municipal elections are behind us and there are a lot of “stories of the night” — at least to the 20 percent of Alaska’s largest city who voted.
The low turnout of 19.66 percent as of this reporting (99.19 percent of the vote is in), is down nearly 20 percent from last year’s already-dismal 24.77 percent, and the lowest since the 19.42 percent turnout in 2010. Over the last decade, in non-mayoral election years, the average voter turnout has been 20.37 percent.
But, regardless of how many people showed up, this election cycle was consequential. A lot of institutional knowledge is going away: Patrick Flynn, Elvi-Gray Jackson, and Bill Starr all were ineligible to run due to term limits. Bill Evans decided not to run for a second term.
A total of six seats on an eleven-member body were up for grabs, meaning that Mayor Ethan Berkowitz could lose the 8-3 supporting voting bloc he has enjoyed over the past year.
With so many seats in question, there was concern over a backlash against the mayor and his center-left, supportive majority.
There was not a backlash against the mayor and his center-left, supportive majority. In fact, they gained a seat.
McCarthy once had an “unofficial mayor” in Neil Darish who was openly gay, and Palmer had a city council member, Kevin Brown. But, there has never been an openly gay candidate elected to public office in Anchorage, nor has there ever been an openly gay candidate elected to the legislature or the U.S. Congress.
As longtime Alaska State Senator Johnny Ellis’s (D-Anchorage) record reflects, it hasn’t exactly been a safe space. Antidiscrimination laws are routinely ignored whenever proposed and there has still been no action, three years after Hamby and two years after Obergefell, to so much as update the numerous referrals in state statute and code to update the repeated references to “husband and wife” or to officially the repeal the constitutional amendment banning marriage equality.
Ellis came out after he retired.
In 2009, the Anchorage Assembly passed an ordinance banning workplace and employment discrimination against LGBTQ residents of the municipality. Then-Mayor Dan Sullivan vetoed the measure. In 2012, in an election fraught with voting issues, voters overwhelmingly put down a ballot proposition with the same goal.
Five years later, Anchorage has elected their first openly gay elected official — twice over.
Christopher Constant, running against a prominent Democrat and three lesser known conservatives for the downtown seat being vacated by Flynn, won Tuesday with 52 percent of the vote. His closest competitor was David Dunsmore, a fellow Democrat, who mustered just 23.35 percent of the vote after the latter pursued a final week of negative campaigning, which evidently backfired.
Felix Rivera, also openly gay, is now too an Assembly member-elect, fending off three challengers while maintaining nearly 47 percent of the vote in midtown Anchorage. Rivera ran for the seat being vacated by Assembly Chair Elvi Gray-Jackson with her full support — as well as the support of current Vice-chair Dick Traini.
“With Chris and I winning, I think it shows that Anchorage voters know that we’re moving in the right direction and they want us to keep going in the right direction,” Rivera told me at Election Central at the Dena’ina Center downtown Tuesday night, adding with a laugh, “There’s a lot to learn and learn quickly.”
Rivera said he can’t wait to get started on issues like public transportation.
I caught up with Constant, too, and asked him how he was feeling.
“Really great. Really, really great,” he said, smiling wide. “You know, it was a very hard-fought effort with resistance at every step. And my neighbors, the people that believe in me, we overcame all that resistance.”
He looked at the election results as they trickled in via projectors onto the wall showing a 19 point advantage over his closest competitor, Dunsmore. Constant won with 52 percent of the vote.
“Not only did we overcome it, we really, really showed them,” he laughed. “The proof there is that our downtown district, at least, is ready for something different — something positive; something that’s connected to the neighborhood — and I hope to live up to the love that’s been given to me. Hope to live up to it.”
He says he can’t wait to get started, in his new position, on the Gambell Street redevelopment project, and also wants to continue to work on the city’s homelessness issues. Constant said he also planned to work with Berkowitz on the creation of a farm north of downtown that would put people to work and bring local produce to market. He also would like to address the oft ignored issue of his district’s lone representation on the Assembly. The downtown district has only one seat on the Assembly whereas every other is allotted two.
A little before 10 pm, Dunsmore conceded.
While I am disappointed with the outcome of the evening tonight, I just called Chris to congratulate him on his election. I sincerely wish him great success; our district has a lot of priorities that need to be addressed. I would like to thank all of my supporters and volunteers, we ran a heck of race and raised a lot of great issues including the need for improved public safety, affordable housing, and giving people a real voice in local government. I am truly humbled by the support I received and I will continue to work to make Anchorage an even greater place to live.
According to a 2011 study by the Williams Institute, 3.8 percent of Americans identify as LGBTQ. A 2006 study narrowed the number of LGBTQ-identifying Alaskans to 3.4 percent — though the complete lack of anti-discrimination laws (still not recognized at the state level, though the State Senate scheduled, and then canceled, a second round of public hearings on legislation again Wednesday) increases the likelihood of under-reporting.
The eleven-member body of the Anchorage Assembly will soon be represented by LGBTQ members to the tune of 18 percent.
This year’s municipal election also saw a district flip from conservative to progressive in a very unlikely place — for the second year in a row.
Conservative candidate Albert Fogle faced off against progressive Suzanne LaFrance for the seat vacated by Bill Evans, who, as previously mentioned, decided not to run for a second term.
In 2016, John Weddleton won the seat previously held by Chris Birch (R-Alaska) — now a State House representative — in a three-way split against conservative challengers Mark Schimscheimer and Treg Taylor. This year, darkhorse candidate Suzanne LaFrance upset Albert Fogle in a two-way race by 558 votes.
South Anchorage has not had both seats occupied by center-left candidates since Birch ousted Dick Tremaine by nearly ten points in 2005. Two years later, Jennifer Johnston (R-R-Anchorage), also now serving in the State House, narrowly defeated Val Baffone in a four-way election. Both served their full three terms.
LaFrance initially started the night down a few percentage points. Or, as recent history would say, “Everything is normal.”
But, by nine o’clock or so, she took a narrow lead.
With 83 percent of the vote in, and the race tightening in Fogle’s favor, an unnamed campaign worker nervously described the status of the race as, “Fuuuuuck.”
With 9,866 votes split between the two, LaFrance currently enjoys a 558 vote lead; 52.49 percent to 46.87. A razor slim margin of victory, but a likely insurmountable one with over 99 percent of the vote already tallied.
Two seats on the district-wide Anchorage School Board were in play tonight, but only one has officially been decided.
I initially cast Seat C as a three-way race between James Smallwood, Tasha Hotch, and Dave Donley, but get to eat some humble pie while acknowledging additional egg on face for discounting Alisha Hilde. My honest apologies.
Donley, a former Republican state legislator, won the seat easily in a five-way race in which he nearly doubled the votes cast by supporters of his closest competitor, James Smallwood. Donley won easily with just under 43 percent of the vote.
Hilde edged out Hotch for the third runner up with over 6,000 votes compared to Hotch’s 4,100.
Seat D bears a winner to be named later, as Andy Holleman and Kay Schuster are in a virtual tie with Holleman ahead by just 58 votes out of 31,836 cast between them.
That’s what political professionals nervously refer to as an “Eek.”
“It’s not really the end. After counting all the early votes and votes cast Tuesday, the margin is about 60. The good news is, I’m up,” Holleman posted on Facebook just before 2 in the morning. “The bad news is, the question ballots and absentee ballots could easily change who is. The Clerk’s office will be working on this for several days. I’ll be down with other observers eyeballing the process.” ”
“It’s not over,” Holleman concluded.
All but one of the seven bond propositions passed, mostly by healthy margins. The lone bond to fall was Prop 2, an areawide proposal with a price tag of $2.3 million to fund new ambulances and public transportation vehicles, as well as update school safety infrastructure.
Prop 2 was vocally opposed by former Anchorage mayors Rick Mystrom, Dan Sullivan, George Wuerch, and Tom Fink.
Berkowitz supported it. But, you can’t get everything you want in a night.
Prop 8, which sought to repeal an ordinance carried by Bill Evans and voted through by the Assembly, was rejected despite a surplus of cash supporting the measure — including a single contribution of $50,000 from the Anchorage Taxicab Permit Owners Association (ATPOA) and an influx of weird arguments claiming more cabs would increase prices.
Prop 8 was a complex issue fueled by well-funded support versus no organized opposition.
But, Alaskans travel. Likely to states with ridesharing services. Which people want here.
Obviously, Alaska is not the same as Philadelphia or San Francisco or Seattle where these rideshare services prosper and shore up all the transportation gaps, but Alaskans have enough experience in the Lower 48 and abroad to recognize a monopoly when they see one, and shoddy services in the absence of competition, and they’d like to at least entertain the idea of pursuing other options — even if, at first blush, it’s simply an increase in the amount of cab permits doled out by the municipality.
With Pete Petersen defeating conservative challenger Don Jones — a Demboski ally in the Greg Jones fiasco — by a healthy 57-43 margin, and Tim Steele easily fending off perennial candidate David Nees by 24 points, the Berkowitz administration avoided risk of a backlash of conservative voters for a third straight year and actually picked up ground, with the Assembly now poised to enjoy a 9-2 split — not an easy feat.
It’s going to be lonely in Eagle River for awhile, where Demboski and newly-elected Fred Dyson now comprise the extent of conservative representation on the body.
“There’s going to be new energy on the Assembly and that’s going to be positive,” Mayor Berkowitz told me Tuesday night. “I have friends who were running on both sides of the aisle and, so, some of them did very well, some of them didn’t do as well as we might have hoped. But, I’m looking forward to serving with all of them.”
He added, “I think the fact that the bonds that are passing shows that the people of Anchorage have confidence in the direction we’re heading. It also is a sign that the AAA bond rating that we have has meaning.” | Government Job change - Election | April 2017 | ['(LGBT Weekly)', '(Alaska Commons)'] |
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rules that the global surveillance programs of the National Security Agency disclosed by former Central Intelligence Agency employee Edward Snowden in 2013 are unconstitutional, having violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. | Seven years after National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans' phone records, a court has found the program unlawful and its defenders untruthful.
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said on Wednesday the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional.
Snowden, who fled to Russia in the aftermath of the 2013 disclosures and still faces US espionage charges, said on Twitter the ruling was a vindication of his decision to go public with evidence of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping.
"I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA's activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them," Snowden said.
Evidence the NSA was secretly building a vast database of the who, how, when and where of millions of mobile calls was the first and arguably most explosive of the Snowden revelations published by the Guardian newspaper in 2013.
Until that moment, top intelligence officials publicly insisted the NSA never knowingly collected information on Americans at all.
After the program's exposure, US officials fell back on the argument the spying was crucial in fighting extremism, citing the case of four San Diego residents accused of aiding religious fanatics in Somalia.
They insisted that the four - Basaaly Saeed Moalin, Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud, Mohamed Mohamud and Issa Doreh - were convicted in 2013 thanks to NSA program.
However the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday the claims were "inconsistent with the contents of the classified record".
The ruling will not affect the convictions of Moalin and his fellow defendants; the court ruled the illegal surveillance did not taint the evidence introduced at their trial.
Nevertheless, watchdog groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped bring the case to appeal, welcomed the judges' verdict.
"Today's ruling is a victory for our privacy rights," the ACLU said in a statement, saying it "makes plain that the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records violated the Constitution". | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | September 2020 | ['(AAP via The Canberra Times)', '(DW)'] |
The United States officially declares its intent to withdraw from the World Health Organization in 2021. | The US has formally notified the World Health Organization of its withdrawal, despite widespread criticism and an almost complete lack of international support for the move in the midst of a pandemic.
Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw in May, accusing the WHO, without evidence, of withholding information, and of being too close to China. The letter confirming the move was delivered to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, officials confirmed on Tuesday.
A WHO official said: “We have received reports that the US has submitted formal notification to the UN secretary general that it is withdrawing from WHO effective 6 July 2021.”
Trump’s Democratic challenger for the presidency, Joe Biden, said he would return the US to the WHO before the year-long process of withdrawal was complete.
“Americans are safer when America is engaged in strengthening global health,” Biden said on Twitter. “On my first day as President, I will rejoin the @WHO and restore our leadership on the world stage.”
Democrats have also questioned the legality of the move without congressional approval.
But the administration has already begun looking for other channels to spend the $450m it pays annually in WHO membership dues and voluntary contributions. It is unclear what will happen to US officials who work with the global health body.
Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations subcommittee that oversees multilateral institutions, called the move “a huge win for China and a huge blow to the American people”.
“By pulling out of the WHO, President Trump is strengthening Chinese leadership and power, both within the WHO and more broadly within the international community,” Merkley said. “Cutting the United States out of the WHO in the middle of the worst global pandemic in a century makes Americans more vulnerable. By abandoning the efforts to control the virus abroad, we’re ensuring that far more Americans will get sick, either through foreign travelers coming to the US, or through Americans traveling abroad.”
Republican members of Congress have also urged Trump to keep the US inside the WHO to support reform. The administration has received almost no support for withdrawal from US allies, with the exception of the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, who confirmed he had tested positive for coronavirus on Tuesday.
The formal withdrawal was confirmed as the number of US coronavirus cases approached 3 million, with 130,000 deaths so far.
The White House coordinator on coronavirus response, Deborah Birx, said the administration had been caught by surprise by the spread among younger Americans.
“I think none of us really anticipated the amount of community spread that began in our 18-to-35-year-old age group and I think that this is an age group that was so good and so disciplined through March and April, but when they saw people out and about on social media, they all went out and about,” Birx said at a roundtable with foreign ambassadors and senior diplomats organised by the Atlantic Council.
Birx left the online meeting before news of the formal withdrawal arrived. None of the foreign diplomats taking part supported the move.
| Withdraw from an Organization | July 2020 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
The New York Times reports that a memo from James Comey, read in part to a reporter by a Comey associate, revealed that President Donald Trump asked him to end the F.B.I. investigation of Michael T. Flynn. The White House denies the version of events in the memo. | WASHINGTON — President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.
“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.
The documentation of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia. Late Tuesday, Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded that the F.B.I. turn over all “memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings” of discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey.
President Trump fired F.B.I. Director James B. Comey after asking him to announce that he was not personally under investigation. The president later told Russian officials that firing Mr. Comey had taken the pressure off.
In a letter sent to the F.B.I. on Tuesday night, Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded all internal memos, notes, recordings or summaries of discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey.
The Trump administration has offered conflicting answers about how and why the F.B.I. director, James Comey, was fired.
| Famous Person - Give a speech | May 2017 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
At least 12 Algerian Army soldiers are killed in a military helicopter crash near the town of Reggane, in Algeria's southern Adrar Province. | ALGIERS (Reuters) - At least 12 Algerian soldiers were killed when a military helicopter crashed in the south of the country, the Defense Ministry said on Sunday.
Further details were not immediately available. The crash occurred near Reggane town and two other soldiers were injured, the ministry said.
Reporting by Hamid Ould Ahmed; Editing by Patrick Markey and Peter Cooney
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. | Air crash | March 2016 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Protesters rally against Islam and immigration in several European cities amid growing tensions over the massive influx of asylum-seekers to the continent. | Protesters rallied against Islam and immigration in several European cities Saturday, sometimes clashing with police or counterdemonstrators amid growing tensions over the massive influx of asylum-seekers to the continent.
Riot police clashed with demonstrators in Amsterdam as supporters of the anti-Islam group PEGIDA tried to hold their first protest meeting in the Dutch capital. In Dresden, Germany, up to 8,000 people took part in a PEGIDA rally. Up to 3,500 people took part in a counterdemonstration.
In the northern French city of Calais, police dispersed a rowdy anti-migrant protest with tear gas after clashes with protesters and detained several far-right demonstrators. | Protest_Online Condemnation | February 2016 | ['(Daily News)'] |
Danish inventor and submariner Peter Madsen is convicted of the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall and sentenced to life in prison. | Danish inventor Peter Madsen has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his submarine.
Madsen had planned to kill Ms Wall, 30, either by suffocating her or cutting her throat, the Copenhagen court heard.
Her dismembered remains were found by Danish police at sea on 21 August last year, 11 days after she interviewed him on board his homemade vessel.
Madsen, 47, has said he will appeal against the conviction.
He was found guilty of premeditated murder and sexual assault after previously admitting to dismembering Ms Wall's body on the submarine and throwing her remains overboard. His claim that Ms Wall's death was accidental was dismissed by the court.
The case was heard by Copenhagen City Court Judge Anette Burkoe and two jurors.
Judge Burkoe said: "It is the court's assessment that the defendant killed Kim Wall.
"We are talking about a cynical and planned sexual assault and brutal murder of a random woman, who in connection with her journalistic work had accepted an offer to go sailing in the defendant's submarine."
She said Madsen had "failed to give trustworthy explanations" and had "shown an interest for the killing and maiming of people and has shown an interest for impaling".
BBC's Jenny Hill, at the court in Copenhagen
In the stuffy, crowded press room, everyone exhaled at once as the judge announced her verdict. This case has horrified Denmark - and not just because of the brutality of the crime.
Peter Madsen's stunts and projects, after all, had captured the public imagination. But the man people thought they knew as a harmless eccentric turned out to be a calculating and violent killer.
Madsen went to extraordinary lengths to evade justice, scuttling his own submarine and changing his story several times. Today he sat, staring ahead, betraying no emotion as the judge told him that she didn't believe that Kim Wall had died accidentally.
This was, she insisted, a "cynically planned murder". Only Madsen knows exactly what happened on board the Nautilus that night but the details pieced together by investigators suggest a crime so gruesome that even the prosecuting lawyer admitted afterwards that he'd found the case particularly hard to deal with.
Ms Wall had been researching a story about Madsen's venture and was last seen on the evening of 10 August as she departed with him on his self-built 40-tonne submarine, UC3 Nautilus, into waters off Copenhagen.
Her boyfriend raised the alarm the next day when she did not return from the trip. Madsen was rescued at sea after his submarine sank the same day. Police believe he deliberately scuttled the vessel.
Ms Wall's mutilated torso was spotted by a passing cyclist on 21 August but her head, legs and clothing, placed in weighted-down bags, were not discovered by police divers until 6 October.
After his arrest, Madsen gave differing accounts of what had happened on board his submarine.
During the opening session of his trial last month, prosecutors said there was a suspicion that he had "psychopathic tendencies" after investigators discovered films on his computer showing women being tortured and mutilated.
Madsen's shifting and unconvincing explanations helped convict him.
Initially, he said he had dropped Ms Wall off at about 22:30 the night before she disappeared and had not seen her since. The next day Madsen gave police a new account of events, telling them there had been a "terrible accident" on board the self-built submarine. Ms Wall, he said, had been accidentally hit on the head by the submarine's 70kg (150lb) hatch. He had then dumped her body somewhere in Koge Bay, about 50km (30 miles) south of Copenhagen.
On 30 October, police said the inventor had changed his story again and told them Ms Wall had died on board of carbon monoxide poisoning while he was up on deck. He also admitted dismembering her body, which he had previously denied.
After the verdict was announced, Madsen's lawyer Betina Hald Engmark told the court her client would appeal. He will remain in custody pending the process.
Theoretically it means just that, but in reality life-term prisoners do not serve the sentence. Police killer Palle Sorensen, paroled in 1998 after 32 years, and Naum Conevski, jailed in 1984 for killing two young men, are unusual in having served considerably more than the average of about 16 years. Sorensen died earlier this year. Conevski is still in jail.
The sentence range for murder starts at five years and runs to life.
One study shows the number of life-termers in Danish prisons increased from 10 in 1997 to 25 in 2013. The 2015 study said only every fifth or sixth murder convict was serving life.
Friends and family describe her as a formidable character and driven journalist.
She was born in 1987 and grew up in a close-knit community in the small town of Trelleborg in southern Sweden, just across the strait dividing Denmark from Sweden.
She studied international relations at London School of Economics and went on to gain a place on the masters programme of Columbia University's School of Journalism - described as the "Oxbridge of journalism".
Even within her cohort she was top of the class, winning honours in her year, her classmate and friend Anna Codrea-Rado told the BBC.
Ms Wall's close family members were not present in court for the verdict.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | April 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
Former Canadian navy intelligence officer Jeffrey Delisle is jailed for 20 years after pleading guilty to selling classified NATO information to Russia. | A Canadian ex-navy intelligence officer has been jailed for 20 years after pleading guilty to selling classified Nato information to Russia.
Sub Lt Jeffrey Delisle, who was arrested in January last year, was also fined CA$111,000 (£70,000).
He admitted emailing secret files shared by Canada, the US and other Nato allies to Russia for four years.
Delisle is the first Canadian to be sentenced under the country's Security of Information Act.
The act was passed by parliament after the September 2001 attacks on the US.
Delisle was found guilty of giving classified information to "a foreign entity" between July 2007 and Jan 2012.
He had worked at top secret Canadian naval military facilities where he had clearance to intelligence-sharing systems linked to countries such as the US and UK.
For nearly four years he copied secret information on to memory sticks to share with his handlers in Moscow, in exchange for a monthly fee of $3,000.
The 41-year-old had "coldly and rationally" committed treachery when he walked into the Russian embassy in Ottawa in 2007 to volunteer his spying services, judge Patrick Curran said during Friday's sentencing.
Prosecution witnesses said it was likely that Delisle put Canadian intelligence agents in danger, the BBC's Lee Carter reports from Toronto.
The case has become a major embarrassment for Canada as its military and government struggle to explain how the former navy officer was able to use such primitive methods to copy and convey his material and remain undetected for so long, our correspondent adds.
Observers said Delisle's guilty plea last October came as a surprise. It meant a publication ban was lifted, allowing details from the case to be published for the first time. At a bail hearing in March last year, portions of a police statement were read out in which Delisle reportedly described the day he walked into the embassy as "professional suicide".
"The day I flipped sides... from that day on, that was the end of my days as Jeff Delisle," said the statement.
Suspicions were raised when Delisle returned in 2011 from a four-day trip to Brazil - where he had met a Russian handler - with several thousand dollars in cash.
That prompted the involvement of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who broke into an email account he shared with his handlers.
He reportedly worked for a unit that tracked vessels entering and exiting Canadian waters, with access to information shared by the Five Eyes community that includes Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Canada's military has not revealed any details about any information disclosed to the Russians. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | February 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
In men's football, Brazil defeats Germany 5–4 on penalties after a 1–1 draw to claim their first-ever gold medal in the sport. | Last updated on 21 August 201621 August 2016.From the section Olympics
Neymar scored the winning penalty as hosts Brazil beat Germany 5-4 on penalties in Rio to win their first men's Olympic football gold medal. The game finished 1-1 after extra time, with Neymar's first-half free-kick cancelled out by Max Meyer's strike.
In the shootout, Germany's Nils Petersen had his penalty saved by Weverton before Neymar won it.
It comes two years after Germany thrashed Brazil 7-1 in the 2014 World Cup semi-finals in Belo Horizonte.
In front of 78,000 at the Maracana, Brazil got a measure of revenge as they finally won the Olympic title after losing in the finals in 1984, 1988 and 2012.
Find out how to get into football with our special guide. Barcelona forward Neymar, who missed the World Cup semi-final through injury, opened the scoring with a fine 25-yard free-kick, but the hosts were lucky to go in at half-time with the lead.
Germany hit the woodwork three times in the first half - through Julian Brandt's 25-yard effort, a deflection off a Brazilian defender and Sven Bender's header - before they scored a deserved equaliser shortly after the restart.
Bender passed to the overlapping Jeremy Toljan and he found the unmarked Meyer, who arrowed a low shot into the net.
Neither side could find a winner before the drama of the penalty shootout gave Brazil the gold.
Goalkeeper Weverton said: "The gold is ours, but it belongs to God. God loves Neymar like he loves all this team."
Neymar added: "This is one of the best things that has happened in my life. That's it."
Two years ago, World Cup hosts and tournament favourites Brazil suffered their heaviest ever World Cup defeat as they fell 5-0 behind inside 29 minutes on their way to that 7-1 thrashing by the Germans.
Before the Olympic final, Brazil coach Rogerio Micale tried to play down talk of a "revenge" victory.
He pointed out that none of his players were involved in the World Cup semi-final - with the Olympic squads only able to feature three players aged older than 23.
"That was the World Cup, this is the Olympic team,'' said Micale. "Neymar never played in that match so there is nothing that could generate any type of feeling that we have to take revenge.
"It is a different time with different players and ages."
Nevertheless, the capacity crowd created a fantastic atmosphere in the Maracana and got the result they desperately craved.
Nigeria won their first medal of the 2016 Olympics as they beat Honduras 3-2 in the bronze-medal match, with Sadiq Umar scoring twice and Aminu Umar scoring once.
Chelsea midfielder John Mikel Obi, who captained the Nigeria side, said: "I am so proud of this team, the boys worked so hard.
"It is very important, because football in Nigeria is absolutely massive. We had extra pressure perhaps, but we have done it for us, for our family, for Nigeria."
Nigeria held a 3-0 lead before Honduras, who qualified from the group phase at Argentina's expense, scored twice through Antony Lozano and Marcelo Parera to set up a tense conclusion.
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How to get into football - the most popular sport in the world, with clubs and facilities throughout the UK. | Sports Competition | August 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
The ruling Mexican National Action Party endorses Josefina Vázquez Mota as its candidate for the Presidential election, the first time that a major Mexican party has endorsed a woman to run for President of Mexico. | - A major political party in Mexico has chosen a female presidential candidate for the first time, as the ruling party bet that a charismatic former congresswoman will help it erode the lead held by its powerful rival.
After easily winning the National Action Party's primary Sunday night, Josefina Vazquez Mota vowed to unite a party battered by a bloody drug war and help it defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for 71 years before being ousted by National Action in 2000.
"I will be the first woman president of Mexico in history," Vazquez Mota, 51, told cheering supporters.
The party's vote for Vazquez Mota over two other candidates sets the race for Mexico's July 1 presidential election. The two other major parties had already selected their candidates.
Vazquez Mota faces an uphill climb against former Mexico State Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto, the front-runner in the polls who could return Mexico's PRI to power after a 12-year hiatus.
The leftist Democratic Revolution Party chose Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is making his second run after a razor-thin loss in 2006 to President Felipe Calderon. Mexico limits its presidents to a single six-year term.
The personable, cheerful Vazquez Mota invited party members to help her beat the telegenic and handsome Pena Nieto, who is married to a glamorous telenovela star.
"We begin a new road," said Vazquez Mota. "A road to defeat the real adversary of Mexico, who embodies authoritarianism and the worst antidemocratic practices; who represents the way back to corruption and offers impunity as a conviction. The adversary is Pena Nieto and his party."
Vazquez Mota is considered the PRI's strongest challenger, though Mexican voters seem weary of the ruling National Action Party which has governed for 11 years. Delegates are betting that a woman candidate could boost party appeal.
"It injects a certain new note of uncertainty. There's never been a strong female presidential candidate for any other major party before," said Eric Olson, a senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute. "It adds that historical element and maybe some excitement."
Others argue that the party, known as the PAN, is tainted by a crackdown on drug cartels that has seen violence soar, stalled reforms and corruption.
"Josefina arrives with a weakened party," said Soledad Loaeza, a political science professor in Colegio de Mexico who has studied the evolution of the PAN. "The electorate is not willing to see her as an alternative."
Jose Espina, president of the party's election commission, says Vazquez Mota obtained 55 percent in Sunday's primary, with 89 percent of the polling stations counted. The party's president, Gustavo Madero, later confirmed her nomination.
She was not Calderon's choice to compete for the party, though he appointed her education secretary after she served as his campaign manager in 2006. The party establishment had supported former Finance Secretary Ernesto Cordero.
But the party's rank-and-file membership handed her a victory from the polls. Her two opponents showed their support after the results were announced. More than 400,000 people voted in the primary
Calderon was not the choice of his predecessor, Vicente Fox, whose election in 2000 booted the PRI out of office after 71 years of single-party rule.
The fact that Calderon still won the party nomination and went on to surprise everyone and defeat Lopez Obrador provides a template for Vazquez Mota to pull an upset, even though she now trails Pena Nieto by nearly 20 points in the polls.
Cordero obtained 38 votes, and the third candidate Santiago Creel, a former senator who also ran in the 2006 primaries against Calderon, got 6 percent of the votes.
Women have run for president in Mexico before, but not representing any of the three major parties.
The PAN's choice of Vazquez Mota may have been the wisest, according to political analysts.
"A PRI victory is still the most likely outcome, but it's almost inevitable the race will tighten," said Pamela Starr, a professor at the University of Southern California who writes on Mexican politics. "It will be an interesting campaign, regardless."
Vazquez Mota's party opponents had complained she was a weak lawmaker and couldn't push through an educational reform as secretary.
A married mother of three, Vazquez Mota has used her family life on the campaign trail to garner the support of Mexican mothers and young voters.
"Today I'm committed to take care of your families like I've taken care of mine," she said Sunday. "I want to make Mexico the best country to live in."
Some say Mexico isn't prepared for a woman president, unlike other Latin American countries, but analysts disagree.
"I don't think Mexico is any less ready for a female president than Chile for example," Starr said.
Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Costa Rica are among the nations in Latin America that have recently elected women to their higher posts. | Government Job change - Election | February 2012 | ['(PAN)', '(AP via Star Tribune)'] |
Brandon Straka, the WalkAway movement founder and "Stop the Steal" activist who spoke at a rally held by pro-Trump supporters, is arrested on a felony charge of interfering with police during the storming of the United States Capitol. | Brandon Straka, a self-described ex-liberal, was arrested on a felony charge of interfering with police during civil disorder.
Pro-Trump protesters gather on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. | Brent Stirton/Getty Images
By JOSH GERSTEIN
01/25/2021 04:19 PM EST
Link Copied
A prominent activist in the Stop the Steal movement who spoke at a rally held by backers of President Donald Trump in Washington the day before the storming of the Capitol was arrested on Monday on charges that he took part in the riot.
Brandon Straka, 44, was arrested on a felony charge of interfering with police during civil disorder. The self-described founder of a movement to “walk away” from liberalism was also charged with unlawful entry into a restricted building and disorderly conduct.
An FBI agent’s affidavit used to obtain a criminal complaint against Straka describes his role as an organizer of Stop the Steal and quotes his comments at the Jan. 5 rally held at Freedom Plaza, but doesn’t indicate whether the government views those activities as context for his actions at the Capitol or part of the alleged crimes.
FBI Special Agent Jeremy Desor said that videos revealed that during the melee, Straka was part of a crowd pushing toward a Capitol doorway. Desor doesn’t contend that Straka went into the building, but says that as others tried to charge through the entrance, the activist shouted: “Go! Go!”
Desor said that as a Capitol police officer tried to make his way through the crowd with a riot shield over his head, Straka urged others to wrestle it from him.
“Take it away from him,” Straka allegedly yelled. “Take it! Take it!”
Straka achieved some prominence in the media during Trump’s effort to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s win. Straka spoke at a variety of previous Stop the Steal events at the Capitol, in Michigan and elsewhere. According to the complaint, he said he was supposed to speak at such a rally at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but that event was scuttled after the riot broke out and police cleared the crowd.
During his speech the day before the riot, Straka referred to the audience as “patriots” and referred repeatedly to a “revolution,” Desor said. Straka also told the attendees to “fight back” and added, “We are sending a message to the Democrats, we are not going away, you’ve got a problem!” the agent reported.
In media appearances, Straka described himself as a Manhattan-based, gay ex-liberal. He and his “#walkaway” tagline became a favorite in some conservative quarters in the past couple of years, featured on programs such as the "Judge Jeanine" show on Fox News.
Court records show the criminal complaint against Straka was approved by a federal magistrate judge in Washington last Tuesday.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | January 2021 | ['(Politico)'] |
The United Nations states there is high risk for as many as 3.5 million children who may be struck down by diseases in the water. | Up to 3.5 million children are at high risk from deadly water-borne diseases in Pakistan following the country's floods, a UN spokesman has said.
In southern Pakistan, floods continue to cause havoc with water surging from the province of Sindh to neighbouring Balochistan. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who visited Pakistan, said the floods were the worst disaster he had seen. However, the UN has so far only raised a fraction of the aid it has asked for.
"Up to 3.5 million children are at high risk of deadly water-borne diseases, such as watery diarrhoea and dysentery," Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), is quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
"What concerns us the most is water and health. Clean water is essential to prevent deadly water-borne diseases. Water during the flood has been contaminated badly," he added.
The World Health Organization was also preparing to assist tens of thousands of people in case of cholera, although the government has not notified the UN of any confirmed cases, he added.
He estimated the number at risk from such diseases was six million.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the BBC that he feared the growing desperation of flood victims could play into the hands of extremists.
But he said troops fighting insurgents in the north had not been redeployed to help the relief effort.
"We have moved additional troops to southern parts of Punjab and the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. We are not going to permit militants to take advantage of this situation," he said.
Speaking later at a press conference, Mr Qureshi said Nato officials were in talks with Islamabad on setting up an "air bridge" to fly in relief to cut-off areas.
He said Japan had also sent a team to Islamabad with a view to sending helicopters to help in the relief effort.
In southern Pakistan, angry flood survivors blocked a main road in Sindh province to protest against the slow delivery of aid and demanded more action from the authorities. One of the protesters, Mohammad Laiq, said the government had to do more to help people. "There seems to be no government here since the floods. We lost our children, our livestock, we could hardly save ourselves - though we have come here but we are getting nothing. "Where is the government? What do we do? Where do we go? We have to tell the government and it is the responsibility of the government to do whatever is possible," he said.
Saleem Bokhari, whose village in the Layyah District of Punjab is under water, told the BBC that the situation was worsening moment by moment.
"Due to standing water there is a rapid production of mosquitoes, abdominal disease, fever, malaria and skin diseases," he said.
"Government officials and volunteers are only reaching the cities. Villages or remote areas are helpless." Sindh Irrigation Minister Jam Saifullah Dharejo said water levels were still rising and now entering the Shikarpur district.
"The next five days are crucial," he said.
In eastern Balochistan, at least one district centre and three major towns have been inundated following a government decision to divert the thrust of the flood in the Indus river away from Jacobabad, a major town in the north-west of Sindh province, and the nearby Pakistan Air Force base.
An official at a power station serving parts of both Sindh and Balochistan reported standing in 5ft-deep (1.5m) water inside the station as engineers battled to restore the power supply after breaches occurred in a nearby canal, reports the BBC's Mike Wooldridge in Islamabad.
On Sunday, Mr Ban again urged the world to speed up aid to the country, saying shelter and medicine were desperately needed.
Last week, the UN launched a $459m (294m) appeal for emergency aid for Pakistan. It said that billions of dollars would be needed in the long-term.
But charities say the response to the UN's appeal has been sluggish.
The US has made the biggest contribution so far, followed by the UK.
Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has branded the international response as "lamentable".
Officials at the OCHA and the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Monday that Pakistan suffered from an "image deficit" with the Western public because of associations with the Taliban and widespread corruption.
The Pakistani government says up to 20 million people have now been affected by the monsoon floods.
At least 1,500 people are known to died.
The flooding began more than two weeks ago in the mountainous north-west and has swept south across a quarter of the country, including its agricultural heartland.
The International Monetary Fund has warned that the floods could have dire long-term economic consequences for a country already reliant on foreign aid.
BBC Urdu will transmit six daily bulletins in Urdu and Pashto providing vital information including how to stay safe, avoid disease and access aid. | Disease Outbreaks | August 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(Aljazeera)'] |
A fire onboard the German container ship MSC Flaminia forces the crew to abandon ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. | One seafarer is confirmed dead and one is still missing as a result of a serious fire on a containership in the middle of a North Atlantic voyage.
The abandoned 6,732-teu MSC Flaminia (built 2001) is drifting 1,000 miles from land with reports from other vessels in the area indicating a large pall of smoke over the ship.
No ships are currently in attendance on the MSC Flaminia but two fire fighting tugs are on their way although they are not expected to reach the casualty until late Tuesday evening.
NSB Niederelbe said the cause of the fire is “completely unresolved” and they had no information on the condition of the vessel.
Any estimate of the damage would not be possible until after the arrival of the tugs, the company noted.
A missing seafarer from the MSC Flaminia is feared dead but the rest of the crew and two passengers on freighter voyage cruises were rescued from a lifeboat and liferaft by the 311,000-dwt tanker DS Crown(built 1999) which trades as part of the Frontline fleet but appears to be owned by a KG fund linked to DS Tankers.
The 6,402-teu containership MSC Stella (built 2004) diverted to take on four members who sustained burn injuries as they fought the fire.
NSB Niederelbe later reported one of the rescued crewmen on the MSC Stella died from his injuries. The other injured seafarers have been now been flown by helicopter to the Azores with one in emergency care.
Other rescued crew on the DS Crown will be disembarked when the vessel docks at Falmouth in the UK.
The crew of the MSC Flaminia comprises five Germans, three Poles and 15 Filipinos with the vessel on a voyage from Charleston to Antwerp. Details of the missing crewman are currently not known.
The priority at the moment was the medical treatment of the injured crew and the safe return of the remaining personnel to their home countries, NSB Niederelbe added.
The MSC Flaminia part of the fleet of NSB Niederelbe appears to be a Conti Reederei KG financed ship on a 16 year charter to Mediterranean Shipping Co from delivery by South Korean shipbuilder Daewoo.
The fire is reported to have begun in a container in the Number Four hold but the extent to which it has spread is currently unclear.
NSB said they immediately initiated their emergency procedures and a team was working on the crisis.
The bleaching agent calcium hypochlorite is shipped in containers and can spontaneously combust. It has been implicated in a number of major containership fires although there is as yet no indication of the cause of the blaze on the MSC Flaminia.
The hull insurance of the MSC Flaminia is led by the Swedish Club which also provides protection and indemnity cover for the vessel.
There have been several casualties over the last couple of years where the same insurer is doubly exposed with the biggest incident that of the 3,032-teu Rena(built 1990) which broke up after running aground off New Zealand. This was also a Swedish Club loss. | Fire | July 2012 | ['(TradeWinds)'] |
The Egyptian Football Association agrees to cancel the 2011–12 Egyptian Premier League season following the Port Said Stadium disaster. | Last updated on 10 March 201210 March 2012.From the section Football
The 2011/12 Egyptian Premier League season has been cancelled in the wake of last month's disaster which claimed 74 lives.
The decision was announced by the Egypt FA in Cairo on Saturday.
EFA spokesman Azmy Megahed said the season will not resume because there is not enough time to play the games before the national team begins training for the 2013 African Cup qualifiers and this year's London Olympics.
But Megahed said that 18 teams will play in a friendly tournament in empty stadiums to raise money for the families of those killed in the violence.
The friendly competition known as the 'Martyrs Cup' will be held from 29 March to 18 May.
But the event will not feature Al Masry, whose home match against Al Ahly ended in Egypt's worst football tragedy.
As the match ended in Port Said on 1 February, fans flooded onto the pitch attacking Al Ahly players and fans.
Seventy-four fans lost their lives and more than 150 were injured, some of them seriously.
Egypt announced three days of national mourning and the domestic championship has been in limbo since.
The country's top clubs were not too keen to see the league called off completely but the lack of security assurances from the Interior Ministry left them with no choice. | Sports Competition | March 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Following a breakthrough in talks, Russia and Ukraine agree to implement a ceasefire in the Donbass by the end of 2019. | Ukraine and Russia have agreed to implement a "full and comprehensive" ceasefire in eastern Ukraine by the end of 2019, after top-level talks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky met face to face at a Paris summit on Monday.
Mr Zelensky was downbeat, saying little had been achieved at the meeting and he had wanted to see more resolved.
Five-and-a-half years of fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels have cost 13,000 lives.
The negotiations were brokered by the leaders of France and Germany.
They follow a big prisoner swap and the withdrawal of Ukraine's military from three key areas on the front line.
In a written statement, the countries agreed to the release and exchange of all "conflict-related detainees" by the end of the year.
The two sides also pledged to disengage military forces in three additional regions of Ukraine by the end of March 2020, without specifying which regions would be affected.
Additional talks will be held in four months to take stock of the ceasefire's progress.
At a press conference after the talks in France's Elysée Palace, President Putin hailed them as an "important step" towards a de-escalation of the conflict.
President Zelensky said the issue of Russian gas exports via pipelines through Ukraine had been "unblocked" after a dispute about transit tariffs, and an agreement would now be worked out.
But Russia and Ukraine continue to disagree on issues such as the withdrawal of Russian-backed troops, and elections in areas of Ukraine held by the separatist rebels.
Mr Putin also called for a change in Ukraine's constitution to give special status to the Donbas region, which is held by the rebels. He also pushed for an amnesty for people who had taken part in the seizure of Ukrainian territory.
Mr Zelensky told reporters that Ukraine would not make any territorial concessions in exchange for peace.
"We saw differences today," said French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted the talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"We didn't find the miracle solution, but we have advanced on it," he added.
Mr Zelensky, a former comic actor, was elected president of Ukraine in a landslide victory in April following a campaign built around bringing peace to eastern Ukraine.
Since then, his strategy has focused on trying to restart talks with Moscow. For that to happen Mr Zelensky has had to agree to some Russian conditions, including pulling back Ukrainian troops in the eastern towns of Stanytsia Luhansk, Petrivske, and Zolote.
In June, Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists withdrew a kilometre from Stanytsia Luhanska. By late October, the Ukrainians and separatists had disengaged from Zolote and early in November they pulled back from Petrivske.
Nato and Western intelligence experts have repeatedly accused Russia of sending heavy weapons and combat troops into eastern Ukraine to help the rebels.
Russia denies that, but admits that Russian "volunteers" are helping the rebels.
In September, Mr Zelensky won praise for a long-awaited prisoner swap with Russia - he described it as a "victory" that had emerged from personal phone contact with the Russian president.
To pave the way for the summit, President Zelensky accepted a 2016 deal granting special status to the separatist-held parts of Ukraine's Donbas region.
The "Steinmeier formula" aims to break the impasse over peace agreements reached at the height of the fighting. It details free and fair elections in the east under Ukrainian law, verification by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and then self-governing status in return.
Pro-Russian separatists seized control of large swathes of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in April 2014, just after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.
It was an insurgency against the new pro-Western authorities in the capital Kyiv, who had ousted the pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych, in street protests dubbed the "Maidan Revolution".
The separatists later declared independence from Ukraine - but no country has recognised their "republics".
Long-awaited talks aim to end Ukraine conflict
Will a deal with Russia bring peace to Ukraine? | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | December 2019 | ['(BBC)'] |
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is released after 15 years of house arrest. | The Burmese military authorities have released the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest.
Appearing outside her home in Rangoon, Ms Suu Kyi told thousands of jubilant supporters they had to "work in unison" to achieve their goals.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years. It is not yet clear if any conditions have been placed on her release.
US President Barack Obama welcomed her release as "long overdue".
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Ms Suu Kyi was an "inspiration", and called on Burma to free all its remaining political prisoners.
Ms Suu Kyi, 65, was freed after her latest period of house arrest expired and was not renewed by the military government.
Her release comes six days after the political party supported by the military won the country's first election in 20 years. The ballot was widely condemned as a sham.
For more than 24 hours crowds of people had been waiting anxiously near Ms Suu Kyi's home and the headquarters of her now-disbanded National League for Democracy (NLD) party for news of her fate. Many wore T-shirts sporting the slogan "We stand with Aung San Suu Kyi".
On Saturday afternoon, a stand-off developed between armed riot police and several hundred people gathered on the other side of the security barricade blocking the road leading to her lakeside home. Some of them later sat down in the road in an act of defiance.
As tensions rose, reports came in at about 1700 (1030 GMT) that official cars had been seen entering Ms Suu Kyi's compound, and then that unnamed officials had formally read the release order to her.
Hundreds of people then surged forward and rushed forwards to greet her.
The ecstatic crowd swelled to three or four thousand before Ms Suu Kyi, in a traditional lilac dress, finally appeared, about 30 minutes later, on a platform behind the gate of her compound.
She took a flower from someone in the crowd and placed it in her hair.
Ms Suu Kyi then tried to speak, but was drowned out by the noise of the crowd, many singing the national anthem and chanting her name repeatedly.
"I have to give you the first political lesson since my release. We haven't seen each other for so long, so we have many things to talk about. If you have any words for me, please come to the [NLD] headquarters tomorrow and we can talk then and I'll use a loud speaker," she joked.
"There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk," she added. "People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal."
She then went back inside her home for the first meeting with NLD leaders in seven years. She also spoke to her youngest son, Kim Aris, who was awaiting her release in neighbouring Thailand. Ms Suu Kyi had two sons with late husband, British scholar Michael Aris.
International leaders were quick to welcome Ms Suu Kyi's release. Mr Ban said she was an "inspiration", but he regretted that she had been excluded from the elections.
He said he hoped no further restrictions would be placed on Ms Suu Kyi, and urged the Burmese authorities "to build on today's action by releasing all remaining political prisoners".
The head of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Surin Pitsuswan, said he was "very, very relieved" and hoped the move would "contribute to true national reconciliation".
President Obama called Ms Suu Kyi "a hero of mine".
"Whether Aung San Suu Kyi is living in the prison of her house, or the prison of her country, does not change the fact that she, and the political opposition she represents, has been systematically silenced, incarcerated, and deprived of any opportunity to engage in political processes," he said.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron also said the release was "long overdue", describing her detention had been a "travesty".
"Aung San Suu Kyi is an inspiration for all of us who believe in freedom of speech, democracy and human rights," he added.
The ruling junta has restricted Ms Suu Kyi's travel and freedom to associate during previous brief spells of liberty, and has demanded she quit politics. However, earlier this week her lawyer said that she would "not accept a limited release".
A BBC correspondent in Rangoon says it is unlikely the ruling generals would have freed Ms Suu Kyi unless they felt confident she no longer represented a threat to them or their plans for the country.
Sunday's elections were a key step in a carefully planned transition from overt military rule to a nominally civilian government, but the process has been widely condemned as widely fraudulent and un-democratic, she adds.
State media have reported that the biggest military-backed party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), has secured a majority in both houses of parliament. Those elected included the leader of the USDP, Prime Minister Thein Sein, who retired from the military as a general in April to stand.
A quarter of seats in the two new chambers of parliament will be reserved for the military. Any constitutional change will require a majority of more than 75% - meaning the military will retain a casting vote.
The NLD - which won the last election in 1990 but was never allowed to take power - refused to contest the election, which means that legally it is no longer a political entity. By extension Burma's most famous democracy campaigner now has no official political status and an unclear role.
Our correspondent says the next few days might provide some answers on how Ms Suu Kyi plans to further the cause of freedom of justice in Burma, for which she has sacrificed so much to achieve, but in the meantime thousands of her supporters are just enjoying the moment.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | November 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(Times of India)', '(Al Jazeera)'] |
Aid agencies say they have reached all areas of Bangladesh struck by cyclone Sidr, but more aid is needed for the survivors. | Money and aid are now pouring into the coastal region destroyed by the storm, but survivors' needs are still huge. Many complain they need food, clean water and shelter. At least 3,100 people are confirmed dead so far. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been pledged to help to rebuild the destroyed area. Leading UK charities have launched an appeal for more aid.
Estimates of the number of Bangladeshis caught up in the crisis vary wildly, from the hundreds of thousands to the millions. We are fulfilling their immediate needs to keep them alive [but] they need more food
The BBC's Mark Dummett in southern Bangladesh says no one yet has a clear idea and the logistical challenge of reaching all the victims of the cyclone remains enormous.
In the village of Chandpai, survivors told the BBC they need food and do not yet have clean drinking water.
They also complain that cases of diarrhoea are increasing.
But our correspondent says community leaders are also responding. In one town the BBC visited businessmen were providing three meals a day to more than 1,000 homeless people. In some places people are receiving only just enough to keep them from dying, officials say.
"We are fulfilling their immediate needs to keep them alive [but] they need more food," said Emamul Haque of the World Food Programme.
Bangladesh's government and military are leading the relief effort and they say they have received aid pledges of up to $500m. They have also now agreed to accept the help of two US naval vessels operating in the Bay of Bengal. Saudi Arabia pledged $100m in aid earlier this week. In the UK, the Disaster Emergency Committee of 13 major aid agencies launched a new appeal on Thursday to help those without food or water.
Cyclone Sidr, which struck late last Thursday, packed winds of up to 240km/h (150mph) and a tidal surge of several metres.
It brought down power lines and wiped out vital crops. Coastal Bangladesh is a maze of waterways, creeks, islands and sandbanks and the only way to reach the area is by boat. The government's early-warning system is being credited with saving many lives. Officials say that in many areas 95% of rice has been destroyed, while shrimp farms and other crops were simply washed away. Southern Bangladesh is hit every year by cyclones and floods, but Cyclone Sidr is the most destructive storm to hit the country in more than a decade. Another storm in 1991 left some 143,000 dead. More than 500,000 people were killed by a cyclone in 1970. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | November 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
Tens of thousands of women hold nationwide protests in 200 cities against Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi, whom they say has damaged the standing of women with his string of sex scandals. | Hundreds of women will take to the streets of Italy’s cities today calling on scandal hit Premier Silvio Berlusconi to resign after prosecutors requested he be sent to trial for having sex with an underage prostitute.
Protesters say evidence leaked from the probe into Berlusconi, 74, allegedly paying for sex with then 17 year Moroccan belly dancer Karima El Mahroug, and show he has little respect for female dignity.
Wiretaps leaked from more than 600 pages of the prosecution file suggest he surrounded himself at parties at his home with starlets and other women hoping to use their looks to gain positions in politics or within his Mediaset TV empire.
Protests are scheduled to take place in 200 cities and towns across Italy as well as London and New York, with the largest due to be held in Rome and Milan and counter demonstrations by activists from Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party area also planned.
Organisers have called the protest ”If Not Now, When?” which is also the title of a famous novel by the Italian award winning writer Primo Levi and which tells the story a group of Jewish partisans behind German lines during World War II as they seek to continue their fight against the occupier and survive.
Iaia Caputo, of the organising committee, said: ”The Ruby case has revealed a system of political selection based on an exchange of sex and power.
”If we accept this as normal, we risk prejudicing the free choice of women.
”We want to send a message to the country and to the parties that do not see themselves a part of what has happened over the last few weeks - it’s possible to change route”.
Men have also been encouraged to attend the rallies and prostitutes and nuns have also said they will attend to voice their anger and disgust at Berlusconi’s alleged lewd behaviour.
For almost a month now billionaire media tycoon Berlusconi has been in the spotlight over claims of stripping nurses and policewomen at his infamous ”bunga bunga” parties.
The phrase is said to refer to a crude after dinner sex game and Berlusconi has insisted that the regular parties he held at his mansion at Arcore near Milan were nothing more than convivial social events.
Following a tense meeting with Italian president Giorgio Napolitano about the scandal the respected daily Corriere Della Sera published a cartoon of the two men on its front page.
It showed Berlusconi telling the president: ”Bunga bunga is a perfectly innocent game - if you like I can show you”, which is greeted with a look of surprise from Napolitano.
The scandal seems to have had little effect on Berlusconi’s popularity with just a 5% drop in his approval ratings and polls show that if an immediate general election were held he would win.
He has plenty of supporters in Italy who agree with him, including many women, and they plan demonstrations in support of him outside the prosecutor’s office in Milan.
In a reference to his numerous battles with the Italian judiciary they plan to hold placards reading:”Hundred trials, no convictions equals persecution”, and ”Palace of Injustice”.
They claim his privacy has been violated by the investigation and are urging him to ”resist, resist, resist” as one supporter who was interviewed on Italian TV put it.
They are also urging women to show their support by going to pro Berlusconi rallies or not attending the demonstrations against him - popular Italian pop star Anna Tatangelo said she would not be taking part.
She said: ”I don’t think the protest will help the climate in Italy. It’s necessary to calm things down and restore order in the political situation and the basic things that concern our country. Don’t go and protest, think about how we can really get back up”.
Preliminary hearings judge Cristina Di Censo is not expected to announce before Monday or Tuesday whether she has granted the prosecution request to send the case to trial and if approved it could start as early as April. | Protest_Online Condemnation | February 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(The Daily Telegraph)', '(Herald Sun)'] |
Badri Daher, the director general of the Lebanese Customs Administration, is arrested amid the investigation on the storage of ammonium nitrate at the Port of Beirut for six years. | BEIRUT -- The head of Lebanon's customs authority was formally arrested on Monday after being questioned over the massive explosion in Beirut earlier this month, the state-run National News Agency reported.
The investigation is focused on why nearly 3,000 tons of explosive ammonium nitrate was being stored at the city's port. The ignition of the stockpile caused an explosion that tore through the capital, killing at least 180 people and wounding 6,000.
Thirty people are still missing after the Aug. 4 blast, which caused an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion in damage.
Documents that surfaced after the blast, the single most destructive in Lebanon's history, showed that officials have known for years that 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate were stored in a warehouse at the port and knew about the dangers.
Judge Fadi Sawwan questioned customs chief Badri Daher, who was detained days after the blast, for 4 1/2 hours in the presence of his two lawyers before issuing the arrest warrant, the agency said. Daher will remain in custody as the investigation continues.
NNA said that after questioning Daher, Sawwan headed to the scene of the blast to survey the damage and will later return to question Hassan Koraytem, who was the top port official until the day of the blast.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun said the probe into the devastating blast is "very complex" and would not be finished quickly. Aoun said the probe is divided into three parts. The first aims to determine the circumstances surrounding the cargo, the second where it came from and who shipped it, and the third to find who was responsible for handling and securing it.
Aoun said the FBI and French investigators were helping because "they, more than us, have the capability and ability to find out the details of what got the ship here, what is the source and who owns it."
A nine-member team of FBI investigators landed in Beirut on Sunday, according to a Lebanese aviation official, and were believed to have joined the investigation. French investigators have been active for days at the port.
Popular anger has swelled over the ruling elite's corruption and mismanagement. Lebanon's government, which is supported by the militant Hezbollah group and its allies, resigned on Aug. 10 and continues to serve in a caretaker capacity. There are no formal consultations underway on who will replace Hassan Diab as prime minister and no likely candidate has emerged.
Aftermath of a massive explosion is seen in in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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A check-in on the public mood of Canadians with hosts Michael Stittle and Nik Nanos. FOLLOW ON | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | August 2020 | ['(AP via CTV News)'] |
The number of the cholera outbreak cases in Yemen passes 200,000, with over 1,300 deaths so far. There are an estimated 5,000 new cases every day. | Yemen is now facing the worst cholera outbreak anywhere in the world, the United Nations has warned.
A statement by Unicef and the World Health Organization says the number of suspected cholera cases in the war-torn country has exceeded 200,000. So far more than 1,300 people have died - one quarter of them children - with the death toll expected to rise.
The two UN agencies say they are doing everything they can to stop the outbreak from accelerating.
"We are now facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world," the statement says.
"In just two months, cholera has spread to almost every governorate of this war-torn country," it says, with an estimated 5,000 new cases every day.
Yemen's health, water and sanitation systems are collapsing after two years of war between government forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, and the rebel Houthi movement.
The rebels control much of the country, including the capital Sanaa.
Hospitals are overcrowded and severe food shortages have led to widespread malnutrition, making Yemenis - especially children - even more vulnerable to cholera.
The UN says it is deploying rapid-response teams to go house-to-house telling people how to protect themselves by cleaning and storing drinking water. But clean water is in short supply.
Cholera is an acute diarrhoeal infection caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholera. Most of those infected will have no or mild symptoms but, in severe cases, the disease can kill within hours if left untreated.
The war has left 18.8 million of Yemen's 28 million people needing humanitarian assistance and almost seven million on the brink of famine.
| Disease Outbreaks | June 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
Three car bombs explode outside police stations in Basra, killing 68 people and wounding over 100 more. Iraqi officials blame suicide bombers for the terrorism. 23 of the casualties are school children. A fourth car bomb explodes in Zubeir, south of Basra, killing three and wounding four. British soldiers assisting the wounded are pelted with stones, injuring four, two seriously. | The first blasts - apparently suicide bombings - occurred outside three police stations in Basra city centre during Wednesday's morning rush hour.
Many of the dead and injured were children travelling in passing buses on their way to school.
A fourth attack south of Basra is said to have killed three Iraqis and wounded five UK soldiers. Elsewhere in Iraq, the restive central city of Falluja has seen fresh clashes between insurgents and US troops.
Meanwhile, the Danish foreign ministry says a Danish man kidnapped in Iraq last week has been found dead.
Most of the victims in Basra died in what the mayor of the city described as suicide car bombings.
Basra bombs
Police under fire
Two police stations in the Ashar district and one in the Old City were hit in near-simultaneous attacks.
A wounded Iraqi told Reuters news agency that he heard a huge explosion as he stood at the door of his house.
"I looked around and saw my neighbour lying dead on the floor, torn apart," he said.
"I saw a minibus full of children on fire - 15 of the 18 passengers were killed and three badly wounded."
Condemnation
At least 100 people are thought to have been wounded in the attacks targeting the British-controlled city.
UK soldiers who tried to assist casualties were stoned by protesters who blamed the British for failing to provide security.
Distraught Iraqis stoned coalition forces trying to help
British officials do not think local Shias were responsible for the explosions, but blame them on "al-Qaeda type elements or former regime loyalists".
Briefing reporters in London, one official said: "The Shias have broadly accepted the British presence in Basra and I do not think this has changed."
Shortly after the Basra bombings, two car bombs hit a police academy in the town of Zubair, about 25km (16 miles) to the south.
That attack killed three Iraqis and wounded five British soldiers - one of them seriously - a UK official said.
The BBC's Dominic Hughes in Iraq says that although Iraqi police have been targeted by insurgents in the past, Basra had so far escaped major unrest.
UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters in London the insurgents would be defeated and that the transfer of power to Iraqis, scheduled for June, would not be affected.
There is as yet no information about the perpetrators or a
motive for the killing [of Danish citizen]
Danish Foreign Ministry
Missing Danish man dead
Iraqi Interior Minister Samir al-Sumeidi said the attacks bore the "fingerprints" of those who carried out the bombings in Irbil and Karbala - in which hundreds died in February and March.
US officials have blamed al-Qaeda-linked groups for these and other bombings in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said Italian troops will stay on after the Iraqi handover, to help improve security.
Spain, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras have said they will withdraw their troops from the country.
Falluja attack
In Falluja, a city west of Baghdad held by Sunni militants, about 40 fighters attacked besieging US troops early on Wednesday.
The gunmen struck in the north of the city, mounting a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. Explosions could be heard throughout Falluja as marines were put on high alert.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned on Tuesday that coalition troops would not wait indefinitely for gunmen to surrender in Falluja. He suggested the chance of a peaceful outcome was remote as militants were not involved in the negotiations. | Armed Conflict | April 2004 | ['(BBC)', '(NYT)'] |
The Syrian Democratic Forces reports that it apprehended a 39-member ISIL cell in Al-Hasakah, Al-Hasakah Governorate, a few days ago. The cell was reportedly planning an attack during Eid al-Fitr. | ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) dismantled an Islamic State (ISIS) cell of nearly 40 militants on Thursday in northeastern Syria, the force announced.
The SDF said its forces arrested the group, which included 39 members, in the countryside around al-Shuhail, in the eastern province of Deir ez-Zor. The cell was believed to be planning an attack during the holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
The SDF said they also seized a large number of weapons and documents owned by the terror group. Kurdish security forces say they have destroyed several ISIS hideouts and detained a number of the militant group’s members in northeastern Syria in recent operations.
The SDF announced they arrested 14 ISIS members in Deir ez-Zor on Tuesday and a media outlet affiliated with the SDF said Kurdish forces arrested a leader of the militant group in Hasaka on Sunday. The arrests follow a series of assassinations, targeting civilians, tribal leaders, and members of the SDF.
Three SDF members were killed in separate attacks on Tuesday and Monday. Both attacks were carried out by unknown gunmen.
ISIS has been territorially defeated in Iraq and Syria but the militants continue to carry out bombings, hit-and run attacks and abductions on both sides of the border. The SDF and Syrian regime forces control separate areas of Deir ez-Zor province.
Kurdish-led forces announced in a statement that they concluded on Wednesday a four-day military operation against ISIS on the Syria-Iraq border, which was launched with the support of the global coalition.
In its weekly propaganda newspaper al-Naba, ISIS claimed it had conducted 12 attacks in Syria between April 29 and May 5, killing and injuring 17 people. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | May 2021 | ['(Rudaw)'] |
British politician Priti Patel resigns from her position as Secretary of State for International Development amid reports that she had had unauthorized meetings with senior Israeli officials. | Theresa May loses second cabinet minister in a week as pro-Brexit international development secretary departs Priti Patel’s resignation letter and Theresa May’s response – in full
First published on Wed 8 Nov 2017 19.13 GMT
Theresa May’s government was rocked on Wednesday by a second cabinet resignation in a week after Priti Patel was forced to step down as international development secretary.
The minister quit after being summoned back from a trip to Uganda and Ethiopia by Downing Street after it emerged she failed to be candid with May about 14 unofficial meetings with Israeli ministers, businesspeople and a senior lobbyist.
The prime minister will now need to carry out another reshuffle that will create disruption and add to the sense of instability across Whitehall and Westminster as her minority government battles to retain control of the political agenda.
May and Patel met for just six minutes in the early evening. In her resignation letter, released moments after she left No 10, Patel admitted her actions “fell below the high standards that are expected of a secretary of state”.
The prime minister said Patel’s decision was the correct one. She argued in a letter to the former cabinet minister that the UK and Israel were close allies and should work closely together. “But that must be done formally, and through official channels. That is why, when we met on Monday, I was glad to accept your apology and welcomed your clarification about your trip to Israel over the summer.”
But she added: “Now that further details have come to light, it is right that you have decided to resign and adhere to the high standards of transparency and openness that you have advocated.”
13 August 2017
Priti Patel goes to Israel on what she claims was a family holiday, which she paid for herself.
22 August 2017
Patel met the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The meeting was not authorised in advance and no UK officials were present. She later claimed the Foreign Office was made aware of this meetings and others while her trip was under way.
Meanwhile, Patel’s deputy Alistair Burt and David Quarrey, the British ambassador to Israel, were meeting Michael Oren, a deputy minister at the Israeli prime minister’s office, according to the Jewish Chronicle. According to notes of the meeting, cited by the paper, Oren referred to Patel having had a successful meeting with Netanyahu earlier.
24 August 2017
Foreign Office officials became aware of Patel’s first meetings, according to a statement given to the Commons by Burt on 7 November. He did not mention his own visit to Israel. Hansard quotes Burt telling the Commons: “The Secretary of State [Patel] told Foreign Office officials on 24 August that she was on the visit. It seems likely that the meetings took place beforehand.”
On the same day Patel met Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s Yesh Atid party, who describes her as a “true friend of Israel”.
August 2017
On an undisclosed date during her trip, Patel visited an Israeli military field hospital in the occupied Golan Heights, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. If confirmed, this would be a breach of a protocol that British officials do not travel in the occupied Golan under the auspices of the Israeli government.
25 August 2017
Patel leaves Israel after 12 work meetings, during two days of a 13-day holiday. As well as meeting Netanyahu, she also held talks with the public security and strategic affairs minister, Gilad Erdan, and an Israeli foreign ministry official, Yuval Rotem. The meetings were organised by Lord Polak, a leading member of the Conservative Friends of Israel. He accompanied Patel on all but one one of the meetings.
On her return to the UK, Patel inquires about using the UK aid budget to help fund the Israeli army’s humanitarian work in the Golan Heights. The idea is rejected because the UK does not recognise Israel’s permanent presence in the Golan Heights, which were seized from Syria in the 1967 war.
7 September 2017
Patel meets Gilad Erdan, the minister for public security, and is photographed with him on the House of Commons terrace.
18 September 2017
While in New York for the UN general assembly, Patel has another meeting with Yuval Rotem, an official from the Israeli foreign ministry.
2 November 2017
Theresa May meets Netanyahu in Downing Street.
3 November 2017
Patel told the Guardian that the foreign secretary knew about her trip and suggested the Foreign Office had been briefing against her. “Boris knew about the visit. The point is that the Foreign Office did know about this, Boris knew about [the trip],” she admitted telling the paper.
The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent James Landale reported that Patel had undisclosed meetings in Israel without telling the Foreign Office. He quoted one official as saying that Patel had been “pushing to get her hands on the Palestinian Authority aid budget and we have been pushing back”.
6 November 2017
Patel apologises after admitting she gave a misleading account to the Guardian of her trip to Israel. In a statement, she admits holding 12 meetings, including three with Israeli politicians – Netanyahu among them.
She said: “This quote [to the Guardian] may have given the impression that the secretary of state had informed the foreign secretary about the visit in advance. The secretary of state would like to take this opportunity to clarify that this was not the case. The foreign secretary did become aware of the visit, but not in advance of it.”
She does not mention visiting the occupied Golan Heights or the two subsequent meetings in September.
A No 10 spokesman confirms that Patel was rebuked for breaching the ministerial code.
7 November 2017
Patel avoids answering an urgent Commons question about her meetings in Israel because of a “longstanding commitment” to visit Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. The international development minister Alistair Burt is put up in her place. Burt points out that Patel apologised for the undisclosed meetings. He adds: “The department’s view is that aid to the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] in the Golan Heights is not appropriate.”
Downing Street initially backs Patel but later confirms that the prime minister was not informed about providing aid to Israel during her meeting the previous day. It is suggested Patel failed to disclose her two subsequent meetings in September with Israeli officials. A Whitehall source says: “There was an expectation of full disclosure at the meeting on Monday. It is now clear Priti did not do that. It will now have to be looked at again.” But according to the Jewish Chronicle, it was No 10 who told Patel not to include her meeting with Rotem in New York in her list of undisclosed meetings for fear of embarrassing the Foreign Office.
DfiD confirms previously undisclosed September meetings with Erhad and Rotem in September.
8 November 2017
Patel resigns from the cabinet after being summoned back from a trip to Uganda and Ethiopia by Downing Street. In her resignation letter, released moments after she left No 10, Patel admitted her actions “fell below the high standards that are expected of a secretary of state”.
Six days of revelations about Patel’s meetings dominated headlines. On Monday it emerged that she had spoken to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in August in a meeting that May did not know about and with no officials present. Thirteen meetings were held in the presence of Lord Polak, an experienced Tory lobbyist.
The move piles pressure onto May’s government following a string of controversies. The sex harassment scandal has already resulted in the resignation of the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, while one of the prime minister’s closest allies, Damian Green, is being investigated by the Cabinet office over allegations. Meanwhile there have been calls for May to sack her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, after an intervention risked lengthening the sentence of a British woman jailed in Iran.
The development will also be seen as a blow for Brexiters, for whom Patel is a standard bearer. She was also the only minority ethnic woman in the cabinet. Patel could become an outspoken backbencher and help exert pressure on May from the pro-Brexit wing of the party. MPs supportive of Patel claimed she had been subjected to a Foreign Office “hatchet job” – claiming that senior individuals in Johnson’s department had briefed against her. A replacement for Patel was expected to be announced on Thursday. One senior MP said that May would be determined to maintain “balance” within her cabinet, both in terms of gender and the divide between ministers who backed the leave and remain campaigns in the EU referendum.
Names under discussion include Penny Mordaunt, the welfare minister who was a prominent campaigner for out, and Andrea Leadsom, the pro-Brexit leader of the House of Commons. Remainers who could be in line for promotion include Claire Perry, the climate change minister, and Alistair Burt, whose current brief spans the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office.
Patel’s return to Britain on a flight from Nairobi, Kenya, had been closely followed on the internet and in the media, with broadcasters even airing pictures of the plane she had been travelling in as it landed.
It appeared that the MP for Witham had broken ministerial rules when the BBC disclosed on Friday that she met politicians and businessmen from Israel while on holiday in August without informing departmental officials, the FCO or Downing Street in advance.
In an interview with the Guardian on the same day, she made misleading claims that Johnson had been aware of the meetings and that FCO mandarins had briefed against her.
Patel told the Guardian: “Boris knew about the visit. The point is that the Foreign Office did know about this, Boris knew about [the trip]. It is not on, it is not on at all. I went out there, I paid for it. And there is nothing else to this. It is quite extraordinary.”
But on Monday she was forced to apologise and withdraw her claims about the FCO and Johnson after a meeting with May. She also admitted that she had held 12 meetings in Israel with officials, businessmen, Netanyahu and the country’s security minister.
Patel’s downfall was triggered by a failure to be entirely candid with the prime minister on Monday. It is understood that Patel told May in person that there were no other revelations due to emerge about her visit.
But her reassurances collapsed on Tuesday when it emerged that DfID officials had been asked to explore whether it would be feasible to send UK aid money to the Israeli army for humanitarian work in the occupied Golan Heights.
Her fate was sealed late on Tuesday after Downing Street confirmed that Patel had two further unauthorised meetings with senior Israeli officials after her return from Israel.
Gilad Erdan, the Israeli security minister, met Patel in parliament on 7 September. She also saw Yuval Rotem, an official from the Israeli foreign ministry, for a meeting at the UN general assembly in New York. Polak was present at both meetings.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz claimed on Wednesday that Patel had visited an Israeli military field hospital in the Golan Heights, a disputed area that the UK does not recognise, and failed to declare it. DfID said it could neither confirm nor deny the report. Downing Street insisted that May knew nothing about Patel’s meetings until the controversy broke in the media late last week.
However, Burt said in the Commons that the British embassy, FCO and DfID had been informed on 24 August, immediately after the meetings took place and while Patel was still in the country. Neither the FCO nor DfID were able to explain why No 10 had not been informed.
Patel’s resignation will prompt further calls from the Conservative right to merge DfID with the FCO. Johnson appeared to make a play for his department to absorb DfID last month, saying it was a “colossal mistake in the 1990s to divide the Department for International Development from the Foreign Office”.
Labour’s Tom Watson claimed that he had been informed of a further meeting by Patel during her holiday with officials from the British consulate general in Jerusalem, suggesting the government had been formally notified of the situation.
“The existence of such a meeting or meetings would call into question the official account of Ms Patel’s behaviour, and the purpose of her visit,” wrote Watson in a letter to the prime minister last night, which listed a series of fresh questions. The development comes seven days after Sir Michael Fallon resigned as defence secretary over accusations of inappropriate behaviour towards women, which he categorically denies.
Damian Green, May’s righthand man, remains under investigation by the Cabinet Office for alleged inappropriate behaviour towards a female activist and for allegations connected to claims that pornography was found on a laptop seized by police. He denies both of these claims.
May’s administration has been hit by a series of crises since she lost her House of Commons majority in June. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | November 2017 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Prosecutor General of Tajikistan, Yusuf Rakhmon, announces the arrest of 113 alleged members of the Muslim Brotherhood. | DUSHANBE (Reuters) - Tajikistan has arrested 113 people charged with being members of Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization outlawed in the Central Asian nation, Prosecutor General Yusuf Rakhmon said on Tuesday.
Among those arrested over the course of this month were two foreigners, one municipal official, and more than 20 university professors, he told a briefing.
The government of the predominantly Muslim ex-Soviet republic has been cracking down on Islamist opposition in recent years, banning the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan and accusing its leadership of plotting a coup.
Tajikistan has also blamed Islamists, and the ultra hardline Islamic State militant group in particular, for a series of deadly attack on foreign tourists and local prison staff and border guards.
The Brotherhood, founded more than 90 years ago in Egypt, has survived repeated crackdowns at home and has a network of groups across the Middle East and beyond, some directly linked to the Egyptian organization and others more loosely affiliated.
Its founder Hassan al-Banna called for a religious revival and the establishment of a caliphate under sharia law.
The Brotherhood’s opponents, including several autocratic Arab states, say it is a dangerous terrorist group which must be crushed. The movement says it publicly renounced violence decades ago and pursues an Islamist vision using peaceful means.
Reporting by Nazarali Pirnazarov; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov, Editing by William Maclean
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. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | January 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Amnesty International reports that at least 160 young Iranians are currently awaiting execution and 73 others have been put to death between 2005 and 2015, which including sentencing girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15 to death. | At least 160 young Iranians are currently awaiting execution and 73 others have been put to death between 2005 and 2015, a chilling new report from Amnesty International says.
As the world’s leading executioner of offenders under 18 and one of the world’s largest users of the death penalty overall, Iran had nearly 700 people executed in the first half of 2015 alone.
“The situation overall is shocking and distressing,” Raha Bahreini, the report’s lead researcher, told The WorldPost. “It is absolutely shocking that the majority of countries in the world have rejected the death penalty, but Iran continues to sentence girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15 to death.”
Among the 73 executed youth was Makwan Moloudzadeh, who was sentenced to death as a 13-year-old and executed eight years later, in 2007. Moloudzadeh was accused of having “forced male-male anal penetration” with another boy, but withdrew his pre-trial confession in court, saying he had been coerced and tortured into confessing. Two boys who had also accused Moloudzadeh of raping them retracted their accusations, saying they had lied or had been forced to lodge complaints by the police.
Iran also hanged Janat Mir, an Afghan boy believed to be 14 or 15 at the time of his execution, in 2014. Mir was executed following an arrest for drug offenses after his friend’s house, where he was living, was raided. The boy was reportedly denied access to a lawyer and consular services, according to Amnesty.
Iran signed the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child on Sept. 5, 1991 and ratified it on July 13, 1994. The CRC explicitly prohibits capital punishment and life imprisonment without possibility of release for youth offenders.
Executions of juvenile offenders have also been reported in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Sudan in recent years, but the numbers are far lower than in Iran. The U.S., which has not ratified the CRC, has not imposed the death penalty on juveniles since 2005 but still sentences youth to life without parole.
Many of Iran’s young offenders spent about seven years waiting to die in prison, Amnesty found, while some spent more than a decade behind bars before being hanged. The majority of Iranian children given death sentences have been accused of murder, rape or drug-related offenses.
“The report paints a deeply distressing picture of juvenile offenders languishing on death row, robbed of valuable years of their lives ― often after being sentenced to death following unfair trials, including those based on forced confessions extracted through torture and other ill-treatment,” Said Boumedouha, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa program, said in a statement.
In June 2014, the U.N. human rights chief, Navi Pillay, called on Iran to lift the death sentence of a child bride who killed her husband in his sleep after years of physical and verbal abuse.
“The imminent execution of Razieh Ebrahimi has once again brought into stark focus the unacceptable use of the death penalty against juvenile offenders in Iran,” Pillay said. “Regardless of the circumstances of the crime, the execution of juvenile offenders is clearly prohibited by international human rights law.”
Iran sparked cautious optimism with a series of reforms to its Islamic Penal Code starting in 2013. That year, judges gained the ability to give youth sentenced to death a lesser sentence based on the offender’s mental capacity and maturity at the time of the crime. The following year, Iran’s Supreme Court announced that youth sentenced to death could apply for a retrial.
However, many youth already on death row have not been informed of their right to a retrial, as Amnesty points out in its report, and several retrials that have been granted have been cursory.
“The Iranian authorities are celebrating halfhearted reforms that terribly fall short of international obligations,” Bahreini told The WorldPost. “We are urging European leaders and other states around the world to raise the issue and push Iranian authorities to end the use of the death penalty against juvenile offenders once and for all.” | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | January 2016 | ['(The Huffington Post)'] |
A 7.7 magnitude earthquake strikes off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, west of the Alaskan Aleutian Island of Attu, in the North Pacific Ocean. No immediate reports of casualties or damage; a tsunami warning was cancelled. | The July 17, 2017 M 7.7 earthquake ESE of Nikol'skoye, Russia occurred as the result of transform faulting on or near the plate boundary between the Pacific and North America plates in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. The focal mechanism solution of the event indicates the earthquake occurred either on a right lateral fault oriented NW-SE, or on a left lateral fault striking NE. At the location of the earthquake, the Pacific plate moves towards the NW at a rate of ~73 mm/yr with respect to North America, effectively moving horizontally past the North America plate at this the western extent of the Aleutian Trench. Along the arcuate Aleutian Trench, the motion of the Pacific Plate with respect to the North America Plate changes from almost purely convergent near south-central Alaska, to almost purely translational in the western most Aleutians where the Aleutian Trench meets the Kamchatka Trench. The location, depth, and focal mechanism solution of the earthquake are consistent with rupture on the main plate boundary, as right lateral faulting.
While commonly plotted as points on maps, earthquakes of this size are more appropriately described as slip over a larger fault area. Strike-slip-faulting events of the size of the July 17, 2017 earthquake are typically about 170x20 km (length x width).
The Aleutian Trench is seismically active, and the region within 250 km of the July 17, 2017 event has experienced 14 M 6.5 and larger earthquakes since 1900. The largest event was a M 7.8 earthquake that occurred December 17, 1929, approximately 200 km to the ESE of todays earthquake. The July 17, 2017 earthquake was preceded by a M 6.2 foreshock roughly 12 hours earlier, and 15 km to the NE. In the 2.5 hours since the M 7.7 mainshock, 10 M 4.4+ aftershocks have been recorded. | Earthquakes | July 2017 | ['(Reuters)', '(AP)', '(USGS)'] |
Rioting erupts in Paris following the defeat of Paris Saint–Germain F.C. in the Champions League final. Riot police fire tear gas at groups of PSG fans, who responded by throwing fireworks and flares. Several arrests are made. | Fans of Paris Saint Germain gathered near Parc de Princes, the club's stadium, and began attacking riot police before the match against Bayern Munich had finished
Rioting has erupted in Paris tonight following the city’s biggest football club losing the Champions League final.
Tear gas and baton charges were used by French police on thousands of Paris Saint Germain football fans following the 1-0 defeat to Bayern Munich in the Champions League game on Sunday night.
Despite France’s capital being a coronavirus red zone, crowds had built up around the Parc de Princes, PSG’s home ground, and on the Champs Elysee.
"Trouble started before the final whistle," said a fan at the Parc des Princes. "Riot police were out in force, and they came under attack when PSG went one-nil down."
As he spoke, scores of tear gas cannisters were aimed at fans, who fired red flares and fireworks back.
Videos posted on Twitter showed the concourse around the Parc looking and sounding like a war zone.
At one stage a white police vehicle was attacked by a small group of fans – prompting police to move in.
Riot police were also involved in skirmishes with gangs of youths in other parts of the city, including packed cafés, where arrests were made.
Fans had wandered onto busy roads waving flags and scarves, and forcing the traffic to stop.
Government officials had urged people to wear masks in public before the game, and several bars were closed.
More than 200 people were cautioned by police for not wearing face-coverings, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said onT witter.
Large crowds also appeared at the PSG home ground – Parc des Princes in the west of the City.
Inside the stadium, several thousand people gathered to watch the final on giant screens. Many were not wearing masks, according to a witness.
Paris has introduced some of the strictest Covid-19 measures in Europe in recent days, including making masks obligatory in many public spaces.
There has been a spike in cases of the respiratory disease across France, meaning it is now on Britain’s quarantine list, meaning anyone coming back to the UK from the country has to self-isolate for 14 days.
Despite this, thousands of PSG fans were on the street, and there were 3000 police and gendarmes trying to keep order.
The game had been played behind closed doors in Lisbon because of the pandemic, meaning millions watching around the world on television.
Since Mirror is a Reach news title, you have been logged in with the Reach account you use to access our other sites. | Riot | August 2020 | ['(The Mirror)'] |
South American trade bloc Mercosur will trigger its democratic clause this weekend to suspend Venezuela indefinitely, furthering its past temporary suspension, and not allow the country back until internal political issues have been resolved. | BRASILIA (Reuters) - South American trade bloc Mercosur will trigger its democratic clause this weekend to suspend Venezuela indefinitely and not allow it back until democracy is restored, a Brazilian government source said on Thursday.
The decision will be taken at a meeting of the foreign ministers of Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil in Sao Paulo on Saturday, said the official with knowledge of the negotiations.
Mercosur suspended Venezuela temporarily from the bloc in December for not complying with the bloc’s regulations, but the deterioration of the political and human rights situation has led it to take a more definitive stance.
The bloc had planned to decide on applying the democratic clause at year-end, but brought the decision forward following Venezuela’s controversial election of a constituent assembly on Sunday followed by the arrest of several opposition leaders by President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
“The Venezuelan situation has become intolerable,” Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie told reporters in Montevideo. “For Argentina, it is clear that we have reached a breaking point.”
Argentina warned in July that Mercosur would permanently expel Venezuela if Maduro went ahead with the creation of a national assembly. Countries around the world have condemned the vote, calling it a bid to indefinitely extend Maduro’s rule. His government has been accused of inflating turnout numbers.
Millions in Venezuela are suffering food shortages, soaring inflation and months of anti-government unrest, making it more unlikely that such a high turnout was obtained by the government.
More than 120 people have been killed in the protests, drawing international condemnation of the security forces’ heavy-handed tactics.
Mercosur has no provision for expulsion, but activating the democratic clause adds to the international isolation of the Maduro government because Venezuela can only be readmitted after holding elections that the bloc members view to be democratic.
Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassú, additional reporting by Malena Castaldi in Montevideo; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by David Gregorio and Sandra Maler
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. | Government Policy Changes | August 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn debates with Conservative leader Theresa May. | Jeremy Corbyn will remain leader of the Labour Party regardless of what happens on June 8, the party’s election coordinator has suggested as he claimed “it’s only the beginning of the Corbyn project”. Ian Lavery hinted at an election rally in Glasgow on Sunday that defeat would not spell the end of Mr Corbyn’s leadership. Buzzfeed reported that Mr Lavery, a key ally of Mr Corbyn and the Labour leader’s warm up act at campaign events, said that “it will be a long, long, long process, of changing politics in Britain”. He said: “Whatever happens at the election isn’t the end of the Corbyn project, it’s only the beginning of the Corbyn project." It came as Mr Corbyn attracted criticism after he indicated that he would "open discussions" with the Scottish Government about a possible second independence referendum if he became prime minister. During an interview with Bauer and Global radio stations he was pressed on what would happen if he ended up in Number 10. Mr Corbyn was asked: "Theresa May says now is not the time for another independence referendum. "You walk into Downing Street in a couple of weeks' time, what do you say to Nicola Sturgeon?" The Labour leader replied: "I'll obviously open discussions with the Government in Scotland and listen very carefully to what the Scottish Parliament says. "I would ask them to think very carefully about it and suggest it would be much better to have this question dealt with at the conclusion of what are very serious and very important Brexit negotiations, where I am utterly determined to achieve tariff-free trade access to the European markets to protect manufacturing and service jobs all across the UK, all across Scotland, Wales and England as well of course." Ruth Davidson, Leader of the Scottish Conservatives, responded: "Nicola Sturgeon has said she’d put Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10. Now Jeremy Corbyn says he is happy to ‘open discussions’ with her about a second referendum. "Labour voters in Scotland now know that Jeremy Corbyn would sell them down the river." A Labour spokesperson later clarified: "Labour firmly opposes a second independence referendum." Elsewhere, Theresa May and Mr Corbyn will face separate interview grillings by Jeremy Paxman this evening as they both look to tighten their key election messages with polling day now less than two weeks away. Mrs May will seek to narrow the focus of the Conservative campaign back onto Brexit. She is considering sending out a fleet of "ad vans" onto the UK’s roads to hammer home the importance of the getting a good Brexit deal. Role reversal: @BorisJohnson heckles @MichaelLCrick. "When are you going to resign!?" just before start of #C4News pic.twitter.com/WWeHMT02vW
With your support, I can get the best Brexit deal – and deliver my plan for a stronger Britain. pic.twitter.com/hVRz4659D9
Labour's national election coordinator has called on the Conservatives to apologise after their candidate contesting murdered MP Jo Cox's former seat blamed a "tiring day" for telling a hustings: "We've not yet shot anybody so that's wonderful." Dr Ann Myatt has apologised for her "ill-judged" comments. Andrew Gwynne said:
These remarks are appalling. That they come from the Conservative candidate beggars belief. He added that Theresa May's campaign should also "immediately apologise". Labour said Mr Corbyn would have discussions with SNP ministers "about all Scottish issues". Regarding the party's firm opposition to an independence referendum, a spokesman added: "Jeremy Corbyn and Scottish Labour have repeatedly said that a second independence referendum is both unwanted and unnecessary. "Labour firmly opposes a second independence referendum." AUDIO ALERT: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told me he would "open discussions" with @NicolaSturgeon about holding #indyref2 if he became PM... pic.twitter.com/eZeqXsuJdh
Paul Nuttall supports bringing back the death penalty and said in a BBC television interview on Monday that he “would have pulled the lever on people like Ian Brady". The UK Independence Party leader also said that he would support the waterboarding of terrorist suspects if it foiled a terrorist attack. Mr Nuttall, who was grilled in an half hour long interview by BBC presenter Andrew Neil on BBC One on Monday evening, said he backed the death penalty for terrorists and child killers. In the interview Mr Nuttall singled out the killers of drummer Lee Rigby and Moors murderer Ian Brady, who died of natural causes this month, as people who deserved the death penalty. Pushed on whether he would be “an MP or an executioner”, Mr Nuttall said: “Well, I don’t want to be Albert Pierrepoint, that’s not what I’m going to go on to when I’m out of politics. “What I will say is that, you know, they asked me that question, if I’m prepared to stand up say that I believe in the death penalty, then you know, maybe I would pull the lever on people like Ian Brady in the past.”
A Tory candidate standing in the seat of the murdered MP Jo Cox has been forced to apologise after she joked that no one had been shot at a local hustings. Ms Cox was shot three times and suffered multiple stab wounds last year as she left a constituency surgery. Dr Ann Myatt, who is standing in Batley and Spen, said: "We have here people of all faiths, we have here people from different parts of the community, and we have not yet shot anybody so that's wonderful." Her comments were branded "disgusting" and "insensitive" by Labour MPs. The candidate later said: "I wholeheartedly apologise for my ill-judged remarks at the hustings and for any offence they caused. "I said sorry at the time and would like to apologise again for my comments, which were out of character and came at the end of a tiring day." Ruth Davidson, Leader of the Scottish Conservatives, to Jeremy Corbyn’s admission that he would open discussions with the Scottish Government over an independence referendum. She said:
Nicola Sturgeon has said she’d put Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10. Now Jeremy Corbyn says he is happy to ‘open discussions’ with her about a second referendum. Labour voters in Scotland now know that Jeremy Corbyn would sell them down the river. I will never fold against Nicola Sturgeon’s demand for a second referendum. It is clearer than ever that only by voting Scottish Conservatives on June 8th can we send her a message to take if off the table. Tom Watson, Labour's deputy leader, has accused the Conservatives of being “hell bent on viciously attacking Jeremy Corbyn”. He told The Guardian:
The more they avoid exposing the deficiencies of Theresa May to public scrutiny, the more people are beginning to realise that she’s not up to the job. You’ve only got to look at her handling of the dementia tax issue to know what a poor negotiator she is. Jeremy Corbyn has said that if he was PM he would have open discussions with the Government in Scotland and listen very carefully to what the Scottish Parliament has to say about the prospect of a second referendum. Asked during an interview with Bauer and Global radio stations: "Theresa May says now is not the time for another independence referendum. "You walk into Downing Street in a couple of weeks time what do you say to Nicola Sturgeon?" Mr Corbyn replied:
I'll obviously open discussions with the Government in Scotland and listen very carefully to what the Scottish Parliament says. I would ask them to think very carefully about it and suggest it would be much better to have this question dealt with at the conclusion of what are very serious and very important Brexit negotiations, where I am utterly determined to achieve tariff free trade access to the European markets to protect manufacturing and service jobs all across the UK, all across Scotland, Wales and England as well of course. Jeremy Corbyn has said he would open discussions with the SNP about holding an independence referendum if he became Prime Minister. The former Scottish first minister has revealed he has been campaigning through the pain barrier as he bids to keep his seat in the House of Commons. Mr Salmond said he had been in "agony" after cracking a rib during a visit to a village gala day in Aberdeenshire. The former SNP leader, who is the party's candidate in the Gordon constituency, told how he suffered the injury after scoring at a penalty shoot-out stall at the Kintore Summer Festival on Saturday May 20. He revealed details of the incident when he appeared on Scotland's Talk In on Bauer Radio, saying: "Listeners would have heard me cough occasionally, it's not so much that I've got a cold, I can't cough properly because I cracked my rib and it's agony every time I try to cough, or laugh, or sneeze - sneezing is the worst incidentally." He said it had been "monsoon conditions" when he went round the various stalls at the event. Mr Salmond said: "There was this penalty competition where you have to spin round the top 10 times, which makes you dizzy obviously. I spun round the top 10 times, scored with the penalty and then fell flat on my face. "I thought nothing of it, I jumped up and was fine, but at 10 o'clock on the Saturday night, my ribs started to ache. It was really, really score. "But I want it noted I did score with the penalty." These are some of the questions which have been submitted which Mr Corbyn could face:
Would you be where you are today if you hadn't gone to private school yourself? What kind of food do you have on board your battlebus? Is it healthy stuff, or are you living on crisps and Haribo Tangfastics? I've heard you have no sense of humour. Can you tell us a joke? What did you think of Theresa May holding hands with Donald Trump? Why didn't you show up for the Leaders debate? I felt like you didn't bother to argue for my vote. Was the manifesto leaked accidentally-on-purpose? The Conservatives have urged the Labour leader to "come clean" about his approach to Brexit and have asked a number of questions for him to answer about his negotiating plan. The questions include:
Sir Patrick McLoughlin, the Tory party chairman, said: "Eleven days after the polls close next week, Britain will be sitting down to tough negotiations with the EU 27 states. "The election is a clear choice about who we want at the table negotiating on our behalf; strong and stable Theresa May or shambolic Jeremy Corbyn." Great to meet my Election opponent Baron von Thunderclap of Monster Raving Loony party at Staplefield Fete #gobaron pic.twitter.com/laySicTTsq
Mrs May is asked what size of majority would make her decision to call the election worthwhile. She says she "never predicts election results" and that she called the election to stop people trying to "frustrate the Brexit process". "The poll that matters is the one that will take place on June 8," she says. Mrs May is then told that the election campaign has been subdued and that she has been something of a "glum bucket". Mrs May rejects the idea that the event in Twickenham is a campaign relaunch in the wake of the "dementia tax" controversy. She says she wants to make the UK "an even better place for all of us to live". Mrs May is asked if she was shocked by Angela Merkel's comments about not being able to rely on the UK post-Brexit. "No. We are not leaving Europe, we are leaving the European Union," she says. The Prime Minister says the UK is committed to working to keep Europe safe. She is then asked about reports that temporary exclusion orders have only been used once and that her record on security is as bad as Labour's would be. Mrs May rejects the accusation and says all decisions on TEOs are undertaken on a "case by case basis". Mrs May says the election is about standing up and dealing with the "burning injustices" still in place in the UK as she cites discrimination based on gender. She says "it is this party that has a plan for a prosperous Britain" and that she believes people will "come together" around the Conservatives' plan. She says the choice is "very simple" as she again raises the prospect of a "coalition of chaos". "I am offering myself as Prime Minister," she says. The Prime Minister says the election is about "taking us beyond Brexit" and that "every vote for me and my candidates" will help deliver a good deal. She says she now sees a "unity of purpose" across the UK and that the alternative to the Tories' "strong and stable" leadership "should worry us all". Mrs May attacks allies of Mr Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott "who can't add up". She says Labour "would be propped up by the Liberal Democrats and the SNP and what price would they extract?" "If you don't want Jeremy Corbyn negotiating Brexit you need to vote for local Conservative candidates," she says
Mrs May says that voters face a "simple choice: who do you trust to stand up for Britain and negotiate Brexit" her or the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. She says the UK must get the "best possible deal" and that she is the person to deliver it. The Prime Minister is stressing the need for whoever wins the election to have a Brexit plan because there will be no putting off negotiations which are due to start 11 days after June 8. She warns that a loss of just six Tories would result in her losing her majority. Mrs May says there are just 10 days to go in the election campaign as she says it is the most "crucial" election in her lifetime. She pays tribute to the victims of the Manchester suicide bombing as she thanks the "brave and dedicated" members of the emergency services who responded to the attack. Philip May is also attending the rally in south west London. The Prime Minister is due to deliver a speech in London this afternoon but it looks like the Lib Dems have got wind of the visit. The LibDems are outside Theresa May's Bank Holiday event. Just don't call it a relaunch. pic.twitter.com/ZTW9AlbyuX
Mr Goldsmith quit the House of Commons last year over the Government's support for Heathrow expansion, triggering a by-election in his Richmond Park constituency which he lost to the Liberal Democrats. He contested that election as an independent with the Tories opting not to run against him but he has now been welcomed back to the party and is running as a Conservative as he tries to win the seat back on June 8. Mrs May has been out on the campaign trail with Mr Goldsmith today to boost his efforts. The Scottish Greens have launched their election manifesto with an apology to supporters who cannot vote for them because they are only fielding three candidates. Co-convener Patrick Harvie, who has been an MSP for Glasgow for 14 years, is standing in the Glasgow North seat and has pledged to quit Holyrood if he is voted into Westminster. The only other Green candidates standing are Lorna Slater in Edinburgh North and Leith and Debra Pickering in Falkirk. The lack of candidates has been blamed on a lack of resources. The party's manifesto backs a second independence referendum to give people an alternative to a "hard Brexit UK", a commitment to push to keep freedom of movement and a promise to retain environmental regulations stemming from Brussels. Mr Harvie, who launched the manifesto in a Glasgow cafe, said: "I'm sorry to many Green voters around the country who don't have a chance to vote Green and I know many of them have been coming down to help in Edinburgh North and Leith, in Glasgow and in Falkirk, where we are able to stand candidates." And where people do not have the option of voting Green he urged them to "challenge all of their candidates on the issues that are most important to them". Earlier today Mr Raab, a former justice minister, said Trussell Trust data showed that a typical food bank user does so because of a "cash flow problem". A spokesman for the charity said: "Trussell Trust data shows that the main reasons for a foodbank referral are delays and changes to benefit payments and low income issues that include people who are struggling with low pay or insecure forms of employment. "It is our experience that people living in poverty are more likely to experience a sudden short-term crisis where they are referred for emergency food whilst the underlying causes are addressed." Mrs May was heckled in her own constituency by hunt saboteurs over her plans to give MPs a free vote on repealing the ban on fox hunting. | Famous Person - Give a speech | May 2017 | ['(The Telegraph)'] |
Voters in Tuvalu go to the polls for the general election. | Voters in Tuvalu go to the polls on Thursday to elect a new 15-member parliament, for a four-year term.
Twenty six candidates, including all the sitting MPs, are contesting the poll.
Polling stations are open from 8am - 4pm. Results are expected to start arriving in the capital, Funafuti, from early evening.
Government secretary Panapasi Nelesoni says it is hoped the final results will be in by midnight. | Government Job change - Election | September 2010 | ['(Radio New Zealand)'] |
Labour peer Peter Hain uses parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green as the British businessman who used an injunction to prevent allegations of sexual harassment against him being published in The Daily Telegraph. | Opposition MPs call for tycoon’s knighthood to be revoked after Peter Hain uses Lords speech to name him
First published on Thu 25 Oct 2018 15.15 BST
Sir Philip Green has been named as the businessman at the centre of an injunction linked to allegations known as the “British #MeToo scandal”, after a Labour peer used an ancient parliamentary right to name him in the House of Lords.
The Topshop retail tycoon was named in a dramatic intervention by the former cabinet minister Peter Hain, after days of speculation over a mystery businessman described by the Daily Telegraph as the subject of multiple sexual harassment and bullying allegations.
Green said he “categorically and wholly denies” any suggestion he was guilty of unlawful behaviour.
Court of appeal judges had granted a temporary injunction blocking the Daily Telegraph from publishing allegations of misconduct made by five employees about a figure the newspaper described as a “leading businessman”. The staff had signed non-disclosure agreements.
The court of appeal decision overturned an earlier finding by the high court that to identify the man would be in the public interest. It is thought the legal case cost Green around 500,000. The Telegraph said it would “reignite the #MeToo movement against the mistreatment of women, minorities and others by powerful employers”.
On Thursday, Lord Hain told the Lords he had decided to name Green, saying: “Having been contacted by somebody intimately involved in the case of a powerful businessman using non-disclosure agreements and substantial payments to conceal the truth about serious and repeated sexual harassment, racist abuse and bullying which is compulsively continuing, I feel it’s my duty under parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green as the individual in question, given that the media have been subject to an injunction preventing publication of the full details of a story which is clearly in the public interest.”
Green said he would not comment on any court proceedings or anything that was said in parliament, but issued a robust statement denying any wrongdoing.
“To the extent that it is suggested that I have been guilty of unlawful sexual or racist behaviour, I categorically and wholly deny these allegations,” he said. “[Topshop parent group] Arcadia and I take accusations and grievances from employees very seriously and in the event that one is raised, it is thoroughly investigated.
“Arcadia employs more than 20,000 people and in common with many large businesses sometimes receives formal complaints from employees. In some cases these are settled with the agreement of all parties and their legal advisers. These settlements are confidential so I cannot comment further on them.”
Parliamentary privilege is an ancient right allowing MPs to say what they wish in the parliamentary chambers without being sued for libel. That privilege has traditionally been used by the media to report on what was said. In 2011, the Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming named the footballer Ryan Giggs as the star who had taken out an injunction over an alleged affair with a reality TV star.
Members of the Lords did not react to Hain’s intervention and business proceeded to a routine statement on immigration by the Home Office minister Susan Williams.
Theresa May’s spokeswoman declined to comment on the naming of Green but said it was up to individual MPs or peers how they chose to exercise parliamentary privilege.
Speaking during prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, May said the government was already committed to reforming the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).
“Non-disclosure agreements cannot stop people from whistleblowing, but it is clear that some employers are using them unethically,” May said.
She said the government was going to bring forward its consultation “to seek to improve the regulation around non-disclosure agreements and make it absolutely explicit to employees when a non-disclosure agreement does not apply and when it cannot be enforced”.
A report from the women and equalities committee in July recommended that NDAs “must be better controlled and regulated” and that lawyers must be held to account if they used them unethically. Earlier this year the Solicitors Regulation Authority warned its members against inappropriate use of the agreements.
The shadow women and equalities secretary, Dawn Butler, said Labour would reform the use of NDAs unless the government did so first, saying: “If the current law doesn’t protect the voices of survivors, the next Labour government will legislate to do so.”
It is felt there will be calls for Green’s knighthood to be revoked if the allegations are proved, a decision that rests with the honours forfeiture committee which can consider a case when it is referred by the prime minister.
Frank Field, the chair of the work and pensions select committee who has clashed with Green on multiple occasions over BHS pensions, said: “The charge sheet against the knighthood is growing. Parliament and the country have made our views clear on this matter.”
The Labour MP Jess Phillips, who has been outspoken against the use of NDAs, said Green should have already been stripped of his knighthood. “If he isn’t now, a knighthood becomes meaningless. I’m glad that the rich and powerful do not get to buy impunity and today will be a shot across their bow.”
The Lib Dem leader, Vince Cable, also called for Green’s knighthood to be revoked. “He narrowly and luckily escaped losing his knighthood over the pensions scandal. If these allegations are correct, he should certainly be stripped of his knighthood.”
Field said he hoped to bring forward a mechanism in parliament where voices of bullying in the workplace could be heard via MPs, so they would not face the risk of being sued.
“I have been talking this evening with somebody who witnessed grotesque bullying at work,” he said. “They would like for what they witnessed to be shared, through the House of Commons, with the nation.”
He said a mechanism allowing MPs to speak on behalf of victims would “develop the role of the House of Commons in a way which stands up for people who have little money, against those who have much.”
Haindefended his decision to speak out on Thursday night telling the BBC’s Newsnight programme: “What concerned me about this case was wealth, and power that comes with it, and abuse. And that was what led me to act in the way that I did.It’s for others to judge whether I’ve been right or wrong.
“But there’s no point in being in Westminster - which is the sovereign centre of the British constitution, has sovereignty and with it the parliamentary privilege that is a privilege ... if you never discharge that; if you never deploy the precious rights of parliamentary privilege.” | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | October 2018 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Voters in Egypt go to the polls for a second day to vote in a presidential election. | Egyptians are voting for the second day in the country's first free presidential elections - 15 months after Hosni Mubarak was ousted.
Queues were reported at some polling stations, and media reports said turnout was higher than on Wednesday.
The election pits Islamists against secularists, and revolutionaries against Mubarak-era ministers. A row erupted between two of the main candidates for apparently spreading damaging rumours about each other.
In a BBC interview, Amr Moussa launched an angry attack on his rival Ahmed Shafiq and denied what he described as "sinister rumours" that he was about to withdraw from the race.
Mr Moussa and Mr Shafiq's campaigns have apparently been suggesting that the other is losing badly and is about to withdraw.
In all, 13 candidates are running.
The front-runners are: Mr Shafiq, Mr Fotouh and Mr Mursi have all been accused of breaking rules requiring candidates keep silent on polling days.
Voting has now been extended by an hour until 21:00.
The military council which assumed presidential power in February 2011 has promised a fair vote and civilian rule.
On Wednesday, there were large queues in many places, and voting passed off calmly for the most part. However, protesters in Cairo threw shoes and stones at a convoy of Mr Shafiq, who was Mr Mubarak's last prime minister.
There were also reports that a group of female voters was denied access to a polling station in the capital because they were wearing a full face veil.
The US hailed the election, with State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland describing it as a "milestone" in Egypt's transition to democracy.
Fifty million people are eligible to vote, and preliminary results are expected over the weekend.
Until a new constitution is approved it is unclear what powers the president will have, prompting fears of friction with a military which seems determined to retain its powerful position.
'Elections under tanks'
Voting across the country resumed at 08:00 local time (06:00 GMT). The authorities have declared Thursday a holiday. The BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo says some Egyptians may have been waiting for a second day of voting to avoid crowds.
Local TV reporters in several locations said turnout was higher than on the first day.
But in Alexandria the opposite appeared to be true, and military police were seen driving around urging people to vote.
NGOs and rights groups monitoring the election have reported some complaints. Egypt's National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) told the BBC it had received 50 complaints on electoral violations ranging from delay in opening voting booths, to campaigning for candidates outside polling stations during voting.
Meanwhile young people in Cairo told the BBC they had doubts about the vote.
"Has the revolution accomplished all of its goals? No," said Dina Kassem. "You know we still have so much to go [sic] like any other country. The French revolution took how many years? But you can see the fact of it today. And that's what we're hoping to bring to Egypt."
Assia Krim was less hopeful.
"Everyone is disappointed after the revolution. Elections under a military regime are not elections. Elections under tanks, I'm sorry - they are not elections," she said.
Counting will begin as soon as polls close, and some individual polling stations are expected to announce their results by Friday morning.
The results will then be collated and announced in full on Tuesday. No clear picture is likely to emerge until then.
A run-off vote is scheduled for 16 and 17 June if no candidate manages to get more than 50% of the votes. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), worried about potential post-election unrest, has sought to reassure Egyptians that it will be the voters themselves who decide who will be the next president.
The Arab Spring began last year in Tunisia, inspiring pro-democracy activists across the Arab world. Mr Mubarak, who was in power for three decades, resigned on 11 February 2011 after 18 days of protests in Cairo and other cities.
He is on trial for his alleged role in the deaths of protesters. A verdict is expected in June.
The period since he was forced from power have been turbulent, with continued violent protests and a deteriorating economy.
| Government Job change - Election | May 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Darren Scully, the mayor of the Irish town of Naas, resigns after the latest in a series of scandals, having made radio comments about the "aggressive attitude" of "black Africans". A police investigation into his actions is underway. | Fine Gael Councillor Darren Scully has resigned as Mayor of Naas after he said he would refuse to represent constituents of African origin.
Mr Scully said: "I wish to apologise unreservedly for my remarks on 4FM and KFM. I realise they have caused deep hurt and offence in all communities and in all sectors of society. "I realise now that my remarks were open to an interpretation that I did not intend. I abhor racism in all its forms."
A complaint was made to gardaí over Mr Scully's comments. Speaking to Clem Ryan on KFM's 'Kildare Today', Cllr Scully said he made his decision based on what he described as the "aggressive attitude" he has experienced when representations were made to him by "black Africans".
He said he would in future pass any representations from Africans on to other public representatives.
However, he stressed that this was his own view and not that of Naas Town Council.
A special meeting of Naas Town Council was called this evening to discuss the matter.
In a statement read after the meeting on behalf of the members, Councillor and Deputy Mayor Willy Callaghan said Mr Scully's comments in no way reflected the views of the council or the community.
He said the town is very inclusive to all nationalities and is providing a very welcoming environment to the many different backgrounds.
Earlier, Mr Scully said that over his seven years as a councillor his experiences of dealing with "black Africans" were not good.
He said most of the issues had to do with housing and he had been met "with aggressiveness and bad manners". Mr Scully said he has always made it clear that he would speak his mind and that following his comments last night he received "extremely nasty and abusive emails and text messages".
However, he insisted he made his decision based on the experiences that he has had "with every single case over seven years".
This afternoon, Labour's Aodhán Ó Riordáin made a complaint under the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act in relation to the comments.
A statement from Fine Gael said the views expressed by Cllr Scully do not reflect the views of Fine Gael and they were not party policy. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | November 2011 | ['(RTE News)', '(Daily Mail)', '(Irish Times)'] |
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda abruptly resigns less than a year after taking office, triggering a leadership election. | Japan's Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has announced his resignation during a news conference at his official residence.
The surprise announcement means the 72-year-old is resigning less than a year after he took office. His government has suffered chronic unpopularity. Lost pension records, a controversial healthcare scheme and a sliding economy have added to his woes. Mr Fukuda has also been frustrated by the upper house of parliament, which is controlled by the opposition. "If we are to prioritise the people's livelihoods, there cannot be a political vacuum from political bargaining, or a lapse in policies," said Mr Fukuda. He told the hastily convened news conference that a new team was needed to implement his party's policies. Low ratings
Mr Fukuda did not say when his resignation would take effect, adding that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party would hold an internal election to choose his successor. "I believe there will be an election for the party leader," he said. "The leader will be appointed as the prime minister." Japan's next general election must be held no later than September 2009. Last month, Mr Fukuda instigated a major cabinet reshuffle in which one of his main political rivals, Taro Aso, assumed the key role of secretary general. The move was seen as a last-ditch attempt to shore up Mr Fukuda's government and boost its flagging popularity, but it failed to impact low cabinet approval ratings, which had been below 30% for several months. Mr Aso, 67, went from being foreign minister to becoming party secretary general under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in August 2007. However, following Mr Abe's resignation, he left the post and lost the LDP leadership contest to Mr Fukuda soon afterwards. Known for his conservative views, he has advocated a tough line towards North Korea and rejects changing the law to allow women to ascend the throne. He is also seen as a charismatic figure who is known to love Japanese manga cartoons. What are these? | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | September 2008 | ['(BBC)'] |
Voters in twelve states of India go to the polls for the biggest day of voting during the election process. | Millions of Indians have voted in the biggest day of the general election pitting the ruling Congress party against the main opposition BJP.
Nearly 200 million voters were eligible to cast their ballots in 121 seats in 12 states, including Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The nine-phase vote began on 7 April and will conclude on 12 May. Votes will be counted on 16 May.
More than 814 million Indians are eligible to vote in the polls.
Election Commission officials say voter turnout in most states in the general election so far has been higher than in 2009.
Thursday was one of the most critical days of voting spread across 12 states, from Indian-administered Kashmir in the north, to the information-technology hub of Bangalore in the south, Rajasthan in the west and the tea-growing Himalayan town of Darjeeling in the east, the BBC's Sanjoy Majumder reported. "I want a clean government. One that is corruption free and that can take decisions in the interest of our country," a young woman voter in Rajasthan's Jaipur city told our correspondent. A young man said he was voting for BJP as its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi "represented change".
A Muslim voter, however, said people should vote for a "leader who will represent all communities, one who will take everyone along".
The southern state of Karnataka where voting was held in all the 28 seats on Thursday is a key battleground.
Bangalore South is one of the keenly contested seats in the state with Congress party's Nandan Nilekani, BJP's Ananth Kumar and the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Nina Nayak as candidates.
Mr Nilekani is the billionaire co-founder and former CEO of Infosys, one of India's largest IT services firms, while Mr Kumar is a former federal minister.
"I think my vote will make a change. I want my country to be a superpower. We have good candidates with a clean image who I am sure will give good governance," Anita, a first time voter, told BBC Hindi's Imran Qureshi.
Reports said voters streamed in through the day into polling stations even in the central state of Chhattisgarh where Maoist rebels had given a call to boycott the elections.
"I want a good life for my baby, security and peace,'' Associated Press quoted Neha Ransure, a 25-year-old woman voter in Rajnandgaon town as saying. "The rebels are bad. They kill our soldiers. I don't go outside of town. It is too dangerous," she added.
The anti-corruption Aam Aadmi (Common Man's) Party, which secured a spectacular result in local polls in Delhi last year, offers a challenge to the main parties.
Several smaller regional parties are also in the fray and if no single party wins a clear majority, they could play a crucial role in the formation of a government.
Thousands of police and paramilitary security personnel have been deployed across the country to ensure smooth polling.
The marathon vote is being staggered over five weeks for security and logistical reasons.
The main contest in the elections is between the Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi, and the BJP, led by the charismatic and controversial Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi.
Mr Modi, who is ahead in all the pre-election opinion polls, is the leader of Gujarat state, which witnessed one of India's worst anti-Muslim riots in 2002.
The BJP has promised to improve the economy and infrastructure and curb corruption if it wins in the general elections.
The Congress party has promised "inclusive growth" if it returns to power, with a raft of welfare schemes, including a right to healthcare for all and pensions for the elderly and disabled.
Any party or a coalition needs a minimum of 272 MPs to form a government.
India Election Commission
| Government Job change - Election | April 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
Iraqi insurgency: A series of attacks across Iraq kill 46 and injured 123 others. | At least 30 people have been killed in a series of attacks around Iraq, with dozens more injured.
Twin bomb attacks in Baghdad's mainly Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City on Saturday evening killed at least 13. Hours earlier, a bomb near a playground in the Bawiya neighbourhood of the capital killed several people, including at least three children.
Authorities had put security measures in place to try to prevent attacks over the four-day holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Another bomb exploded near Baghdad on a bus carrying Shia pilgrims, some of whom are reported to be Iranian.
"Nobody expected this explosion because our neighbourhood has been living in peace, away from the violence hitting the rest of the capital," Bawiya resident Bassem Mohammed told the Associated Press news agency.
"We feel sad for the children who thought that they would spend a happy time during Eid, but instead ended up getting killed or hurt," he added.
In the northern city of Mosul, gunmen burst into the homes of families belonging to the Shabak minority group, leaving several dead.
The Shabak are a minority in northern Iraq who have previously been the target of sectarian violence.
Several people were also injured when a bomb exploded in a Shia neighbourhood in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, north of Baghdad.
Violence in Iraq is down since the height of the insurgency in 2006 and 2007, but is still common. In recent months the rate of attacks has increased, mostly targeting security services and Shia Muslims.
In August, more than 90 people were killed in a wave of attacks before Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
| Armed Conflict | October 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Nina Bawden, the writer of seminal work Carrie's War and shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987 and the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010, dies at her London home. | Author Nina Bawden, who wrote the novel Carrie's War as well as more than 40 other books for children and adults, has died aged 87.
Published in 1973, Carrie's War was her most famous work, based on her World War II evacuation to south Wales.
She was also nominated for the Booker Prize in 1987 for Circles of Deceit.
In 2002, her husband was killed and she was badly injured in the Potters Bar train crash. She died at her London home on Wednesday surrounded by family.
Bawden was regarded as one of the few modern novelists to write successfully for both adults and children, and was admired for her insightful depictions of childhood and complicated family relationships.
She once said she liked writing for children because "most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right".
Writer PD James once called her "among the most perceptive and accomplished novelists writing today".
Playwright Sir David Hare, who portrayed Bawden in his play The Permanent Way, paid tribute to her as "an uncomplicatedly good woman, whose long fight to obtain justice for the victims of the Potters Bar crash was a model of eloquence, principle and human decency".
Bawden's publisher Lennie Goodings called the author "a gently fierce, clever, elegant, wickedly funny woman".
"She wrote slim books but they were powerful and extraordinarily acute observations about what makes us human," Goodings said. "She was a wonderful storyteller and she was writing to the end."
Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin children's division, described Bawden as "a wonderful storyteller, brilliant at stepping into the minds of her characters and conjuring up a powerful sense of time and place".
Author Valerie Grove added: "Nina Bawden is one of the most admirable women I know, and why she was never made a Dame, I can't imagine." Born Nina Mary Mabey in Ilford, Essex, in 1925, Bawden was evacuated at the age of 14, first to Ipswich and then south Wales.
The experience provided the template for Carrie's War, about the girl sent to live in a mining town, which was later added to the school curriculum. It was adapted twice for television by the BBC, while a stage production ran in the West End in 2009.
Bawden often used personal experience or family stories in her work. Her first children's book, The Secret Passage, published in 1963, was written for her three children after they discovered a secret passage in their cellar.
The Peppermint Pig, which won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 1976, was based on an old family tale, while The Outside Child told the story of a girl who discovered she had a half-brother and sister from her father's first marriage.
That followed the revelation, when in her 20s, that Bawden had a half-sister who had been sent away to live with cousins.
Her other novels included The Birds on the Trees, which was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize for the best books published in 1970, and Granny the Pag.
Towards the end of World War II, Bawden won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford, where she read politics, philosophy and economics alongside Margaret Roberts, later Baroness Thatcher.
Bawden was a member of the Labour Party and told the future Conservative prime minister they should "use our good fortune to make sure that, when the war ended, a new, happier, more generous society would take the place of the old one".
Bawden had hoped to become a journalist and, after graduating, was offered a job as a trainee reporter on the Manchester Evening News. But she turned it down when she married Harry Bawden and became pregnant.
Their child, Niki, grew up to suffer schizophrenia and become involved in drugs. He killed himself in 1981, aged 33.
He provided the basis for one of the characters in Bawden's Booker-shortlisted novel Circles of Deceit.
In 1954, Bawden was remarried, to Austen Kark, whom she had met on a bus.
On 10 May 2002, the couple were on their way to an 80th birthday party in Cambridge when their train derailed at high speed after leaving King's Cross.
Kark, who had risen to become managing director of the BBC World Service, died in the crash, while his wife suffered a broken ankle, arm, leg, shoulder, collarbone and ribs.
She campaigned to get answers after the accident, and received almost £1m in compensation from Network Rail and former rail contractor Jarvis.
In one of Bawden's last books, Dear Austen, the author told the story of the crash in the form of letters to her late husband.
Bawden was made a CBE in 1995 and received the prestigious ST Dupont Golden Pen Award for a lifetime's contribution to literature in 2004.
Her literary agent noted that, shortly before her death, the author was "delighted to learn that Macmillan's Bello imprint is to reissue her early crime books, including her first novel". | Famous Person - Death | August 2012 | ['(BBC)', '(The Guardian)', '(The Daily Telegraph)'] |
2007 Zasyadko mine disaster: Rescuers continue the search for 20 trapped miners, but a union official says there is "no chance" for them. | Rescuers are still searching for over 20 miners trapped underground after the blast that killed more than 70 others.
But raging underground fires have thwarted rescue efforts in the mine in the eastern Donetsk region.
Sunday's blast, caused by a build-up of methane gas, occurred more than 1,000m (3,280ft) below ground in what was one of Ukraine's worst accidents in years.
Hundreds of desperate relatives rushed to the mine after hearing the news. There was a bang, the temperature surged, and [there was] thick dust. You could see absolutely nothing
Vitali KvitkovskiZasyadko miner
As grim-faced mine officials later emerged to announce the names of the victims, many in the crowd began weeping and several fainted.
The head of the Ukrainian Free Miners' Union, Mykhailo Volynets, said it was now certain that all the missing men had died, says the BBC's Laura Sheeter, in Kiev.
Local authorities have declared three days of mourning for the blast's victims. Methane inhalation
At least 360 of the more than 450 miners who were below ground when the explosion happened at 0300 (0100 GMT) have now been rescued, emergency officials say.
In pictures: Deadly blast
One survivor described how he had to clamber over his dead colleagues along rail tracks to escape from the mine. Some 28 miners are now being treated in hospitals, many suffering from methane inhalation.
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych travelled on Sunday to the scene of the accident. He told reporters there had been a cave-in at the accident site, and that fire and smoke were also obstructing rescuers.
He also said a safety watchdog had reported that miners were working in accordance with regulations.
"This accident has proven once again that a human is powerless before the nature," Mr Yanukovych said, according to the Associated Press news agency.
On Monday, President Viktor Yushchenko was in Donetsk to chair a session of a commission investigating the disaster. Mr Yushchenko's office earlier quoted him as saying that the government had "made insufficient efforts to reorganise the mining sector, particularly the implementation of safe mining practices". Poor record
As fears grew, relatives gathered at the mine entrance trying to find news of their men.
"I've come here to collect my grandson," one woman told Reuters. "I accompanied him to work yesterday. Now I want to take him home."
One miner, Vitali Kvitkovski, told the BBC that just before the explosion, he had checked his instruments and the methane levels seemed normal.
"I was walking to the coal layer. There was a bang, the temperature surged, and [there was] thick dust. You could see absolutely nothing," Mr Kvitkovski said.
Ukraine's coal mines are among the most dangerous in the world, with a high number of fatal accidents.
Miners' pay varies according to the volume of coal produced, giving them an incentive to ignore safety procedures that would slow production, one union official said.
Anatoly Akimochkin told AFP most disasters were caused by concentrations of methane, which can occur suddenly.
In September 2006, a gas leak at the Zasyadko coal mine, one of Ukraine's largest, killed 13 miners and injured dozens more.
| Mine Collapses | November 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
Gunmen mount an attack on the office of the attorney-general of Afghanistan's Balkh Province in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif. | Gunmen dressed in military uniforms have stormed the office of the attorney general in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, killing at least 10 people and injuring more than 65.
Four attackers were seen entering the office, followed by heavy gunfire and several explosions. Five security officers - including a police chief - were among the dead and 26 government officials among the hurt.
A spokesman for the Taliban said they carried out the attack. The siege ended seven hours after it began and all four gunmen were killed by the Afghan National Security Forces which had surrounded the area.
Police said they rescued the attorney general from his office, which is just 200m (650ft) from the office of the governor of Balkh province. The governor's aide told the BBC that the governor, Atta Muhammad Nur, was at home when the attack began but was taken to his office to monitor the situation.
In a statement seen by the BBC, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said: "Breaking News: This noon suicide [attackers] stormed office of the attorney and appeal court of Balkh province. Heavy casualties for enemy, battle continues."
The Taliban has targeted Afghanistan's legal system in the past. In June 2013, the group detonated a car bomb in front of the compound of Afghanistan's Supreme Court, killing 17 and wounding 39.
And in December of 2014, Atiqullah Raufi, the chief of the secretariat of Afghanistan's Supreme Court, was assassinated by Taliban gunmen in the west of Kabul.
The attack in Mazar-e-Sharif comes a day after an American soldier was killed in a fire fight between US and Afghan troops in eastern Afghanistan.
| Armed Conflict | April 2015 | ['(BBC)'] |
Hundreds of thousands of government workers protest against the killing of Yashwant Sonawane, an official in Maharashtra, a murder which is said to have shocked people across India. | Tens of thousands of government workers in India have protested against the brutal killing of an official in the western state of Maharashtra. Yashwant Sonawane was burnt to death while investigating a fuel racket.
Nine people have been arrested in connection with Tuesday's murder which has shocked people across India. Mr Sonawane's death is being blamed by the government on the so-called fuel mafia - criminals who steal petrol and mix it with kerosene before selling it. State police are now carrying out raids on groups suspected of being involved in the activity. Tens of thousands of government officials in Maharashtra refused to work on Thursday in protest at the killing.
Several thousand attended a meeting in the state capital, Mumbai (Bombay), to mourn Mr Sonawane and demanded that they be given adequate protection while carrying out their duties.
"We will attend office but not work," GD Kulthe, secretary of the Maharashtra Gazetted Officers Mahasangh, told the BBC. "We are going to present a memorandum demanding strict action against all involved and better protection for government officers." Mr Sonawane had apparently tried to prevent a criminal gang from stealing fuel on the Nashik-Manmad highway some 200km (124 miles) from Mumbai, when he was attacked and burnt alive after being doused by kerosene. The killing has drawn people's attention to the issue of corruption, which has been a major concern in the country in recent months after a series of scams, says the BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi. | Protest_Online Condemnation | January 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Salisbury University defeats Trinity College 12–5 to win the Division III NCAA women's Lacrosse championship. | The University of North Carolina Tar Heels celebrate their 13-12 triple-overtime win over Maryland. (Drew Hallowell, Getty Images) Revenge was oh so sweet for Salisbury's women's lacrosse team, especially when it came with a national championship.
The Sea Gulls polished off a 23-0 season with a 12-5 victory and the Division III national championship by avenging last year's title-game loss to Trinity College in a battle of undefeated teams Sunday at Stevenson University's Mustangs Stadium.
"We've been cheering 'Redemption' all year and 'Road to redemption' and that word has really meant a lot to us," said Sea Gulls senior attacker Lauren Feusahrens, who scored five goals. "It definitely is awesome and it's also great to be the last undefeated team. It means a lot to be like, 'OK , we went up against someone hard and we finished and we won.'"
The top-seeded Bantams (21-1), from Hartford, Conn., are the only team to beat the Sea Gulls in their last 46 games, but that stinging 8-7 loss from last May's title game doesn't hurt anymore. The Sea Gulls are the 13th undefeated Division III women's lacrosse champion.
As Sunday's game ended and fireworks shot off from beyond the sideline, Sea Gulls junior goalie Ashton Wheatley, the tournament's Most Outstanding Player who had just run out the last 12 seconds, tossed the ball into the air as her ecstatic teammates swarmed her.
"As the time was getting closer and closer [to zero], I wanted to hold onto that ball and I wanted to see how many [Bantams] would chase me, because it didn't matter at that point," Wheatley said with a laugh. "I was just so excited. I like to be out of the goal running around, so I was just like, 'This is great. You couldn't ask for a better end to the game in my opinion.'"
Wheatley made nine saves in the title game after stopping 12 shots in the 8-7 semifinal win Saturday over Middlebury. She had six saves in Sunday's second half when the Bantams outshot Salisbury, 11-8. The Sea Gulls managed only a slight edge in the game, 21-18.
"She's a great goalie. There's no question she absolutely deserves to be tournament MVP," Trinity coach Kate Livesay said. "I think that was probably one of the biggest issues for our attackers. It wasn't just that they had to beat their defender, they then had to get the ball past her and that put a lot of pressure on our shooters. Knowing how good she is definitely affected the mindset of the shooters."
As the Sea Gulls won their second national championship in four years, Feusahrens scored four times in a 6-2 second-half run that sealed the victory. With nine assisted goals, Salisbury did a terrific job of moving the ball on attack and finding openings in a Bantams defense that had not allowed an opponent to score in double figures all season.
"We knew they were going to play that backer zone," Feusahrens said, "and we knew we were going to have to pull that one and two hole and [get] that girl off the crease and make them make slides they don't normally make, make that backer work hard to get around… We really stuck to our game plan and got the looks we wanted and finished them off really well."
Although they had to come back to beat Middlebury, coach Jim Nestor's Sea Gulls led Trinity from start to finish, getting on the board in the first minute and a half when Maggie Roundy fed Kara Koolage. Roundy's goal from Bethany Baer boosted the lead to 4-0 with 18:01 left in the half.
When Trinity took a time out, Nestor reminded his players that the Bantams had trailed SUNY-Cortland 3-0 in the semifinals, coming back to win 8-6.
The Bantams rallied with a couple of free-position goals to cut the lead to 4-2 with 1:52 left but Roundy and Baer finished off the half with back-to-back goals for a 6-2 lead at the break.
Megan Leonhard scored the first goal of the second half for the Bantams, but they couldn't maintain the momentum, because Wheatley, last season's Division III Goalie of the Year, stopped another Leonhard shot.
Koolage then fed Feusahrens for an extra-man goal and a 7-3 Sea Gulls lead with 26:56 to go. Caroline Hayes answered for the Bantams, but Katie Bollhorst and Feusahrens scored quick assisted goals from Kate Haker and Roundy, respectively and the Sea Gulls finished off the game with five of the last six goals.
Feusahrens, Baer, Roundy and Meghan Toomey were named to the All-Tournament Team.
[email protected]
S 6 6 -- 12
T 2 3 -- 5
Goals: S—Feusahrens 5, Roundy 2, Koolage, Bolllhorst, Baer, Haker, Nemecek; T—Leonhard (2), Hayes (2), Hildebrand. Assists: S—Roundy 3, Baer 2, Haker, Bollhorst, Koolage, Gartner; T—Kusiak, Griffin. Saves: S—Wheatley 9; T—Mooney 3, Whitney 0.
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A police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, kills a man during an attempted arrest following a traffic stop, leading to rioting and looting in the city and surrounding areas. | Gallery: Following a press conference that showed body camera video from the police shooting of Daunte Wright, a man follows a law enforcement officer inside the Brooklyn Center Police Department Monday in Brooklyn Center.
A Brooklyn Center police officer fatally shot a man during a traffic stop Sunday afternoon, inflaming already raw tensions between police and community members in the midst of the Derek Chauvin trial.
Relatives of Daunte Wright, 20, who is Black, told a tense crowd gathered at the scene in the northern Minneapolis suburb Sunday afternoon that Wright drove for a short distance after he was shot, crashed his car, and died at the scene.
Protesters later walked to the Brooklyn Center police headquarters near N. 67th Avenue and N. Humboldt Avenue and were locked in a standoff with police in riot gear late Sunday night. Officers repeatedly ordered the crowd of about 500 to disperse as protesters chanted Wright's name and climbed atop the police headquarters sign, by then covered in graffiti. Police used tear gas, flash bangs and rubber bullets on the crowd.
National Guard troops arrived just before midnight as looters targeted the Brooklyn Center Walmart and nearby shopping mall. Several businesses around the Walmart were completely destroyed, including Foot Locker, T Mobile, and a New York men's clothing store.
Looting was widespread late Sunday into early Monday, spilling into north and south Minneapolis. Reports said that stores in Uptown and along Lake Street were also being looted.
Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott issued a curfew order until 6 a.m. Monday. Precautions were being taken into Monday, with Brooklyn Center canceling or closing all school buildings, programs and activities.
Sunday's fresh outrage came as Twin Cities officials and law enforcement are already on edge as Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, stands trial on murder and manslaughter charges in the death of George Floyd.
Floyd's death 10 months ago sparked waves of protests and violent demonstrations across the cities, which seriously damaged hundreds of buildings.
Law enforcement has already been bracing for unrest once the jury reaches a verdict, erecting barricades and marshaling an intense police presence at the Hennepin County Government Center, where the trial resumes Monday.
The trial, which is being livestreamed, has drawn international attention.
Gov. Tim Walz tweeted that he was "closely monitoring the situation" and "praying for Daunte Wright's family as our state mourns another life of a Black man taken by law enforcement."
Elliott also tweeted, urging protesters to remain peaceful. According to Teddy Tschann, the governor's spokesman, Walz and Elliott spoke Sunday night.
The multi-agency security plan called Operation Safety Net, put in place for the Chauvin trial, held a news conference early Monday morning to provide an update on actions being taken in the aftermath of the shooting.
Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said Minneapolis will wake up to more National Guard stationed around the city due to reports of looting and shots fired. About 20 Brooklyn Center businesses were looted, he said, but crowds largely dispersed.
During the standoff with police, he said, "rocks and other objects" were thrown at law enforcement.
Harrington says he can't comment on the shooting but he said the Brooklyn Center Police Department does have bodycams, so there is likely video.
After the shooting, Brooklyn Center police said officers pulled over a vehicle for a traffic violation shortly before 2 p.m. in the 6300 block of Orchard Avenue.
The driver, who had a warrant, got back into the vehicle as officers were trying to take him into custody. That's when an officer discharged a weapon, striking the driver, police said. The vehicle traveled several blocks before crashing into another vehicle.
Officers and medical personnel performed lifesaving measures but the driver was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. A female passenger was taken to the hospital with injuries that weren't life-threatening.
Wright was identified by family members, not by authorities.
His family had said earlier that the shooting occurred in Plymouth but it had not.
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was on the scene and will conduct an independent investigation.
Brooklyn Center officers wear body cameras and the Police Department said Sunday that it believes the body cameras and dash cameras were on during the incident.
Wright's mother, Katie Wright, tearfully pleaded near the scene Sunday afternoon for more information and for her son's body to be moved from the street. She also urged the protesters to remain peaceful.
"All he did was have air fresheners in the car and they told him to get out of the car," Wright said, explaining that her son called her when he was getting pulled over. During the call, she said she heard scuffling and then someone saying "Daunte, don't run" before the phone call ended. When she called back, her son's girlfriend answered and said Daunte had been shot.
"He got out of the car, and his girlfriend said they shot him," she said. "He got back in the car, and he drove away and crashed and now he's dead on the ground since 1:47. ... Nobody will tell us anything. Nobody will talk to us. ... I said please take my son off the ground."
A woman who lives near the crash scene, Carolyn Hanson, said she saw officers pull a man out of a car and perform CPR. A passenger who got out of the vehicle was covered in blood, she said.
Within hours of the shooting, a couple hundred people had gathered near the scene, where emotions were running high.
Protesters pushed past police tape and confronted officers donning riot gear. Around 7:15 p.m., the crowd broke the windshields of two squad cars and police fired nonlethal rounds to try to disperse the crowd.
By 8:30 p.m., the remaining crowd gathered to light candles, burn sage and write messages in chalk on the street near the scene.
| Riot | April 2021 | ['(Minneapolis Star-Tribune)'] |
Opposition parties say that they will not recognize the election's result, which gave incumbent President John Magufuli another term. The Chadema party calls for fresh elections. | DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania’s two leading opposition parties said on Saturday they would not recognise the results of a presidential election that handed incumbent John Magufuli a second five-year term.
On Friday, Tanzania’s National Electoral Commission declared Magufuli the winner of Wednesday’s poll, with 84% of the vote against 13% for his opponent, Tundu Lissu of the Chadema party.
Presidential and parliamentary elections were held simultaneously in mainland Tanzania and semi-autonomous Zanzibar, an Indian Ocean archipelago.
“We are calling on the international community and bodies not to recognise what was referred to as a general election, and we call on them to take appropriate action,” Chadema chairman Freeman Mbowe said in comments posted on the party’s Twitter account.
“We demand fresh elections as soon as possible.”
Mbowe, who led the opposition in parliament, lost his long-held seat in the vote and urged opposition supporters to demonstrate on Monday against the handling of the election, which Lissu has called a “travesty”.
Zitto Kabwe, the leader of another major opposition party, ACT-Wazalendo, was among dozens of opposition candidates who lost their seats in parliament to the ruling CCM party. ACT-Wazalendo on Saturday joined the calls for protests against the result.
In a video tweeted by police, senior police official Liberatus Sabas said “illegal assemblies and demonstrations” would not be permitted.
In Zanzibar, 33 people were detained over alleged election-related offences, police commissioner, Mohammed Haji Hassan, said.
In his bid for a second term, Magufuli promised to boost the economy by completing infrastructure projects started in his first term, such as a hydro-electric dam, a railway line and new planes for the national carrier.
But the opposition and rights groups have complained that his administration has cracked down on critical voices, closing down media outlets and preventing opposition rallies.
The main challenger, Lissu, was shot 16 times in 2017 in what remains an unsolved case.
The government has denied stifling dissent.
The United States has said it was concerned about “reports of systematic interference in the democratic process” during the election.
The vote was marred by allegations of irregularities, including the use of force against unarmed civilians, pre-ticking of ballots, the detention of opposition officials and restrictions on political party agents accessing polling stations, the U.S. Embassy said.
But in a preliminary statement, the East African Community’s Election Observer Mission said that the electoral commission had “organised the elections in a professional manner”.
| Government Job change - Election | October 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vows that the Turkish Armed Forces will stay on Cyprus "in perpetuity" and that the proposal of a rotating presidency for a unified island is unacceptable, casting doubts on an eventual solution to the dispute. The remarks come as the latest round of unity talks end, with them to restart on January 18. | President says Turkish troops will be on island in perpetuity and proposed terms of rotating presidency are unacceptableThe Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appears to have thrown an obstacle in the path to a Cyprus peace settlement, saying Turkish troops will be on the island in perpetuity. Speaking after talks in Geneva were adjourned, Erdoğan also said on Friday that the envisaged terms of a rotating presidency for a unified island were unacceptable. The terms were a cornerstone of planned new governance arrangements.
The remarks, taken at face value, suggest UN peace efforts have probably not got as close to a deal as the UN sought to suggest at the end of the four days of talks on Thursday. The conference ended with an agreement that officials would restart detailed talks on 18 January. No date was set for a further meeting at the political level.
A peace settlement for the island, divided since 1974, would need a new form of security guarantee, and Greek Cypriots are demanding a timetable for the removal of 30,000 Turkish troops.
On Friday the Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, reiterated that demand, saying: “Our position remains … that we must agree on the withdrawal of the Turkish army.”
But Erdoğan had a very different message. “We have told Cyprus and Greece clearly that they should not expect a solution without Turkey as guarantor,” he said. “We are going to be there forever.”
In a sign of flexibility, he later added that Turkish troops would be on the island for as long as Greek troops were present. One proposal discussed in Geneva has been for an entirely demilitarised island.
The fact that the conference for the first time dealt with the issue of guarantees, seen as the most difficult issue facing the negotiators, is regarded as progress in the intractable dispute. At present the three security guarantors are Turkey, Greece and the UK, as the former colonial power. A UN force is on on the island on the buffer zone to prevent a return to inter-communal violence.
Turkish officials released remarks by the foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, to the conference insisting Turkey was not willing to abandon its security role.
Çavuşoğlu reportedly told the closed-door session in Geneva: “Taking into consideration the current situation in our region, the continuation of the security and guarantees system, which has been the solid basis of the 43-year-long security and stability on the island, is a necessity”.
Some argue Erdoğan cannot afford to compromise on the issue of Turkish troops while he isbattling with his parliament to secure majority support for an executive presidency, his chief political goal at present. Votes are going his way in the parliament by relatively narrow margins.
Greece put forward a variety of plans for a new security guarantee, including looking at the model of German troops after the withdrawal of Russia from East Germany.
Britain retains military bases in Cyprus that are sovereign British territory, but it has offered to give up nearly half of its land as part of a final settlement.
Anastasiades sought to put a more optimistic gloss on the talks, saying: “The working groups had a mandate to process new forms [of guarantees], acceptable and radically different from the guarantee system of 1960.”
He said the presence of Turkish troops was “a source [of] and maintains instability, which is why the Cyprus problem has been open 43 years. But what one should focus on is that we are discussing ways to find a solution which will reflect the security concerns of all Cypriots.”
Turkey’s participation in the talks showed it was prepared to cooperate, he added. “It’s not a question of hope. While the dialogue is alive and steps are taken which allow a dialogue, I live in hope,” he said.
Any deal would need to be approved by referendums in both the Turkish-dominated north and the Greek-controlled south. | Government Policy Changes | January 2017 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Atonement wins the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama at the 65th Golden Globe Awards. Sweeney Todd wins the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. | Presenter Lara Spencer announces Cate Blanchett of "I'm Not There" as the winner of the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress Motion Picture at a news conference for the 65th annual Golden Globe awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., Sunday, Jan. 13, 2008. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
By DAVID GERMAIN – 3 days ago BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — The tragic romance "Atonement" was named best drama Sunday at a Golden Globes event that was deflated from star-studded revelry to dry, news conference-style awards announcement because of the Hollywood writers strike.
The bloody stage adaptation "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" was chosen as best musical or comedy. Its star, Johnny Depp, won for best actor in a musical or comedy for the title role, playing a vengeful barber who slits the throats of his customers in the adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's stage musical.
Also winning two awards was the crime saga "No Country for Old Men," which earned the screenplay Globe for writer-directors Ethan and Joel Coen and the supporting actor honor for Javier Bardem as a merciless killer tracking a fortune in crime cash poached by an innocent bystander who stumbles onto a drug deal gone bad.
"Thank you to the Hollywood Foreign Press!" said Bardem in a written statement after his win. "It is a great honor to have been recognized with this award in a time when there are so many outstanding performances in this category."
"Atonement," which led contenders with seven nominees, also won for best score. The film stars Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, both losers in the best dramatic acting categories, in a period drama that traces the dire consequences that follows a jealous teen's false criminal accusation against her sister's new lover.
Daniel-Day Lewis was named best dramatic actor for the historical epic "There Will Be Blood," in which he plays a baron of California's oil boom in the early 20th century whose commercial interests put him at odds with a young preacher.
Julie Christie won best dramatic actress for the gloomy drama "Away From Her," starring as a woman succumbing to Alzheimer's who forms a new attachment to a fellow patient that causes heartache for her steadfast husband.
Cate Blanchett won the first award of the night, taking the supporting actress Globe for the Bob Dylan tale "I'm Not There." And like Blanchett, who took the honor for the gender-bending role as one of six actors playing incarnations of Dylan, no other winners were there, either.
Actors and filmmakers skipped the Golden Globes because of the two-month-old strike by the Writers Guild of America, which had planned pickets outside the show if organizers had tried to do their usual televised ceremony. Globe planners and NBC canceled the three-hour star-studded bash in favor of an hour-long news conference at which clips of film and TV nominees were shown and reporters from entertainment news shows announced winners.
Marion Cotillard won for best actress in a musical or comedy for a remarkable personification of singer Edith Piaf in "La Vie En Rose," playing the French icon from youth through middle age and into her ailing final years.
The rodent tale "Ratatouille" — directed by the Brad Bird, who made Academy Award winner "The Incredibles" — was named best animated film.
Among TV recipients, Jeremy Piven won for his supporting role as an acerbic agent in HBO's "Entourage," his first win after three previous nominations. Samantha Morton supporting actress for "Longford."
Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder won the prize for best original song in a movie for "Guaranteed," featured in director Sean Penn's road drama "Into the Wild."
"We all hope that the writers strike will be over soon so that everyone can go back to making good movies and television programs which is what the Golden Globes were designed to celebrate," said Jorge Camara, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that hands out the Globes, said at the start of the news conference.
"Rest assured that next year, the Golden Globe awards will be back bigger and better than ever," Camara said at the close of the news conference, which had been announced as an hour-long event but lasted just 30 minutes.
On strike since Nov. 5, the Writers Guild of America refused to let union members work on the star-studded banquet-style show, prompting actors to boycott the ceremony rather than cross picket lines.
Although the guild called off pickets it had planned outside the news conference, the strike left one of Hollywood's brightest and giddiest nights in shambles. Despite the gowns and formal wear, the Globes are known as a freewheeling cousin of the Academy Awards, a place where stars can have a few drinks and cut loose as they celebrate the year's achievements in film and television.
The Beverly Hilton hotel, normally awash with celebrities, was so barren of stars that "Entertainment Tonight" host Mary Hart was surrounded by photographers and TV cameras as she entered the ballroom where the Globes were announced.
The fate of Hollywood's biggest night, the Feb. 24 Oscars, remains uncertain. Guild leader Patric Verrone has said writers would not be allowed to work on that show, either, which could force stars to make an even tougher choice on whether to stay away or cross the picket line.
Oscar organizers insist their show will come off as planned, with or without the writers.
With two best-picture categories, drama and musical or comedy, the Globes traditionally have had a good shot for one of its movie winners to come away with the top prize at the Oscars. But the Globes have not correctly forecast an Oscar best-picture winner in four years, the last one being "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King."
Writers walked off the job over their share of potential profits from programming on the Internet and other new media.
As a result of their strike, films may not get quite the same box-office bounce they typically receive after winning high-profile prizes, which can add tens of millions of dollars to their haul during the long awards season. Yet actors and writers say tough action is needed to make sure creative people get their fair financial share for the long haul. | Awards ceremony | January 2008 | ['(AP via Google News)'] |
The New England Patriots reach an agreement to sign quarterback Cam Newton. He will replace the Patriots' longtime quarterback Tom Brady, who left the team in March. | The New England Patriots have reached an agreement with free-agent quarterback Cam Newton, bringing in the 2015 NFL Most Valuable Player to help the team move on from three-time MVP Tom Brady, a person with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press.
The one-year deal is worth up to $7.5 million with incentives, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly. A Patriots spokesman said the team had nothing to announce Sunday night. The signing was first reported by ESPN.
“I’m as excited as I don’t know what right now!!” Newton posted on Instagram. “All praise to God!! Dropping content tomorrow!! I hope you’re ready!! Let’sgoPats.”
The Patriots had been heading to training camp with 2019 fourth-round draft choice Jarrett Stidham as the heir apparent to Brady, who led the team to six Super Bowl championships since 2001 but signed with Tampa Bay this offseason. Stidham appeared in three games last season, completing two passes for 14 yards with one interception. The only other experienced quarterback on the defending AFC East champions’ roster was 34-year-old Brian Hoyer, who has started 38 games in an 11-year career with seven NFL teams, including the Patriots twice. A three-time Pro Bowl selection who was the league’s top player in 2015, Newton remains the NFL’s all-time leader in touchdowns rushing by a quarterback. He had one year remaining on a five-year, $103.8 million contract, but the Panthers saved $19.1 million under the salary cap by releasing him on March 24.
The 31-year-old Newton was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2011 draft after leading Auburn to a national championship and winning the Heisman Trophy. He helped the Panthers reach the playoffs four times, including the Super Bowl in 2015.
The Panthers finished 15-1 that season and Newton won league MVP honors after throwing for 3,837 and 35 touchdowns and rushing for 636 yards and 10 TDs. But he was criticized after Carolina’s 24-10 loss to the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl for not jumping on a loose ball late in the game and cutting his postgame news conference short.
After missing the postseason in 2016, the Panthers returned after going 11-5 the next year, losing to the New Orleans Saints in the wild-card round. More problematic, a shoulder injury severely hampered his throwing in 2018; after starting 6-2, the Panthers lost their next seven games.
Newton had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff before the 2019 season. But he injured his foot in a brief appearance in the third preseason game against New England; he played only two games last season before being placed on injured reserve with a broken bone in his foot.
Newton has been rehabbing ever since, posting several workout videos on Instagram. But because of the new coronavirus, he hasn’t had a chance to meet with other teams to show he’s healthy.
In nine seasons, he has completed 2,371 passes for 29,041 yards and 182 touchdowns with 108 interceptions. He has also run for 4,806 yards and 58 scores. ___ | Sign Agreement | June 2020 | ['(AP)'] |
British department store chain British Home Stores collapses into administration after a last–minute rescue deal fails. The collapse of the retailer, which employs 11,000 people, is the biggest failure on the UK's high street since the collapse of Woolworths Group in 2008. | Administrators Duff & Phelps will keep stores open as they try to find a buyer for the department store chain
First published on Mon 25 Apr 2016 08.26 BST
BHS has officially collapsed into administration after failing to agree a last-minute deal to rescue the department store chain.
The demise of the retailer, which employs 11,000 people, is the biggest failure on the high street since that of Woolworths in 2008. Duff & Phelps has been appointed as administrators and will keep stores open as it tries to find a buyer for BHS.
The government is expected to make a statement on the failure of the 88-year-old retail group in parliament this afternoon, either through Sajid Javid, the business secretary, or Anna Soubry, the business minister.
The Pensions Regulator has confirmed that it is investigating BHS, suggesting that the regulator is considering whether to force Sir Philip Green, the former owner of the retailer, to contribute towards the company’s £571m pension deficit.
In a statement, Duff & Phelps said: “The group has been undergoing restructuring and, as has been widely reported, the shareholders have been in negotiations to find a buyer for the business. These negotiations have been unsuccessful. In addition, property sales have not materialised as expected in both number and value.
“Consequently, as a result of a lower than expected cash balance, the group is very unlikely to meet all contractual payments. The directors therefore have no alternative but to put the group into administration to protect it for all creditors. The group will continue to trade as usual whilst the administrators seek to sell it as a going concern. Further announcements will be made as appropriate in due course.”
Duff & Phelps was understood to have had more than 30 expressions of interest in buying BHS by midday on Monday.
The collapse of BHS presents another problem for the government as it attempts to save thousands of jobs in the steel industry. The retailer had failed to secure the emergency funding that it needed to pay wages and rent.
Javid said the government was in talks with BHS management about the retailer’s collapse.
Dominic Chappell, the owner of BHS, said in a letter to employees on Sunday night: “It is with a deep heart that I have to report, despite a massive effort from the team, we have been unable to secure a funder or a trade sale.”
He indicated in the letter that staff wages for this month would be paid by the administrators. Chappell led the Retail Acquisitions consortium that bought BHS from Green for £1 last year. However, the retailer has struggled with falling sales, a hefty rent bill and a pensions deficit.
In a rare public statement, the Pensions Regulator said it is investigating BHS’s pension deficit amid calls for Green to contribute towards to the scheme.
“We can confirm that we are undertaking an investigation into the BHS pensions scheme to determine whether it would be appropriate to use our anti-avoidance powers,” a spokesperson said. “Such cases are complex. There is a clear process that must be followed and this can sometimes take a considerable amount of time. We are unable to provide a running commentary on case investigations or confirm the targets of our investigation.” Green has already held talks with the Pensions Regulator about injecting cash into the company’s pension scheme. He is thought to have offered £40m in cash and a £40m loan secured against BHS’s assets.
Trade unions described the collapse of BHS as devastating. John Hannett, the Usdaw general secretary, said: “This is devastating news for the employees of BHS and we urge the company to change their attitude to trade unions and begin a dialogue with us at this difficult and worrying time.
“We also urge the administrators and the company to comply with the law, consult with staff and Usdaw as the union for BHS workers. We don’t want to see BHS staff locked out of discussions, sent to the back of the queue of creditors and treated like fixtures and fittings, as happened at Woolworth’s.
“The government needs to intervene now to protect taxpayers from picking up the bill for redundancy payments and safeguard the Pension Protection Fund.
“We are in touch with our members working in BHS to reassure them that we will provide the support, advice and representation they require.”
At the retailer’s store in Oxford Street, central London, customers were waiting outside before it opened as usual. Nicolette Kadzeya, 39, who was there with her three children, was looking to exchange an unwanted item. “I think the problem with BHS is that this branch is very up to date, but if you go to the branch in Surrey Quays, it’s as if you have gone back in time. It’s like you’ve gone back to the mid-90s,” she said.
“Some of the branches which are outside London are not that well maintained. It’s a bit old fashioned as well. They are good for school shoes but it’s not really up to date.”
The demise of BHS comes a month after the retailer appeared to have secured its short-term survival by persuading landlords to cut its rent by up to 75% at 87 shops. However, even as landlords, suppliers and creditors voted overwhelmingly in favour of the survival plan, known as a company voluntary arrangement, BHS warned that it needed to find £100m to continue trading.
It attempted to raise the money with £30m of property sales, a new £60m loan from private equity firm Gordon Brothers and £10m from changing the terms of its agreement with suppliers. On top of this, it needed to bring in another £70m from selling property to pay off a separate loan from Grovepoint.
But it failed to raise enough cash from property sales and the deal with Gordon Brothers fell apart. Talks with the private equity firm were already complex, because Green needed to release security that he held over BHS’s assets for the loan to go through.
Green, who bought BHS for £200m in 2000, is understood to have been ready to agree to the loan, but the funds from Gordon Brothers were not enough without the property deals, and the strict terms led to the talks collapsing.
Talks over the weekend with Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct also appear to have come to nothing.
BHS’s chief executive, Darren Topp, said on Sunday that £60m needed to be found urgently to keep the company afloat. “What was on the table wasn’t sufficient and we have been working in the last few days to fill the gap,” he said. | Organization Closed | April 2016 | ['(BHS)', '(The Guardian)'] |
In Lebanon, opposition leaders blame Syria for the death of Samir Qasir and demand resignation of president Émile Lahoud (Daily Star, Lebanon) | The Lebanese opposition demanded President Emile Lahoud to step down over the killing of a prominent anti-Syrian journalist on Thursday. Samir Qasir, 45, a supporter of Lebanon’s anti-Syrian opposition and a front-page columnist for Lebanon’s leading newspaper al-Nahar, was instantly killed in Thursday’s bomb attack which took place in a mostly Christian residential area east of Beirut. The opposition released a statement saying that Lahoud must resign over Qasir’s killing, which came amid the country’s parliamentary elections. Lahoud denounced the attack and Syria rejected opposition accusations that it masterminded the assassination attack. Qasir was the most prominent Lebanese figure to be killed since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which plunged the country into its worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 war and led to the Syrian withdrawal. General strike
The opposition statement said that Lahoud must resign “as the effective head of the security and intelligence regime". It also called for a general strike on Friday to protest Qasir's killing, which took place as an international team was investigating Hariri’s assassination. Anti-Syrian leaders were quick to make a connection between the two killings. Hariri’s son and political heir, Saad Hariri, said the same people were involved in both assassinations, “and God knows what’s coming.”
“We will not be afraid. ... We want our freedom, we want our independence, we want our sovereignty and no one is going to stop us,” he told reporters. Elias Atallah, a leader of the Democratic Left party - to which Qasir had close relations - blamed Lebanon's "president and the joint Lebanese-Syrian intelligence agencies" for assassinating "a symbol of the free press". A government source in Syria denied the accusations, saying that they reflected "pre-determined anti-Syrian stances". In Washington, the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denounced the attack, saying that it was a "heinous" attempt to intimidate the Lebanese amid the legislative elections, due to end on 19 June. She also demanded the Lebanese government to investigate Qasir's death. Visiting EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana also said that Qasir’s killing was a “tragedy”, adding that he was “a very honest man.” Related links... | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | June 2005 | ['(Al-Jazeera)', '(BBC)'] |
Iraqi election officials order a manual recount of votes cast in Baghdad after complaints are raised. | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi election review panel on Monday ordered a recount of votes cast in Baghdad in the March 7 election, raising the prospect of a change in results that gave a cross-sectarian group backed by Sunnis a slim lead.
Officials register the serial numbers on locks used for parliamentary election ballot boxes at a counting centre in Baghdad March 18, 2010.
Any revision could inflame sectarian tensions at a time when Iraq is emerging from the worst of the fighting between minority Sunnis and majority Shi’ites that was unleashed after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Electoral commissioner Hamdiya al-Husseini said the manual recount of more than 2.5 million ballots would begin immediately but she was not sure how long it would take.
The capital accounts for over a fifth of seats in the 325-seat parliament, making it a key prize, and Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law alliance had sought a recount after coming a close second in the election.
“I think the results will be changed after the recount,” Maliki said at a news conference.
“This decision is a triumph for Iraqi justice. Everybody must respect the ruling released by the appeal panel because it followed legal procedures,” added Maliki, whose personal stature was boosted on Monday by news that Iraqi forces had killed al Qaeda’s top two leaders in Iraq.
Seen as a milestone for Iraq as it signs multibillion-dollar deals with global oil firms to develop its vast crude reserves and as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw, last month’s ballot produced no outright winner.
The Iraqiya list of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi came in first with 91 seats, according to preliminary results, after winning the broad backing of Sunnis frustrated at the Shi’ite political supremacy since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Maliki’s State of Law won 89 seats while their erstwhile Shi’ite allies grouped in the Iraqi National Alliance got around 70. Minority Kurds who enjoy virtual autonomy in the north collectively control about 58 seats.
The blocs have been involved in negotiations to form coalitions to create a working majority in the next parliament and select a prime minister. Those talks are likely to be put on hold until the vote recount is concluded and the various factions know how strong their hands are.
Maliki’s alliance and the INA, led by religious parties with close ties to Tehran, have been inching towards a union that could sideline Allawi, a step that would likely anger Sunnis.
While Allawi is a Shi’ite Muslim, Sunni supporters regard his strong showing in the election as a vindication of their claim that they deserve to exert greater influence over Iraq than they feel they have been granted in the last seven years.
There was no immediate public reaction to the news of the recount from Allawi himself.
Haider al-Mulla, a member of a Sunni party within Allawi’s coalition, said the ruling by the review panel showed that Maliki’s government had undue influence over the judiciary.
“This decision will result in consequences which throw the legality of the election onto the edge of a precipice and threaten the entire political process,” Mulla said.
Husseini of the independent electoral commission said it was only votes in Baghdad that were going to be re-tallied.
“Most of the appeals were about the results in Baghdad and for this reason they only decided to order a recount in Baghdad,” she told Reuters.
Tariq Harb, a lawyer for the State of Law, said it presented 24 boxes of files containing proof of voting irregularities to the review panel hearing complaints about the election.
The panel has to finish reviewing more than 300 complaints filed by various parties before the election results can be certified. That could take several more weeks, officials said.
Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim; Writing by Michael Christie; Editing by Jon Hemming
| Government Job change - Election | April 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(Financial Times)', '(Reuters)'] |
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled her visit to a mosque after a protest group threatened to "invade the mosque" during scheduled prayers . | Muslims opposed to her trip to the Masjide Al Hidayah mosque in Blackburn had planned to demonstrate there, spokesman Ibrahim Masters said.
He said high-profile visits should be used to benefit the Muslim community.
"I feel extremely disappointed and angry with some people because they've proposed this action," he said.
"The visit wasn't cancelled because we don't like Condoleezza Rice.
I feel that we will not get this opportunity again
Ibrahim Masters
"What these people had threatened to do was invade the mosque during dawn prayers.
"I feel extremely disappointed and angry, to be honest with you, with some people because they've proposed this action," Mr Masters continued.
"I feel that we will not get this opportunity again. "We have to use these type of visits - very high-profile visits - for our benefit and that's what we proposed to do. "We are extremely unlikely to get another opportunity like this to show the non-Muslim world that Mosques have nothing to hide and non-Muslims have nothing to fear."
Straw's identity was a mystery to most in Alabama
He said the decision followed a meeting between the mosque's governing committee and members of the Stop the War Coalition.
Dr Rice's official visit to Blackburn and Liverpool begins on Friday.
Her call at the mosque on Millham Street was cancelled over safety concerns.
However, plans for her to meet staff at the 1,200-pupil Pleckgate High School in Blackburn have not been affected, despite up to 50 people protesting outside the school on Thursday.
Dr Rice is visiting Blackburn to repay a visit Foreign Secretary Jack Straw made to her home town in Alabama in 2005.
I'm disappointed that it is not possible for Secretary Rice to visit this mosque
Jack Straw
Mr Straw said on Thursday: "I'm disappointed that it is not possible for Secretary Rice to visit this mosque but she is going to see plenty else of Blackburn, and will be able to meet many many members of the Asian community in town, so I'm looking forward to the visit, more importantly so is she."
In addition to meeting dignitaries in Mr Straw's constituency, she will also attend a gala concert at the Liverpool Philharmonic.
She will also attend Blackburn Cathedral on Saturday. The Dean of Blackburn, the Very Rev Christopher Armstrong, said her visit would "promote peace and justice in the global community." "I am delighted that they will both be able to spend time with us, sharing in some of the reflective resources which we provide for the whole community," he added. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "It's a pity that we will not be visiting a mosque in Blackburn.
'Historic decision'
"Everything we are doing on this visit is being done with respect to the communities involved, taking their views into consideration.
"We are looking forward to meeting Muslim and civic leaders during the visit."
Stop the War is planning demonstrations in Blackburn on Saturday morning and in Liverpool before the concert.
Dr Rice has been invited to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra concert to celebrate the city's status as European Capital of Culture 2008.
The trip has already caused controversy with poet Roger McGough pulling out of plans to compere the event.
Dr Rice is also due at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA) on Friday evening, where the choir will sing to her. | Diplomatic Visit | March 2006 | ['(see Condoleezza Rice visit to Blackburn and Liverpool)', '(BBC)'] |
The pastor of a Catholic parish in Northboro, Massachusetts, is removed after the Worcester diocese discovered more than $200,000 missing from parish accounts. | The pastor of a Catholic parish in Northboro, Massachusetts, has been removed after the Worcester diocese discovered more than $200,000 missing from parish accounts. Worcester’ Bishop Robert McManus informed members of St. Bernadette parish that the pastor, Father Stephen Gemme, had been removed in July after he acknowledged a gambling problem. A thorough check of parish finances then uncovered the missing funds. Father Gemme has resigned as pastor, and is now on a “medical leave of absence,” the bishop disclosed. The diocese has referred the case to local law-enforcement officials, and Bishop McManus said that he hoped for full restitution of the missing funds.
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | October 2013 | ['(Catholic World News)'] |
Salva Kiir, the President of South Sudan, visits the People's Republic of China seeking assistance to build an oil pipeline. | The president of newly independent South Sudan is lobbying China for investment in his country's oil industry and diplomatic support in an escalating conflict with Sudan that's threatening to become an all-out war.
Sudan and South Sudan, which broke away from its neighbor and became independent last year, have been unable to resolve disputes over sharing oil revenue and determining a border. Talks broke down this month, and a Sudanese military bombing in South Sudan killed at least two people Monday.
China's energy needs make it deeply vested in the future of the two Sudans, and Beijing is uniquely positioned to exert influence in the conflict given its deep trade ties to the resource-rich south and decades-long diplomatic ties with Sudan's government in the north.
Both have tried to win Beijing's favor, but China has been careful to cultivate ties with each nation. Like others in the international community, China has repeatedly urged the two sides to return to negotiations.
President Salva Kiir is making his first visit to China since taking office. He opens a new embassy and meets Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday, and sees Vice Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday.
The Financial Times on Sunday quoted South Sudan's lead negotiator Pagan Amum as saying Kiir would be seeking Chinese financing for a long-planned oil pipeline that would bypass Sudan. The report said Beijing has already pledged technical assistance for the pipeline, which would allow land-locked South Sudan an alternative export route for its large oil reserves.
Jiang Hengkun, a professor with the Institute of African Studies at Zhejiang Normal University, said that if the pipeline happens, China would contribute heavily, from labor to loans.
"China will surely participate in the construction," Jiang said. "Chinese construction companies or oil companies can join the bidding for the project, while the Chinese government may provide development aids or loans to South Sudan government."
Jiang said the project was likely to take three to four years, or longer.
Zach Vertin, the senior analyst on South Sudan for the International Crisis Group, said that while the pipeline is sure to be the agenda, it's just one piece of what is expected to be a comprehensive bilateral cooperation. Vertin said China invited Kiir last year with the broad aim of cultivating political and economic ties with the new nation.
"Economic cooperation is first and foremost about oil, but also about a potential role for Chinese banks and commercial actors in financing and facilitating the closure South Sudan's colossal infrastructure gap," Vertin said in an email.
Though Beijing's principal objective has been good relations with both Sudans, Vertin said the balance has proven delicate.
"Because the visit comes amid dangerous hostilities, Beijing will try to navigate a course that both satisfies its own interests and steers the parties toward peace," he said.
During his five-day stay, Kiir may also seek to mend differences over the expulsion in February of a senior Chinese oil executive alleged to have helped Sudan divert the South's oil.
Jiang said kicking Liu Yingcai out of South Sudan may have been meant to prod Beijing into exerting more pressure on Sudan to stop the oil diversions but that it was unlikely to impact China-South Sudan relations in the long run. | Diplomatic Visit | April 2012 | ['(AP via ABC News)'] |
René Angélil, manager and husband of singer Celine Dion, dies at age 73 after a long battle with throat cancer. | Rene Angelil, the husband and former manager of Celine Dion, has died aged 73, the singer has announced.
Mr Angelil, who Dion married in 1994 and with whom she has three children, died at home in Las Vegas from cancer.
Dion took two career breaks to look after Mr Angelil after he was diagnosed with throat cancer, first in 2000.
Mr Angelil was born in Montreal in 1942. After managing groups in Canada, he was approached to manage Dion by her parents when she was aged 12.
Last year, Dion told USA Today she was preparing for her husband's death.
"When it hits me, it's going to hit me," she told the newspaper in August 2015. "But my biggest job is to tell my husband, we're fine. I'll take care of our kids. You'll watch us from another spot."
The Montreal Gazette says he mortgaged his house to finance her first album. She has recorded 25 studio albums, and is the fifth-best-paid recording artist in the world, with a value of some $630m (£437m).
In 1999, her song My Heart Will Go On, from the soundtrack of the film Titanic, won two Grammy awards.
She has been a regular performer at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas since 2003.
She returned to performing last year after a year-long hiatus to look after Mr Angelil. He stepped down as her manager in 2014.
| Famous Person - Death | January 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
Two Vietnamese sailors are shot and wounded in the disputed Spratly Islands. | HANOI - TWO Vietnamese fishermen were shot and wounded in disputed South China Sea waters, a police chief said on Thursday, citing the victims' relatives. The incident happened last Saturday in the Spratly archipelago, said Tieu Viet Thanh, police chief of Binh Chau commune in coastal Quang Ngai province. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan claim all or part of the island group, where tensions have risen recently. Relatives of the sailors told police that the shooters wore uniforms of the Philippines but a military spokesman in Manila said there were no reports of incidents in the Spratlys. 'We definitely would not open fire. Rules of engagement say you do not use gunfire except in self-defence,' Commodore Mike Rodriguez said. The Vietnamese boat captain, Nguyen Tan Luan, 39, and crewman Le Quang Tu, were shot and wounded, said Mr Thanh. -- AFP | Armed Conflict | May 2011 | ['(Straits Times)'] |
Indian sitar virtuoso and classical composer Ravi Shankar dies in the U.S. city of San Diego at the age of 92. | His family said he had been admitted to the Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego last week, but had failed to recover fully from surgery.
Shankar gained widespread international recognition through his association with The Beatles. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described him as a "national treasure and global ambassador of India's cultural heritage".
In a statement quoted by Reuters, Shankar's wife Sukanya and daughter Anoushka said he had recently undergone surgery which would have "potentially given him a new lease of life".
"Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the surgeons and doctors taking care of him, his body was not able to withstand the strain of the surgery," they said.
"We were at his side when he passed away. "Although it is a time for sorrow and sadness, it is also a time for all of us to give thanks and to be grateful that we were able to have him as a part of our lives. He will live forever in our hearts and in his music."
Anoushka Shankar is herself a sitar player. Shankar's other daughter is Grammy award-winning singer Norah Jones.
George Harrison of the Beatles once called Shankar "the godfather of world music".
He played at Woodstock and the 1967 Monterey Pop festival, and also collaborated with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and jazz saxophonist John Coltrane.
Shankar also composed a number of film scores - notably Satyajit Ray's celebrated Apu trilogy (1951-55) and Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982) - and collaborated with US composer Philip Glass in Passages in 1990.
Talking in later life about his experiences at the influential Monterey Pop festival, Ravi Shankar said he was "shocked to see people dressing so flamboyantly".
He told Rolling Stone magazine that he was horrified when Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire on stage.
"That was too much for me. In our culture, we have such respect for musical instruments, they are like part of God," he said.
In 1999, Shankar was awarded the highest civilian citation in India - the Bharat Ratna, or Jewel of India.
On Wednesday morning, shortly after his death, the Recording Academy of America announced the musician would receive a lifetime achievement award at next year's Grammys.
The Academy's President Neil Portnow said he had been able to inform Shankar of the honour last week.
"He was deeply touched and so pleased," he said, adding, "we have lost an innovative and exceptional talent and a true ambassador of international music".
Born into a Bengali family in the ancient Indian city of Varanasi, Ravi Shankar was originally a dancer with his brother's troupe.
He gave up dancing to study the sitar at the age of 18.
For seven years Shankar studied under Baba Allauddin Khan, founder of the Maihar Gharana style of Hindustani classical music, and became well-known in India for his virtuoso sitar playing.
For the last years of his life, Ravi Shankar lived in Encinitas, California, with his wife. | Famous Person - Death | December 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania of Georgia dies of gas poisoning. Zhvania was found dead by security guards, an apparent victim of carbon monoxide exposure. | Updated: Sep 7 2005 8:07PM (MSK)
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TBILISI. Feb 3 (Interfax) - High levels of carbon monoxide have
been registered in the apartment where Georgian Prime Minister Zurab
Zhvania and Kvema Kartli region deputy governor Raul Usupov were found
dead, the head of Tbilgaz city gas supplier David Morchiladze told
journalists on Monday.
"An Iranian-made gas heater was installed in Usupov's apartment two
days ago," Morchiladze said.
About 80 people have died as a result of household gas poisoning in
Georgia over the past four years, Tbilgaz sources told Interfax.
© 1991-2005 Interfax | Famous Person - Death | February 2005 | ['(Civil Georgia)', '(Reuters)', '(Interfax)', '(BBC)'] |
Pope Francis uses his Easter address to call for peace between the peoples of Israel and Palestine in response to the clashes. | Pope Francis, in his Easter address, has called for peace in the Holy Land two days after 15 Palestinians were killed on the Israeli-Gaza border, saying the conflict there “does not spare the defenceless“.
The pontiff made his appeal in his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome to tens of thousands of people in the flower-bedecked square below where he earlier celebrated a mass.
He also appealed for an end to the “carnage” in Syria, calling for humanitarian aid to be allowed to enter the country, and for peace in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Francis appeared to refer directly to last Friday’s Gaza violence, calling for “reconciliation for the Holy Land, also experiencing in these days the wounds of ongoing conflict that do not spare the defenceless”.
Israel’s defence minister has rejected calls for an inquiry into the killings by the military during a Palestinian demonstration that turned violent at the Gaza-Israel border.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, and other leaders have called for an independent investigation into the bloodshed.
The pope also begged for peace for “the entire world, beginning with the beloved and long-suffering land of Syria, whose people are worn down by an apparently endless war”.
“This Easter, may the light of the risen Christ illumine the consciences of all political and military leaders, so that a swift end may be brought to the carnage in course,” he said.
He spoke a day after the Syrian army command said it had regained most of the towns and villages in eastern Ghouta. Tens of thousands of people have fled once-bustling towns in the suburbs east of the capital, which had nearly 2 million people before the start of the conflict and were major commercial and industrial hubs.
Francis called for international assistance for Venezuela, so that more people would not have to abandon their homeland because of the economic and political crisis.
He hoped the “fruits of dialogue” would advance peace and harmony on the Korean peninsula, where the two sides are set to hold their first summit in more than a decade on 27 April, after the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, pledged his commitment to denuclearisation.
Francis, celebrating his sixth Easter as Roman Catholic leader since his election in 2013, urged his listeners to work for an end to the “so many acts of injustice” in the world.
He prayed that the power of Jesus’s message “bears fruits of hope and dignity where there are deprivation and exclusion, hunger and unemployment, where there are migrants and refugees – so often rejected by today’s culture of waste – and victims of the drug trade, human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery”. | Famous Person - Give a speech | April 2018 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
UK prime minister David Cameron uses an important speech at a security conference in Munich to say "state multiculturalism" has failed, adding that the UK needs a stronger national identity and promising to promote Western values. | David Cameron was accused of playing into the hands of rightwing extremists today as he delivered a controversial speech on the failings of multiculturalism within hours of one of the biggest anti-Islam rallies ever staged in Britain.
Muslim and anti-fascist groups questioned the prime minister's judgment and sensitivity to the issues, saying he had handed a propaganda coup to the hard-right English Defence League as 3,000 of its supporters marched through Luton chanting anti-Islamic slogans.
Some of crowd were jubilant, saying that Cameron "had come round to our way of thinking". Paul Bradburn, 35, from Stockport, said Cameron was "coming out against extremism".
He added: "The timing of his speech is quite weird as it comes on the day of one of the biggest EDL demos we've ever seen. If he wants to start sticking up for us, that's great."
Matt, 16, a school pupil in Birmingham who was at the march said: "He believes what we believe to some extent."
Downing Street issued a robust defence saying the prime minister was "absolutely unapologetic".
A spokeswoman said the speech had been "in the diary for months". She added: "The idea that he would be blown off course on an issue as fundamental as this by the English Defence League is ridiculous and extraordinary."
Cameron told the Munich Security Conference, attended by world leaders, that state multiculturalism had failed in this country and pledged to cut funding for Muslim groups that failed to respect basic British values.
He blamed the radicalisation of Muslim youths and the phenomenon of home-grown terrorism on the sense of alienation that builds among young people living in separate communities and the "hands-off tolerance" of groups that peddle separatist ideology.
Just a few hours later, EDL leader Stephen Lennon told the crowd they were part of a "tidal wave of patriotism" that was sweeping the UK.
Activists, some wearing balaclavas and others waving English flags, chanted "Muslim bombers off our streets" and "Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah". EDL supporters from Newcastle, Scotland, London, West Yorkshire and Sheffield joined Luton-based supporters. There were also flags representing German, Dutch and Swedish Defence Leagues.
Nick Lowles, director of anti-extremist group Hope Not Hate, said the timing of Cameron's remarks had allowed EDL members to claim the government was on its side.
"The prime minister's comments were unhelpful. On a day when extremist groups of varying persuasions were descending on Luton, his words were open to misinterpretation at best, and at worst were potentially inflammatory.
"Whatever the intention, the timing of this speech has played into the hands of those who wish to sow seeds of division and hatred."
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, said Cameron had handed a "propaganda coup to the EDL and their extremists".
Labour also weighed in, attacking the timing of the speech and rejecting implications from Cameron that it had failed to address issues of Islamic extremism and the complex issues of multiculturalism during 13 years in office.
Former home secretary Jack Straw said it was "ill-timed" and "ill-judged". Former Labour minister Margaret Hodge said: "This is a hugely difficult area. I agree that there are some areas where we need strong assimilation – speaking English and abiding by British law.
"But Cameron appears to suggest we can impose a much wider assimilation with British values and the danger is that this approach will perversely entrench those separate identities that he wants to meld.
"The state has to be very cautious in using its power to mould cultural values. Comparisons with far-right groups on the day the EDL is mounting a demonstration is needlessly provocative.
"It is not merely the Muslim community's responsibility to combat extremism; we all have responsibilities, particularly to ensure that minority communities do not feel excluded."
As the row over the prime minister's remarks intensified, Tory co-chairman Baroness Warsi called for an apology from shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan after he accused Cameron of "writing propaganda for the EDL".
"For Sadiq Khan to smear the prime minister as a rightwing extremist is outrageous and irresponsible. David Cameron has made it clear that he wants to unite Britain around our common values and he has done so in measured language," she said. "It is right that we make it clear: extremism and Islam are not the same thing.
"And, as David said, it's important to stress that terrorism is not linked exclusively to any one religion or ethnic group." | Famous Person - Give a speech | February 2011 | ['(BBC)', '(Al Jazeera)', '(The Guardian)'] |
Tunisia's new interim government holds its first cabinet meeting. | Tunisia's new interim government is holding its first cabinet meeting, nearly a week after the fall of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
The meeting had been postponed amid opposition calls not to give key posts to members of Mr Ben Ali's RCD party.
Earlier, the RCD dissolved its central committee after its members on the interim cabinet quit the party.
On Thursday, troops fired warning shots at crowds who had massed near RCD headquarters in the capital, Tunis.
Reports said some protesters had tried to scale a wall at the building.
Judges also staged a demonstration in Tunis demanding the resignation of all judges who worked for the ousted president.
There were also reports of protests on Thursday in the towns of Gafsa and Kef - the first demonstrations outside Tunis since Mr Ben Ali and his family fled to Saudi Arabia last week.
He left with his family last Friday after mass protests over unemployment, poverty and corruption.
Despite his departure, protests have continued, with demonstrators and opposition leaders demanding that all members of the RCD party be excluded from any future administration.
Earlier, it was announced that more than 30 members of the former president's family had been arrested.
It was not clear which members of Mr Ben Ali's family had been held. However, state television showed what it said was gold and jewellery seized during raids on their properties. The official statement said those being held were suspected of crimes against Tunisia. Political wrangling had delayed the inaugural meeting of the interim cabinet. Hours before it was due to start, a minister who had belonged to the RCD announced he was pulling out of the government.
"I am stepping down for the higher interests of the country in this delicate situation to try to bring the country out of crisis and ensure a democratic transition," the official Tap news agency quoted Zouheir M'Dhaffar, minister of state in the prime minister's office, as saying.
Four opposition ministers quit the cabinet the day after it was formed, demanding the exclusion of RCD ministers.
Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi and interim President Fouad Mebazaa - former speaker of the lower house of parliament - have also quit the RCD to try to distance themselves from Mr Ben Ali.
Swiss officials estimate Tunisian government officials have put about $620m (£387m) into Swiss banks, the Associated Press news agency reports. On Wednesday, Switzerland said it had frozen any assets of Mr Ben Ali and "his entourage" held in the country.
In a televised address on Wednesday, Mr Mebazaa promised to deliver a complete break from the past.
He hailed "a revolution of dignity and liberty", saying that the government's top priority would be an amnesty for political prisoners. He also promised media freedom and an independent judiciary.
"Together we can write a new page in the history of our country," he said.
Although the situation across Tunisia remains tense, authorities have shortened the hours of curfew.
A state of emergency is still in place and the army is still deployed in the capital Tunis. Schools and universities remain closed.
The interim government has pledged free and fair elections within six months but has given no dates. Under the Tunisian constitution, a new presidential election should be held within two months of Mr Ben Ali's departure.
The US has urged Tunisia to move to a true democracy, and promised assistance.
State department spokesman PJ Crowley tweeted: "The people of Tunisia have spoken. The interim government must create a genuine transition to democracy. The United States will help." Kim ready for 'dialogue and confrontation' with US | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | January 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Progressive Slovakia candidate Zuzana Čaputová, who ran on an anti-corruption campaign against the backdrop of Ján Kuciak's murder, wins the first round of Slovakia's presidential election with 40.5% of the vote while the ruling Direction – Social Democracy Party's candidate Maroš Šefčovič receives 18.6% of the vote. As no candidate reached 50%+1 votes in the first round, Čaputová and Šefčovič will take part in a second round on March 30, 2019. The ruling Direction – Social Democracy Party suffers its worst result since its founding in 1999. (Slovakia's Election Commission) | Lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner Zuzana Caputova has easily won the first round of Slovakia's presidential election. She has just over 40% with Maros Sefcovic of the ruling Smer-SD party her nearest rival on less than 19%.
Ms Caputova came to prominence during mass protests sparked by the murder of a journalist who had been investigating political corruption. As no candidate won more than 50%, a second-round run-off will be held. Turnout was just under 50%.
If Ms Caputova, 45, wins the second round in a fortnight's time, she will become Slovakia's first female president. "I see the message from voters as a strong call for change," she said early on Sunday. A member of the small Progressive Slovakia party, which has no seats in parliament, she is a newcomer to politics, whereas her conservative 52-year-old opponent is vice-president of the European Commission.
Ms Caputova first rose to prominence when she led a battle lasting 14 years against an illegal landfill.
More recently, Slovakia has seen large anti-government rallies following the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée in February last year.
The protests prompted Prime Minister Robert Fico to resign.
A new suspect in the killings was charged earlier this week with ordering the murders. Four others were charged by investigators last year.
Ms Caputova was backed in her campaign by outgoing President Andrej Kiska, who did not seek a second term in office. The Slovak presidency is a largely ceremonial office, but the president has limited powers of veto over laws passed by parliament.
| Government Job change - Election | March 2019 | ['(Reuters)', '(The Guardian)', '(BBC)'] |
Germany and the Netherlands suspend military training mission in Iraq citing escalating tensions in the region with Iran. | AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch government has suspended a mission in Iraq that provides assistance to local authorities due to a security threat, Dutch news agency ANP reported on Wednesday.
Dutch military personal help train Iraqi forces in Erbil, northern Iraq, along with other foreign troops.
The report gave no details about the nature of the threat.
| Military Exercise | May 2019 | ['(Deutsche Welle)', '(Reuters)'] |
SpaceX executes a successful test of its Starhopper vehicle at Boca Chica. The vehicle was raised 150 metres into the air by its methane–fueled Raptor engine. The engine is planned for use on SpaceX's Starship vehicle – a crewed spacecraft capable of interplanetary flight. (Forbes, Los Angeles Times) | SpaceX’s stubby rocket Starhopper shot into the air Tuesday afternoon in a test launch that brings Elon Musk’s company closer to his vision of human travel to Mars.
The test was Starhopper’s second and highest hop. The craft — a test vehicle for the Raptor engine that will be included in more sophisticated prototypes — was intended to fly about 500 feet in the air Tuesday.
Shortly after 5 p.m. CDT, the rocket spewed a stream of flame from its bottom as it flew into the air, rising above the cloud of smoke its launch created. It remained upright and gently drifted sideways as it climbed, peaked and descended, then touched down a short distance away from the launch site. The flight lasted about a minute. When the smoke cleared, Starhopper appeared intact.
Congrats SpaceX team!! pic.twitter.com/duckYSK0D4
The craft is set to be retired after Tuesday’s flight and cannibalized for parts as the company ramps up work on Starship, the rocket it hopes to send to Mars.
Last month Starhopper made its first-ever flight, hovering for a number of seconds before landing back on the ground. That test was intended to reach an altitude of about 65 feet. In a July 25 tweet, SpaceX Chief Executive Musk called the flight successful and cheered that “water towers can fly,” a reference to the prototype’s squat, rounded appearance.
SpaceX worked last year on Starhopper at its lesser-known Boca Chica facility in south Texas, before Musk announced work on the prototype at the end of the year and unveiled renderings in January.
Renderings of the Starhopper prototype showed a bullet-shaped stainless steel tube. But in January, Musk tweeted that strong winds had damaged the nose cone. SpaceX decided not to bother making a replacement and instead to do tests without a nose cone, giving the rocket its stubby water tower appearance.
Meanwhile, the Hawthorne company is building other, more complex prototypes of its Mars spaceship. SpaceX workers in Boca Chica and in Cocoa Beach, Fla., are building spaceship prototypes that will have at least three Raptor engines fueled by methane and liquid oxygen. The teams will be doing “simultaneous competing builds” at their respective sites to “see which location is most effective,” Musk tweeted in May. “Answer might be both,” he said.
He said last month that one of the prototypes could hopefully fly several thousand feet in a few months.
SpaceX plans to eventually replace its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, its newer Falcon Heavy rocket and its Dragon capsule with the Starship Mars spaceship and Super Heavy rocket booster. Starship is intended to carry as many as 100 passengers to the moon and Mars. Last September, the company announced that Japanese e-commerce billionaire Yusaku Maezawa would be the first paying customer to travel around the moon on the vehicle. Maezawa has said his flight will occur in 2023.
Musk has not been shy about SpaceX’s goal of turning humans into a multiplanetary species to protect against any potential extinction on Earth. The company’s current revenue streams are decidedly more terrestrial in nature — satellite launches for commercial and government customers and supply runs for NASA to the International Space Station.
SpaceX’s plans to reach Mars are a cornerstone of the company — employees recently wore shirts that read “Occupy Mars,” and the company’s online store started selling shirts that say, “Nuke Mars,” which refer to Musk’s Twitter musings on how to warm up the Red Planet.
Your guide to our new economic reality.
| New achievements in aerospace | August 2019 | ['(490 feet)'] |
British sex offender David Wilson is sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for 96 offences against 51 boys aged 4 to 14. | A man who posed as teenage girls online and blackmailed 51 boys into sending him indecent images of themselves has been jailed for 25 years.
David Wilson, 36, of Kirstead, King's Lynn, Norfolk, admitted 96 offences in November at Ipswich Crown Court.
In some cases he threatened to share indecent images of the boys online unless they sent him footage of them abusing younger siblings or friends.
The judge described Wilson as "extremely dangerous" and "sadistic".
The court heard some of the children who were groomed to abuse others had been arrested and one was now in a children's home.
Wilson's victims were aged between four and 14 and his crimes took place between 2016 and 2020, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
He won their trust by sending sexual images of young women in exchange for photographs and videos of the victims themselves.
Wilson then used these images to blackmail his victims into sending more extreme content.
The NCA said he distributed images to some of his victims' friends, despite them begging him to stop, and some children spoke of wanting to end their lives as a result.
Sentencing, Judge Rupert Overbury described Wilson as a "serial paedophile" and "an extremely dangerous individual".
"You carried out a lengthy and premeditated campaign of sadistic and manipulative abuse of young boys using social media," he said.
"Any decent human being will be astonished at the level of depravity involved."
One child was groomed while struggling with the effects of his father dying from cancer, the judge said.
Another pleaded for Wilson to stop as his grandfather was about to die but this had no effect on his abuser, he added.
Wilson pleaded guilty to 54 counts of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, 25 counts of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, 10 counts of causing a child to watch a sexual act, three counts of blackmail and four counts of arranging or facilitating the sexual exploitation of a child.
He was ordered to serve a further eight years of extended licence once he is released from prison.
Officers began compiling intelligence on Wilson after Facebook identified 20 accounts of boys ranging from 12 to 15 years old, who had sent images of themselves to an account seemingly belonging to a 13-year-old girl.
The mother of one of Wilson's victims spoke of her concern over Facebook's plan to bring in end-to-end encryption of messages on the platform.
"I'm eternally grateful that David Wilson was caught," she said.
"I think that if it becomes too difficult for law enforcement agencies to track these people then we won't be able to protect our children and people like him will be able to get away with it."
A spokeswoman for Facebook said: "Child exploitation and grooming have no place on our platform.
"Facebook has led the industry in developing new ways to prevent, detect, and respond to abuse and we will continue to work with law enforcement to combat criminal activity."
Home Secretary Priti Patel said: "This sickening case is a chilling reminder of how crucial it is that tech companies play their part in combating child sexual abuse.
"It is vital that Facebook do not press ahead without amending their current end-to-end-encryption plans, otherwise sick criminals like David Wilson could still be abusing children with impunity."
Tony Cook, head of child sexual abuse operations at the NCA, said Wilson "preyed" on his victims' "vulnerability".
"He groomed, bullied and blackmailed young boys into sending him indecent images and in some instances performing horrific abuse on themselves and others," he said.
"Despite knowing their utter anguish and despair he ignored their pleas from him to stop."
Mr Cook urged parents to speak to their children about who they communicate with online and understand "this can happen to anyone".
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | February 2021 | ['(BBC)'] |
Voters in Guinea–Bissau go to the polls for a presidential election following the death of President Malam Bacai Sanhá in January. | Votes are being counted in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau following an election to choose a new president.
Nine candidates are running for office, but analysts say only four have a realistic chance.
The election was triggered by the death in January of President Malam Bacai Sanha.
Guinea-Bissau has been plagued by army mutinies and coups over the past 10 years.
No elected president has completed his mandate since multi-party politics was introduced in 1994.
Several senior military figures are accused of involvement in the international drugs trade and the country has become a trafficking point for cocaine from South America to Europe. The BBC's John James in the capital Bissau says that if the new president is accepted as legitimate by the losing candidates and the powerful army, it would reinforce this fragile country's attempts to escape a cycle of coups and instability.
The front runner is Carlos Gomes Junior, 60, who has stepped down as prime minister to run as candidate for the governing African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).
The three other candidates expected to do well are Kumba Yala, who was president from 2000 to 2003; MP Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo and former businessman Henrique Rosa.
Our correspondent say it is likely that a second round will be needed to decide the eventual winner.
Observers said it appeared that people had voted freely and that the election had been well organised.
Air, sea and land borders were closed for the day and only election commission-authorised vehicles were allowed on the roads.
The election in the former Portuguese colony was overseen by about 180 foreign observers. Security has been in the hands of a mixed force of police, national guard and soldiers, trained by UN security experts. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the US have called for a peaceful, orderly and transparent election.
Malam Bacai Sanha was elected president in 2009 after years of unrest and coups. His predecessor - Joao Bernardo Vieira - was assassinated by mutinous soldiers.
Last December, the US warned its citizens in Guinea-Bissau that there was increased potential for political instability and civil unrest. | Government Job change - Election | March 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Brazil bans land clearance fires for 60 days in response to the ongoing disaster. | Brazil has banned setting fires to clear land for 60 days in response to a massive increase in the number of fires in the Amazon rainforest.
The decree was signed by President Jair Bolsonaro, who has faced intense criticism at home and abroad for failing to protect the rainforest.
A leading Brazilian environmentalist warned on Wednesday that the "worst of the fire is yet to come".
South American countries will meet next week to discuss the crisis.
It remains unclear what impact the ban will have, as environmentalists say the overwhelming majority of forest clearance in the Brazilian Amazon is already illegal and enforcement is lax.
The Amazon - a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming - has seen more than 80,000 fires break out so far this year - a 77% rise on the same period in 2018.
Environmentalists say the increase is due in part to policies enacted by Mr Bolsonaro's administration. Prosecutors have been investigating allegations that some of the fires were triggered by the illegal clearing of land and the decree now bans setting fires for this purpose across the entire country.
It allows three exceptions: when fires are authorised by environmental authorities for reasons relating to plant health; as a preventative measure to fight wildfires; and as part of traditional subsistence agriculture practised by indigenous people.
Writing in O Globo newspaper, Tasso Azevedo - who runs the deforestation monitoring group Mapbiomas - said those clearing the forest would cut down trees and vegetation before leaving it for a few weeks until it is drier and easier to set fire to.
The current fires were the result of forest clearing in April, May and June, he wrote, but the rate of clearing in July and August jumped sharply, suggesting that there was a lot of combustible fuel on the ground waiting to be ignited.
Mr Azevedo called for a ban on the use of fire in the Amazon region until the end of the dry season in November. He also called for urgent action to end deforestation, which he said was largely illegal and linked to criminal groups involved in timber theft, gold mining and land grabbing.
"What we are experiencing is a real crisis, which can turn into a tragedy that will feature fires much larger than the current ones if not stopped immediately," he said.
Mr Bolsonaro has accepted Chile's offer of four planes to fight the fires, the most in Brazil since 2010 - but he has refused a G7 offer of $22m (£18m) following a spat with French President Emmanuel Macron.
The government says it has deployed 44,000 soldiers to seven states to combat the fires. That came after Mr Bolsonaro last week said the authorities did not have the resources to fight the blazes.
The justice ministry says that federal police officers would be sent to the fire zones to assist other state agencies in combating "illegal deforestation".
On Monday Brazil's Defence Minister Fernando Azevedo e Silva told local media that the situation was "not simple, but it is under control and cooling down nicely".
Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday, former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is jail following corruption convictions, accused Mr Bolsonaro of "causing tremendous evil to Brazilian people".
Data published by Brazil's space agency suggests there are. The agency, known as Inpe, says there have been more than 83,000 fires between 1 January 2019 and 27 August 2019. That is a 77% rise compared to the same period in 2018.
Nasa has also warned that the "2019 fires season has the highest fire count since 2012".
BBC analysis has also found that the high number of fires being recorded coincides with a sharp drop in fines being handed out for environmental violations.
| Fire | August 2019 | ['(BBC)'] |
Hundreds of protesters arrive at Ludgate Circus near the end of the procession route, protesting variously by turning their backs to the coffin, chanting slogans or standing in silence. | Hundreds of protesters turned their backs on Margaret Thatcher's funeral procession as it passed through central London on Wednesday during a day of highly charged but peaceful demonstrations.
In the former mining community of Goldthorpe in South Yorkshire, an effigy of Thatcher was put in a mock-up coffin and carried to wasteland where it was set alight to cheers and cries of: "Scab, scab, scab."
Celebrations were held in former mining areas in the north-east of England and in South Wales. In Liverpool, the radical bookshop News from Nowhere said party packs – containing black balloons and party poppers with the politician's face on and bearing the legend: "Still hate Thatcher" – sold out in two days.
In Scotland, trade unionists and socialists were due to hold a rally on Wednesday evening to remember the "industries and communities who suffered" under her government".
In London, protest organisers had called for people to silently turn their back on Thatcher's coffin. But as it came into view at 10.45am, there were shouts of "What a waste of money" and "Tory scum". Similar shouts at other points on the route were drowned out by pro-Thatcher clapping.
Rebecca Lush Blum from Hampshire, who set up a Facebook group to organise the protest event on the route at Ludgate Circus, said she was pleased people had been allowed to voice anger at Thatcher's legacy.
"We have shown the world that not everyone in this country thinks Margaret Thatcher was a great thing for this country … today felt like an important moment in the battle over what her legacy is and what sort of country we want so I'm pleased our voice was heard."
Police had told Blum the protest could go ahead and by 9.30am about 100 people had gathered at the normally busy junction in central London. As the first ceremonial military band went past just before 10am, there were boos and chants from protesters. Thatcher supporters – including one man wearing a suit and Thatcher T-shirt on a balcony overlooking the crowd – clapped and cheered.
Numbers of protesters swelled and by the time the coffin went by, police at the scene estimated there were about 300 protesters. The atmosphere was tense, with military personnel gathered at the other side of the road, clapping and cheering.
Dave Winslow, 22, an anthropology student from Durham – who was holding a placard reading "Rest of us in Poverty" and wearing a T-shirt with the messages "Power to the people" and "Society does exist" – was one of those who wanted a silent protest.
"We want to maintain a dignified protest," he said. "It's counterproductive to catcall and sing Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead. The message is that spending £10m on such a divisive figure in times of austerity, especially when austerity is being imposed on the poor, is wrong, especially when harm is being caused to the disabled and the NHS."
There was a big police presence with "liaison officers" mingling with the crowd and armed police guarding the barriers along the route. Surveillance officers took up positions on surrounding buildings.
Once the coffin had passed, some protesters were visibly moved. One man, who did not want to give his name, had tears in his eyes. He said: "She ruined my family's life. She took my dad's job, everything … I promised myself I would come here for this day years ago."
Julie Guest, who had been in Iraq in 1998, said she pledged she would come when she saw a six-year-old Iraqi boy die because sanctions had stopped him getting medical treatment.
"The consequences of her policies have spread a long way in this country and abroad and I said to myself when I saw that boy die that I would remember him when this day came."
The funeral procession passed within a few minutes and the crowd began to disperse. Police confirmed there were no arrests.
Blum, who had been besieged by media since an article about her planned protest appeared in the Guardian on Monday, said she was pleased and moved by what had happened.
"It's provocative to have a state funeral for such a controversial politician, and I wanted to remember and respect all those who suffered under Margaret Thatcher. I think we did that today."
A few miles south of St Paul's Cathedral, a group of 19- to 25-year-olds were discussing her legacy at Kids Company, a charity based in south London. Outside, the traffic was perhaps more modest than usual but otherwise it felt like a normal day. "If it was Tony Blair, it might mean more to people," said Amee, 20. Still, she said, we are living in the world Thatcher created. "Because of what she did, our benefits are dropping. Average working people can't afford to have a mortgage. Soon everything is going to belong to private companies. I look at my three-year-old and wonder how I'm going to put him through school."
"If I have any respect for her it's because she was a fierce leader," said Monique, 21. "She was decisive and stuck to her beliefs. Most politicians today are wishy-washy but she kept her word." Amee added: "She did a lot to affect the whole system and how it works. She is still in the system even though she is out of power; even though she is dead."
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A bus in Tak Province, Thailand, plunges into a ravine, killing 30 people and injuring 22. | A bus crash in northern Thailand has killed at least 30 people and injured 22 others, Thai authorities say.
The fatal accident took place in Tak province on Monday night.
Thai police said the bus was trying to overtake cars on a winding mountain road when it skidded and plunged into a ravine.
The double-decker bus was carrying local government workers who were on a field trip. A child was also believed to be among the injured.
The bus driver, who survived the accident with a broken rib, said his brakes had stopped working, Thai police said.
The route is often frequented by buses and trucks travelling along the Thai border with Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
"Accidents happen on this road very often,'' Thai Provincial Governor Suriya Prasatbunditya told the Associated Press news agency. "We've put warning signs up to caution road users but the accidents keep happening.''
Traffic accidents are common in Thailand, with poor safety standards and busy roads thought to be a factor.
In February, 15 people died after a bus travelling to the seaside town of Pattaya crashed into a truck. In a separate accident, 29 people died after a bus travelling through the northern province of Phetchabun plunged off Khun Pha Muang bridge.
| Road Crash | March 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
At least 11 Afghan civilians are killed and 16 wounded when a NATO helicopter attacked a house where Taliban insurgents had taken shelter in Logar Province, east of Kabul. | KABUL (Reuters) - At least 11 Afghan civilians were killed and 16 wounded on Wednesday when a NATO helicopter attacked a house where Taliban insurgents had taken shelter in Logar province, east of the capital, Kabul, the local governor said.
There was no immediate confirmation that NATO or U.S. aircraft were involved, but a spokesman for Resolute Support, the NATO-led mission in Kabul, said in an emailed statement it was aware of the reports and was looking into them.
Logar Governor Halim Fedaee said the incident occurred in Dashte Bari district near the provincial capital Pul-e Alam.
“The Taliban took position in a civilian house and fired a rocket at a NATO helicopter,” the governor said. “The house owner begged the Taliban to leave, but they didn’t. The helicopter took a turn, came and hit this house that caused these deaths.”
The incident, a day after reports that an Afghan air strike killed at least 13 civilians in the western province of Herat, underlines the risk that a recent increase in air raids by U.S. and Afghan forces will increase civilian casualties.
United Nations figures showed a 43 percent spike in civilian casualties from both Afghan and U.S. air strikes in the first half of the year, with 95 killed and 137 wounded, as the pace of air operations has increased.
Civilian casualties caused by U.S. air strikes have long been a source of friction in Afghanistan, and the risk of further casualties may increase if the U.S. steps up operations as part of President Donald Trump’s new strategy for Afghanistan.
Earlier, Resolute Support denied a Taliban statement that a U.S. helicopter had been shot down in Logar province. It said a helicopter had made a precautionary landing for a maintenance issue.
Reporting by Hamid Shalizi, editing by Larry King
| Armed Conflict | August 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Peter James Bethune, a New Zealand antiwhaling campaigner, pleads guilty to four charges over his alleged attacks on the Japanese whaling vessel MV Shōnan Maru 2 in February. | New Zealand anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune appeared in a Tokyo court this morning facing five charges related to his boarding of a Japanese whaling ship in the Antarctic earlier this year.
Bethune is charged with trespass, vandalism, obstructing commercial activity, being armed with a weapon and, most seriously, assault causing injury.
The assault charge stems from allegations Bethune threw tubs of rancid butter onto one of the whaling ships and in the process slightly injured a Japanese crewman.
Bethune pleaded guilty to four of the charges but denied the assault.
If convicted he faces up to 15 years in jail.
The charges arose after Bethune tried to make a citizen's arrest on the whaling ship's captain and was also trying to serve him with a multi-million-dollar damage bill.
Bethune was the captain of the powerboat, the Ady Gil, that was destroyed in a confrontation with the Shonan Maru 2 in January.
On Thursday, a group of ultra-nationalist supporters gathered outside the court to make it clear they want Bethune punished.
One carried a placard calling for the Sea Shepherd activist to be hung.
More than 400 people queued for 18 seats inside the courtroom.
Bethune faces an uphill battle, with the Japanese conviction rate particularly steep compared to Western standards.
The court system in which Bethune is being trailed is widely quoted as having a 99.8 per cent conviction rate, and Japanese law deals with assault charges harshly.
Bethune has served three months already and according to his lawyer is hoping for a suspended sentence.
They are hoping the court will take into account that he pleaded guilty on the other charges and consider he is conceding he broke Japanese law.
It is believed Bethune will be tried by a panel of three judges.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | May 2010 | ['(ABC)', '(Radio New Zealand)', '(The Jakarta Post)'] |
United Nations officials announce the creation of a new team in Geneva to investigate possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide during the Syrian Civil War in order to prepare for future prosecutions of those responsible. | Geneva-based team will investigate ‘abuses that amount to international crimes’ and prepare files for future prosecutions
Last modified on Sat 14 Apr 2018 18.54 BST
A new unit is being set up by the United Nations in Geneva to prepare prosecutions of war crimes committed in Syria, UN officials have said.
The first major policy announcement under the newly inaugurated UN secretary-general, António Guterres, the unit will “analyse information, organise and prepare files on the worst abuses that amount to international crimes”, a UN human rights official said.
The team will investigate “primarily war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and identify those responsible”, the official added. Although it will not be able to prosecute, the unit will prepare files that could be used in future prosecutions by states or by the international criminal court in The Hague.
The focus on prosecutions also means evidence collected since 2011 by a UN commission of inquiry may be sharpened into legal action.
Legal experts and activists welcomed the initiative. “The focus is on collecting evidence and building criminal cases before the trail goes cold,” said Andrew Clapham, professor of international law at Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.
Jeremie Smith, of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, said the UN must lay the groundwork for prosecutions ahead of any “exodus” of perpetrators when the war ends. “This is the only way to make sure criminals don’t get away by fleeing the scene of the crime,” he added.
The commission of inquiry has issued 20 reports accusing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government, rebel forces and Islamic State of mass killings, rapes, disappearances and recruiting child soldiers. It too lacks a prosecutorial mandate, but has denounced a state policy amounting to “extermination” and compiled a confidential list of suspects on all sides, which is kept in a safe.
Human rights organisation Amnesty International last week claimed the Syrian government executed up to 13,000 prisoners in mass hangings and carried out systematic torture at a military jail. Syria denied the report, calling it “devoid of truth”.
A UN report in January put the start-up budget for the new team at between $4m and $6m. Funding is voluntary and so far $1.8m has been donated, the UN official said. According to diplomats, the UN is aiming to recruit between 40 and 60 experts in investigations, prosecutions, the military and forensics. “It’s a very important step. It will not only allow court cases but also help us preserve evidence if there are cases in the future,” a senior western diplomat said.
Many national courts could pursue suspects using the unit’s dossiers, Clapham said. States that have joined the international criminal court could bring cases without referral by the UN security council. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Investigate | February 2017 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Vice-Chancellor of Austria, Heinz-Christian Strache, steps down both as Vice-Chancellor and chairman of the Freedom Party of Austria due to an alleged corruption scandal. | Heinz-Christian Strache has stepped down as Austrian vice chancellor following an alleged corruption scandal. Strache was caught on video apparently offering business deals in exchange for friendly media coverage.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has accepted the resignation of Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache in the wake of the release of a video showing Strache discussing the possibility of exchanging friendly media coverage for lucrative state business deals.
In a statement delivered from his office at noon, a visibly angry Strache said he was stepping down to protect the work of the government, but added that he had been the victim of illegal entrapment and a concerted "dirty campaign" to discredit him. He also rejected any suggestion he had committed any crimes.
"My person must not be the reason to undo [the government's work], and perhaps to provide a pretext to break up this government, because that was the aim of this illegal ... action," he said. "This was a targeted political assassination," he added.
A spontaneous demonstration of some 2,000 - 3,000 people has also gathered outside Chancellor Kurz's office in Vienna, demanding new elections.
'Alcohol-induced macho talk'
The vice chancellor admitted the video released on Friday showed him in a compromising situation, in which he had been tempted into "polemicizing about everything." "And yes, looking at them soberly, my statements were catastrophic and extremely embarrassing," he said.
"Yes, it was stupid, it was irresponsible, and it was a mistake," he said. "It was typically alcohol-induced macho talk, in which, yes, I was probably trying to impress the attractive hostess. I behaved boastfully, like a teenager, and acted embarrassingly over the top." He went on to apologize to his wife, "the most important person in my life."
Kurz's conservative Austrian People's People's (ÖVP) currently governs Austria in coalition with Strache's far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Strache also gave up the FPÖ leadership, handing over his duties to deputy leader and Austrian Transport Minister Norbert Hofer.
Strache's departure leaves the chancellor with the choice of either dissolving the government and calling new elections, or attempting to maintain his coalition with the FPÖ under a new leader. Austrian media reported Kurz would call for new elections during a speech later on Saturday.
Buying the media
Strache was caught on video offering business deals to a woman posing as a Russian oligarch's niece in exchange for her help boosting the FPÖ's news coverage. According to Strache, the woman had told him she wanted to move to Austria and invest money.
The video was reportedly filmed on the Spanish island of Ibiza in July 2017 but only disclosed on Friday by Germany's Der Spiegel and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A woman calling herself Alyona Makarova can be heard telling Strache and FPÖ parliamentary group leader Johann Gudenus that she is very wealthy and wants to buy as much as 50% of Austria's largest newspaper, the Kronen Zeitung.
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the meeting lasted several hours, with Strache and Gudenus (whose wife was also present) discussing with Makarova and a male companion about how indirect donations and friendly media coverage could help the far-right party. The video was apparently recorded a few months before the Austrian national election in October 2017, when the FPÖ took 26% of the vote and entered government.
Infrastructure deals and indirect party donations
Makarova reportedly claims to be interested in the paper so that she can provide favorable pre-election coverage of the FPÖ. Strache and Gudenus describe to her ways in which rich sponsors could donate to the FPÖ via non-profit organizations, so the donations do not become public.
Strache tells her that the Kronen Zeitung deal could push the FPÖ from 27% up to 34% in the vote, and proposes a number of ways in which he could repay the woman, including shifting state infrastructure contracts away from Austrian construction giant Strabag to her yet-to-be-founded companies.
Sebastian Kurz (left) and Heinz-Christian Strache have parted ways
In response to the release of the video, Strache and Gudenus told Der Spiegel and the Süddeutsche Zeitung that throughout the meeting they had emphasized the "necessity of conforming to Austrian law," and that they had only been talking about potential donations to the FPÖ or non-profit organizations.
They also told the papers that the conversation had happened in a "loose, informal, and boozy holiday atmosphere." and that the absence of a professional translator had created a language barrier. In the video, Gudenus can be heard translating into Russian.
German comedian knew in advance
Meanwhile, Peter Burtz, manager of German satirist Jan Böhmermann, confirmed to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency that the comedian had been aware of the video weeks ago, but denied the material had been offered to him.
This admission shed light on a joke Böhmermann made during an Austrian TV awards ceremony in April, when he said he couldn't appear personally because he was currently "coked up and full of Red Bull, hanging round in a Russian oligarch's villa on Ibiza with a few FPÖ business partners." He also said he was in negotiations to take over the Kronen Zeitung.
Strache referred to this joke in his statement on Saturday, when he said he "wondered what role Böhmermann played in connection with this."
Böhmermann gave an interview to Austrian public broadcaster ORF earlier in May criticizing the FPÖ's plans to change the country's financing system for public broadcasters. ORF courted controversy afterwards by "distancing itself" from the interview.
bk/tj (dpa, AFP, Reuters)
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | May 2019 | ['(DW)'] |
The death toll from Cyclone Sidr increases to 242 as the storm weakens and passes through the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka. | At least 600 people are reported to have died after a powerful cyclone smashed into Bangladesh's coast, levelling villages and uprooting trees.
Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated or sought safe shelter before the storm hit the coast from the Bay of Bengal, but some were left behind.
The true extent of the devastation remains unclear as the storm has blocked access to the affected areas.
The storm weakened on Friday as it passed through the capital, Dhaka.
As it was downgraded to a tropical storm, attention turned to assessing the devastation and distributing aid.
Crops destroyed
The damage from Cyclone Sidr, which has now moved well inland north-east of Dhaka, was worst on Bangladesh's southern coastal strip.
The government's disaster agency estimated the confirmed number of dead at 606 on Friday.
Tens of thousands of homes are thought to have been damaged and the recent crop harvest has also probably been destroyed.
The World Food Programme is sending emergency food rations for 400,000 people. The government, the Red Crescent and other NGOs are also sending teams.
More than 40,000 policemen, soldiers, coastguards and health workers have been deployed.
But amid a virtual national blackout, the authorities have been struggling to get food, medicine, tents and blankets to the affected areas.
River ferries are not running, roads are blocked by uprooted trees and Dhaka's main airport was forced to suspend operations.
Flattened
The Home Ministry in Dhaka said several districts could still not be contacted as telephones and communications were cut and reports of casualties were confused.
Many people are thought to have been killed as falling trees levelled fragile houses made of thatch, wood and tin.
At least 150 fishing boats in the Bay of Bengal have failed to return to shore.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said 1,000 fishermen were missing, reported Reuters new agency.
Red Crescent officials have said at least three villages were flattened by the storm.
Dhaka residents told the BBC news website that buildings and roofs were shaken by fierce winds during the night, and that by morning power and water supplies had been cut.
"All night the wind has been raging so hard that I thought my window will shatter," said K Ashequl Haque.
Search for survivors
"We have mounted a search by civilians, army and police, and the casualty figures will rise," an official in Barisal, one of the worst hit districts, told Reuters.
The cyclone had roared in from the Bay of Bengal just before dusk on Thursday, generating winds of up to 240km/h (150mph) and driving rain.
It later blew past India's eastern coast without causing much damage, police and weather officials said.
The storm triggered 5m (16ft) tidal surges in many of the affected districts. Rivers flowing into the Bay of Bengal were said to be swollen and rising.
Southern Bangladesh is often hit by cyclones, but experts say the latest one is a category four storm, the most powerful so far in the season.
Bangladesh developed a network of cyclone shelters and a storm early-warning system, after a cyclone killed more than 500,000 people in 1970. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | November 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
An Islamic State suicide bombing kills 37 at an Iraqi police base. | Baghdad (AFP) - A huge suicide bomb attack on an Iraqi police base killed at least 37 people Monday, further slowing an operation to retake the city of Ramadi from Islamic State jihadists.
The blast came as US-led coalition members carrying out air raids against IS and providing training and weapons to Iraqi forces prepared to meet in Paris for talks on a string of major battlefield gains by the jihadists in Iraq and Syria.
A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden vehicle at a police base in Iraq's Salaheddin province, killing at least 37 people and wounding more than 30, officers said.
"They are mostly policemen," said a doctor at the main hospital in the nearby city of Samarra where the casualties were taken.
Some police officers said the suicide attacker used a tank to muscle his way into the police base, located between Samarra and Tharthar lake, northwest of Baghdad.
The area is being used as part of a military operation aimed at cutting off the Islamic State group's supply lines in Anbar province of western Iraq.
IS fighters have in the past year seized a formidable arsenal of military vehicles, weapons and ammunition from retreating Iraqi forces.
The jihadists' latest haul of gear came on May 17 when Iraqi forces fled and they captured Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.
The debacle of the security forces prompted Abadi to call in the Hashed al-Shaabi, an umbrella organisation which includes Iran-backed Shiite militias that Baghdad and Washington had been reluctant to involve in the Sunni bastion of Anbar.
- IS gains in Syria -
Iraqi forces launched a counteroffensive but have either stopped on the outskirts of Ramadi or focused efforts on outlying areas in and around Anbar to sever the jihadists' supply lines.
IS used an unprecedented number of massive truck bombs to blast its way into government strongholds in Ramadi and it has since unleashed suicide vehicle-borne bombs on a daily basis.
Abadi vowed after the stinging setback in Ramadi that his troops would wrest it back within days, but he has also admitted the truck bombs were keeping government forces from entering the city.
The premier is headed to Paris for the Tuesday coalition meeting, which will focus on the year-long crisis in Iraq that began when IS overran much of its Sunni Arab heartland last June.
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, on the eve of the meeting, refused to classify the fight against IS as a failure.
"I have no doubt that this will be a generational struggle," Hammond said, giving a time span of around five years.
"This will take a long, long, long time to challenge and overcome the underlying ideology that supports" IS, he said.
"Fragmenting the organisation should be much easier than destroying the underlying ideology."
Coalition strikes have helped Iraqi forces regain ground from IS, but the fall of Ramadi was a stark illustration of the limits of air power in the absence of effective forces on the ground.
The jihadists' capture of the city coincided with their takeover of Palmyra in Syria, in what appeared to swing the momentum in the jihadists' favour after months on the back foot.
On Monday, IS advanced towards Marea, a village between the Syrian city of Aleppo and the Turkish border.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS expanded its control in Aleppo province at the weekend, at the expense of rival rebel groups.
The jihadists also gained ground in northeast Syria, where a suicide bomber killed "at least nine regime loyalists" near Hasakeh, the Observatory said.
IS also ousted government forces from areas in the central province of Homs.
"The road is now open (for IS) from Palmyra to Anbar province in Iraq, without any obstacles," said activist Mohammed Hassan al-Homsi.
- Rising death toll -
Geographer and analyst Fabrice Balanche said that across Iraq and Syria, the jihadist group now controlled nearly 300,000 square kilometres (115,000 square miles), an area the size of Italy.
The multiple offensives by IS resulted in a surge of casualties across Syria and Iraq in May.
The Observatory said it had recorded the deaths in Syria of at least 6,657 people last month, the highest number this year.
In Iraq, the health department in Anbar alone reported at least 102 civilian deaths in May.
The United Nations said even partial figures not covering the areas worst affected by the conflict showed at least 665 civilians were killed last month.
Aid agencies are preparing to launch a fundraising appeal for half a billion dollars for the crisis in Iraq, the UN children's agency UNICEF said.
"Five hundred million is really the bare minimum. We're cutting it down to the bare bone," said Philippe Heffinck, its representative in Iraq.
According to the UN, 2.9 million people have been displaced by violence in Iraq since the start of 2014 and almost four times as many have been forced from their homes in Syria since its conflict broke out more than four years ago.
| Armed Conflict | June 2015 | ['(Yahoo)'] |
Citizens in the Republic of the Congo head to the polls to elect their President. Incumbent Denis Sassou Nguesso is expected to extend his 36-year rule as his main rival Guy Brice Parfait Kolélas remains hospitalized in France, where he was evacuated after contracting COVID-19. | BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - Polls opened in Congo Republic on Sunday, with President Denis Sassou Nguesso widely expected to extend his 36-year rule despite an economic crisis in the Central African oil producer.
With Sassou’s grip on power firm, diplomats and analysts doubt any of his six opponents will unseat him.
The president’s main rival, former government minister Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas, was in hospital with COVID-19 and could be evacuated to France on Sunday, Kolelas’ campaign director told Radio France Internationale.
Even so, the government appeared to be leaving nothing to chance. There was an internet blackout across the country on Sunday, according to internet monitor NetBlocks.
Sassou, a 77-year old former paratrooper, rose to power in 1979. He lost Congo’s first multi-party elections in 1992 but reclaimed the presidency in 1997 after a civil war. He later changed the constitution to extend term limits.
“I hope the vote is calm and that there are no incidents,” said Michel Bedo, an 80-year-old retiree, after casting his ballot at a school in the capital Brazzaville. “The Congolese people don’t want disorder.”
United Nations and European Union observers were not invited to monitor the election, and the interior ministry refused to allow the Catholic Church’s 1,100 observers to take part.
Observers are optimistic, however, that the vote will be peaceful - in contrast to the last election in 2016 that was marred by sporadic violence. The government signed a peace accord with an anti-Sassou rebel group in 2017, quieting a conflict in southern Congo.
Congo is a major oil producer, yet 41% of its 5.4 million citizens live below the global poverty line, according to the World Bank.
Extreme poverty has increased since the last election as oil prices slumped. Public debt, much of it owed to oil traders like Glencore and Trafigura, ballooned to more than 100% of GDP.
Anti-corruption activists say vast sums are lost to graft by Sassou’s inner circle, accusations the government denies.
“The economic situation has been difficult since 2014, but we have faith, unshakeable faith to propel our country on the path to development,” Sassou said at his final rally on Friday.
Kolelas, who finished second in 2016, released a video from his hospital bed late on Saturday. Breathing heavily and holding an oxygen mask next to his face, he said he was “battling against death” but urged Congolese to “go vote for change”.
Results are expected to be published within four days of voting. If no candidate secures more than 50% of votes, a second round will take place 15 days later.
| Government Job change - Election | March 2021 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Yulia Skripal is released from hospital. Russia says it will view any resettlement efforts by the United Kingdom as "abduction." | Yulia Skripal leaves hospital more than five weeks after she and her father Sergei were poisoned in Salisbury.
By Martin Brunt, Crime Correspondent, and Alix Culbertson, News Reporter Tuesday 10 April 2018 15:15, UK
Russia has said any secret resettlement of the spy poisoned in Salisbury and his daughter will be seen as "abduction".
The threat came hours after it was revealed Yulia Skripal has been discharged from hospital, five weeks after she and her father, Sergei Skripal, were found slumped on a bench in central Salisbury on 4 March after they were poisoned.
Having made a rapid recovery in recent days, Ms Skripal was discharged on Monday and taken to a secure location.
The Russian Embassy in London said that if the Skripals were resettled in the USA, Australia, Canada or New Zealand and offered new identities - as reported - it would be "another gross violation of international law".
A statement said: "With a secret resettlement of Mr and Ms Skripal all opportunities to hear their version of the events of 4 March will highly likely be lost forever.
"The world, while having no opportunity to interact with them, will have every reason to see this as an abduction of the two Russian nationals or at least as their isolation."
Christine Blanshard, deputy chief executive and medical director at Salisbury District Hospital, said both Ms Skripal, 33, and her father, 66, have been responding well to treatment in the five weeks they have been in hospital.
She said they have received "round-the-clock" care and revealed that nerve agents cause hallucinations and sickness.
Mr Skripal is making good progress and will be discharged "in due course" but is recovering more slowly than his daughter, she added.
They were contaminated by the nerve agent novichok, thought to have been smeared hours earlier on the handle of Mr Skripal's front door at his home on the edge of the city.
His daughter had arrived the day before on a visit from her home in Moscow.
For nearly a month both were in a critical condition, but they have recently made a remarkable recovery.
Reacting to the news Ms Skripal had been discharged, the Russian Embassy in London tweeted its congratulations but said it needed "urgent proof" that she was not being influenced.
We congratulate Yulia Skripal on her recovery. Yet we need urgent proof that what is being done to her is done on her own free will.
Theresa May said: "Obviously I welcome the fact that Yulia Skripal has been discharged from hospital and I wish her the best for her continuing recovery."
When contacted on Tuesday morning Viktoria Skripal, Yulia's cousin, said she had only just heard, via the story broken by Sky News, that her cousin had been discharged.
She has since been trying to contact her.
"I think Britain will insist that she claims asylum," she said, adding: "I've tried lots of numbers for her but have had no response.
"How should I feel? I'm feeling pleased that she's well enough to be released from hospital.
"So far my feelings are unclear because I have not seen her and nobody has seen her, we've just had information."
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At the end of last week Viktoria Skripal said she had been denied a UK visa to travel to Salisbury to visit her cousin and uncle.
At the end of March, Prime Minister Theresa May said doctors indicated the Skripals "may never recover fully" as she announced that more than 130 people in Salisbury could potentially have been exposed to the nerve agent.
The poisoning of the Skripals prompted nearly 30 countries to expel more than 150 Russian diplomats in solidarity with the UK after it blamed Russia for poisoning the family.
| Famous Person - Recovered | April 2018 | ['(Sky News)'] |
A magnitude 7.7 earthquake strikes off the Loyalty Islands Province, New Caledonia. It is the strongest recorded earthquake of the year so far. A tsunami warning was issued with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology confirming that a tsunami was generated by the earthquake. | The United States Geological Survey detected the quake at 5:20 a.m. with an epicenter 257.3 miles east of Vao, New Caledonia. With a magnitude of 7.7 and depth of 6.22 miles, this quake could be felt far beyond the epicenter and is potentially disastrous.
Over the last seven days, there have been eight other earthquakes above magnitude 3.0 within 100 miles of this area.
| Earthquakes | February 2021 | ['(The San Francisco Chronicle)', '(Metro)', '(NDTV)'] |
Ten people are injured in a shooting at a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania block party. | Washington - Two children and five adults were injured in a shooting at a block party in Philadelphia on Saturday, when a suspect randomly opened fire on a crowd, according to officials and local media.
Philadelphia Police Lieutenant John Walker told NBC affiliate WCAU that a gunman shot down a street where people were gathered for a party. "It appears that everybody was here for the picnic and everybody just ran... it looks like they just randomly fired down the street and just hit whoever was in their way," Walker said. He said the incident was "just a terrible situation".
The news station said one of the victims was an 18-month-old baby who was grazed with a bullet in the neck. The other was a 10-year-old boy. The other five victims, aged 15 to 25, were taken to hospitals after the shooting, which occurred around 02:00 GMT in the largest city in the northeast state of Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, in a similar incident in Detroit Saturday, one person was killed and nine others injured when a suspect opened fire at a party on a basketball court. The shootings come after nine African Americans were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, by a suspected white supremacist.
The massacre has reignited a debate about gun laws in the United States.
The Weekly
Newsletter editor Alet Law guides you through our most interesting and insightful stories to give you a well-rounded view of the week that was. | Armed Conflict | June 2015 | ['(AFP via News24)', '(NBC Philadelphia)'] |
Typhoon Kalmaegi hits the northeast Philippines with warnings of potential floods and landslides. | By Associated Press Published: 05:35 BST, 16 September 2014 | Updated: 05:35 BST, 16 September 2014 BEIJING (AP) — A typhoon struck China's southernmost island of Hainan on Tuesday, forcing the cancellation of dozens of flights as it headed northwest toward Vietnam.
About 90,000 people in southern China were evacuated from high-risk areas ahead of Typhoon Kalmaegi, China's official Xinhua News Agency said. But the typhoon's course was giving only a glancing blow to southern China as the storm headed toward northern Vietnam, where it was expected to make landfall Tuesday night.
The storm was sending winds of 137 to 144 kilometers per hour (85 to 90 mph) over southern mainland China, according to the country's National Meteorological Center. Hainan's international airport canceled 69 flights, Xinhua said.
A Filipino holds a duck outside his house as a swollen river slowly recedes in suburban Quezon city, Philippines Monday, Sept. 15, 2014. Fast-moving typhoon Kalmaegi blew out of the northern Philippines Monday after causing flash floods and landslides. Three people died when big waves and strong winds sank a stalled ferry over the weekend.
Vietnam ordered residents in high-risk areas to evacuate and fishing boats to take shelter.
Typhoon Kalmaegi slammed into the northern Philippines on Monday, unleashing flooding and killing at least two people.
A Filipino man carries a pig over floodwaters as residents who earlier evacuated due to a swollen river return to their homes in suburban San Mateo, Rizal province, Philippines Monday, Sept. 15, 2014. Fast-moving typhoon Kalmaegi blew out of the northern Philippines Monday after causing flash floods and landslides. Three people died when big waves and strong winds sank a stalled ferry over the weekend. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | September 2014 | ['(AP via Daily Mail)'] |
Scientists discover a 386 million–year–old fossil forest at a sandstone quarry in Cairo, New York, making it the oldest known fossil forest in the world. | The world’s oldest known fossil forest has been discovered in a sandstone quarry in New York state, offering new insights into how trees transformed the planet.
The forest, found in the town of Cairo, would have spanned from New York to Pennsylvania and beyond, and has been dated to about 386m years old. It is one of only three known fossil forests dating to this period and about 2-3m years older than the previously oldest known fossil forest at Gilboa, also in New York state.
“These fossil forests are extremely rare,” said Chris Berry from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences. “To really understand how trees began to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we need to understand the ecology and habitats of the very earliest forests.”
The forest would have been quite open and its ancient trees would appear alien to the modern eye. A walker would have encountered clusters of Cladoxylopsid, a 10m-tall leafless tree with a swollen base, short branches resembling sticks of celery and shallow, ribbon-like roots. The fossils also revealed a tree called Archaeopteris, something like a pine, but instead of needles the branches and trunk were adorned with fern-like fronds, giving it an almost hairy appearance. “It’s not something we can immediately recognise as a modern tree,” said Berry.
Archaeopteris also featured enormous woody roots, which had not previously been seen in forests of this era.
The prehistoric forest would have been sparse on wildlife. The first dinosaurs would only appear 150m years later and there were no vertebrates on land yet and no birds. The forest’s primary occupants were millipede-like creatures, called myriapods, and some other primitive insects that may or may not have begun to fly.
“It’s funny to think of a forest without large animals. No birdsong. Just the wind in the trees,” said Berry.
The emergence of forests is one of the most transformative events in Earth’s history, marking permanent changes to ecology, atmospheric CO2 levels and climate. Before forests, CO2 levels were far higher and the Earth’s climate was hotter with no ice caps. By the end of the Devonian period, about 350m years ago, there were glaciers and, soon after, polar ice became permanent.
However, there have been so few fossil remains of early trees that scientists have had only a hazy idea of which trees dominated which habitats, how root systems altered soil chemistry and how forests opened up new ecological niches for animals.
“These remarkable findings have allowed us to move away from the generalities of the importance of large plants growing in forests,” said Berry. “We are really getting a handle on the transition of the Earth to a forested planet.”
Today, forests cover about 30% of the planet and are being cleared on a massive scale. Between 1990 and 2016, the world lost 502,000 square miles of forest, according to the World Bank – an area larger than South Africa – and about 17% of the Amazon rainforest has been cleared over the past 50 years. Even without accounting for the impact of burning fossil fuels, deforestation could lead to profound changes to the world’s ecosystem and climate. “If you reverse that process [of forestation] you probably lose the ice,” said Berry. | New archeological discoveries | December 2019 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
41 people are injured when a coach overturns in Kent, England, United Kingdom. | A serious coach crash on the M25 left a total of 41 people injured - three seriously.
Kent Live first revealed the coach overturned over the barrier on the hard shoulder just before the exit slip road at 4pm today (August 13).
Dozens of emergency vehicles, including Kent Police, South East Coast Ambulance Service and firefighters, raced to the shocking scene.
Drivers were left facing long delays on the anti-clockwise carriageway near junction 3 and the road remains closed.
You can get the latest updates on the roads from the Kent Traffic and Travel Facebook group. Traffic is still not moving anticlockwise after the incident at Junction 3 for the M20 (Swanley Interchange).
There is still huge congestion on the lead up to the Dartford Crossing and traffic is backed up to Junction 4 for Orpington.
There are also knock on effects on most of the surrounding areas.
Highways England warned of around 90 minutes of delays.
A Kent Police spokesman said there are long delays and drivers are advised to seek alternative routes. Follow our live blog below for the latest updates on this breaking news story.
The Princess Royal University Hospital in Orpington has declared a ‘major incident’ and is preparing to accept patients. A spokeswoman from King’s College NHS Trust, which runs Princess University Hospital, told Mirror Online: “We’ve declared a major incident status.
“This means that we’re preparing to accept casualties from the incident.”
Serious coach crash causes 90 minutes of delays as M25 traffic is at a standstill
Emergency services actually delivered a baby in the traffic jam after a coach overturned on the M25. Highways England warned the exit slip road is still closed, as are lanes one and two of the main M25 carriageway but severe delays are “easing”. A spokesman for Kent Fire and Rescue Service said: “Three fire engines, several fire officers and KFRS’ technical rescue team was sent to reports of a passenger coach leaving the anti-clockwise carriageway of the M25 near the A20 interchange at Swanley.
“Working closely with Kent Police and South East Coast Ambulance Service, firefighters secured the vehicle and made the scene safe before assisting in the removal of casualties from inside the coach. “Crews remain at the scene to assist partner agencies and keep the public safe.”
If you’re worried about the safety or wellbeing of a loved one you can contacted the Princess Royal University Hospital to find out if they are being treated. A spokesman for Kent Police has issued an update.
He said: “Kent Police was called to a report a coach had overturned on an M25 slip road at around 4pm on Monday 13 August.“The incident happened at junction three on the anti-clockwise carriageway and the slip road is currently closed, along with lanes one and two of the M25.“Officers attended the scene alongside crews from the South East Coast Ambulance Service and Kent Fire and Rescue Service.“All people aboard the coach have been accounted for and a number of people have received treatment at the scene for minor injuries before being conveyed to local hospitals. “A further three people have been taken to local hospitals with more serious injuries. “Specialist recovery for the coach has been arranged however it is anticipated the slip road will remain closed for several hours.“Motorists are advised to expect delays and, where possible, consider using another route.”
The road is still closed. Travel time is around 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Lanes one and two (of three) remain closed following an overturned coach that has left the carriageway. The exit slip has also been closed. There are still delays of around 90 minutes on the M25. A video of the shocking scenes on the M25 has emerged.
Paramedics have revealed extent of injuries, including children and serious injuries. Read more on this ongoing story.
While there has still been no confirmation on injuries, people are wishing any potential injuries well. Kent Live has contacted the South East Coast Ambulance Service and is still awaiting a response but at this stage there is no confirmation of any serious injuries. There is speculation on social media about a Major Incident having been declared at a local hospital, but this has not yet been confirmed.
We will keep you updated with the facts as and when we get them.
Delays are currently at around 90 minutes - with traffic not expected to clear until 9.15pm.
It’s not looking good. Traffic is at a standstill between Junctions 3 and 4 at the moment.
A spokesman for Highways England has said: “Traffic released in lane 3 after block.
“The M25 J3 anti-clockwise exit slip road is closed and lanes 1 and 2 are closed on the main M25 carriageway within J3 due to an overturned coach. “Long delays in the area. Please allow extra journey time or use alternative route.”
The air ambulance and the South East Coast Ambulance Service are still attending to the incident.
Worried drivers passing the scene of the collision said it looks “very bad”.
Katia Pisetzky tweeted this photo of dozens of emergency vehicles at the scene.
Pictures have emerged showing huge delays and a massive emergency response to the crash on the M25.
Today, Kent Live exclusively revealed the Dart Charge is going up. Yes, really. A spokesman for Kent Police said: “We were called at approximately 4pm on Monday 13 August to reports of a collision involving a coach on the anti-clockwise carriageway of the M25 near to junction 3.
“Officers are currently at the scene with South East Coast Ambulance Service and Kent Fire and Rescue Service.
“The junction 3 slip road on the anti-clockwise carriageway and lanes 1 and 2 are currently closed.
“There are delays to traffic and motorists are advised to seek alternative routes where possible.”
The M25 anticlockwise is completely blocked - traffic is stationary due to a crash.
A coach has overturned over the barrier on the hard shoulder at Junction 3 for the M20 (Swanley Interchange).
Congestion goes back to before Junction 4 for Orpington.
The emergency services are at the scene.
Traffic on the surrounding roads is affected by the accident and drivers are asked to find alternative routes.
Traffic cameras initially reported the crash to be between a car and a lorry but the problems seem to be caused by an overturned coach. A Highways England spokesman said: “The M25 junction 3 anti-clockwise exit slip road is closed and lanes 1 and 2 are closed on the main M25 carriageway within J3 due to an overturned coach. “ Long delays in the area and are expected to increase through the evening peak. “ Please use an alternative route and allow extra time.”
| Road Crash | August 2018 | ['(Kent Live)'] |
A suicide bombing attack in Baiji, Iraq kills at least 34. | BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Dozens of people picking up cylinders of cooking gas were victims of a suicide car bomb attack Tuesday morning in the northern Iraqi city of Baiji.
The explosion killed at least 25 people and wounded 80 others, a Salaheddin police official told CNN.
A suicide car bomber slammed into a truck loaded with cooking gas cylinders at a checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers and members of a local Awakening Council -- a grass-roots movement that fights al Qaeda in Iraq.
A number of people were killed in secondary explosions when cooking gas cylinders exploded, the police official said. Iraqi security forces and U.S.-led coalition forces were on the scene of the attack. A U.S. military statement said the casualty toll was 20 dead and 80 wounded. Watch medics care for injured Iraqis
"The enemy is making last-ditch efforts to derail and discredit the local Iraqi security forces by targeting innocent citizens of Baiji," said Lt. Col. Peter Wilhelm, commander of the 1st Battalion, 327th Regiment.
Baiji Police Chief Saad Nufoos was dismissed from his post as a result of the attack, according to an Iraqi Interior Ministry official.
Baiji is about 125 miles (200 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
In a second suicide attack, a bomber blew himself up in the middle of a funeral procession in western Baquba, killing nine people and wounding 20 others, a Baquba police official said. Casualties included members of another Awakening Council. Among the dead was the local head of the Brigades of 20th Revolution, a former Sunni insurgent group that is now an ally of the U.S. military. See damage and injuries from both bombings
According to police, the funeral was for Auday Mohammed Hassan, also an Awakening Council member whom the U.S. military mistakenly killed hours earlier. Baquba is in Diyala province about 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Baghdad. Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters have launched aggressive attacks against Awakening Councils in Diyala province in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said that 13 insurgents were killed and 27 others were detained in raids Monday and Tuesday targeting al Qaeda in Iraq.
"We continue to disrupt al Qaeda networks that are conducting attacks against the Iraqi people and the security forces that protect them," said Maj. Winfield Danielson, spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, the formal name for the U.S.-led forces.
"Operations like these show that, while al Qaeda remains a threat, Iraqi and coalition forces will take the fight to the terrorists, diminishing their ability to attack innocent civilians."
Also Tuesday, the Turkish military said its forces have killed between 150 and 175 Kurdish militants in northern Iraq operations this month.
In a statement, the military said that more than 200 Kurdish rebel positions were struck in Iraq's Kurdish region.
Turkey has been targeting rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has been launching cross-border attacks against Turkey from Iraq.
Jamal Abdullah, the spokesman of Iraq's Kurdish regional government, denied reports that strikes took place Tuesday.
He said that Turkish surveillance aircraft carried out a reconnaissance mission over the Iraqi border near a village in Duhuk province. E-mail to a friend CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq and Talia Kayali contributed to this report. All About Al Qaeda in Iraq Suicide Attacks Iraq War Kurdish Politics | Armed Conflict | December 2007 | ['(CNN)'] |
Three people are dead and over 200 are injured when HefajateIslam and JamaateIslami clash with police in Dhaka, Bangladesh. | At least three people were killed and over 200 injured as radical Islamists of Hefajat-e Islam and Jamaat-e-Islami jointly clashed with the police at the capital during the Dhaka Siege programme by the Islamists on Sunday.
Police authorities said, scores of policemen were injured in the fierce battle that ensued when the law enforcers fired hundreds of rubber bullets and tear gas shells to. Scores of journalists were injured and beaten up by Hefazat and Jamaat men .
At least 50 people, most of them hit by rubber bullet, were admitted to the Dhaka medical College Hospital.
Awami League General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam warned of tough action against Hefazat, askingit to leave the capital by Sunday evening. But Hefazat leaders defied his calls.
Earlier, as part of their pre-announced agitation, thousands of Hefazat activists seized the capital city, blocking all roads isolating Dhaka from rest of the country. Brandishing sticks, they took up position on several entry points to Dhaka to enforce their proposed blockade after Fajr prayers, raising slogans in support of their 13 demands, many of which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina says have already been met.
Hefazat has encountered stiff opposition from women’s groups ever since it opposed the National Women’s policy. Leading women’s groups in the country have announced a grand rally in Dhaka on May 9. | Armed Conflict | May 2013 | ['(The Hindu)'] |
Niger's president Mahamadou Issoufou announces that an attempted coup, involving the use of aerial firepower to overthrow the government has been foiled and those behind it have been arrested. Among those taken into custody were the former military chief of staff, General Souleymane Salou, and Lt. Colonel Dan Haoua, head of the air force base in the capital Niamey. | At least four senior military officers were arrested earlier in the week, for an ‘evil attempt at destabilisation’
Last modified on Thu 15 Oct 2020 14.30 BST
Niger’s government has foiled an attempted coup and arrested people who planned to use aerial firepower to seize control, the president Mahamadou Issoufou has said.
Issoufou was elected in 2011, one year after a coup. Political tension is high in advance of a presidential election set for 21 February. Issoufou is favourite to win, but the opposition accuses his government of repression ahead of the vote.
In an address to national television on Thursday, Issoufou called the attempted coup high treason, and said the situation was under control and all the main actors had been arrested – except one person who had fled.
“The government has just foiled an evil attempt at destabilisation,” he said. “The objective of these individuals, motivated by I don’t know what, was to overthrow the democratically elected power.”
“They envisaged using aerial firepower and they have for some weeks deliberately blocked [those military assets] in Niamey that I was pressing them to send to Diffa to the front for the struggle against Boko Haram.”
The west African country is a major uranium producer and western ally in a regional fight against Islamist militants including Nigeria’s Boko Haram.
Niger has declared a state of emergency in its south-eastern Diffa region due to numerous cross-border attacks this year from Nigeria.
At least four senior military officers were arrested on Tuesday, military sources and family members of those detained said.
Among those taken into custody were the former military chief of staff, Gen Souleymane Salou, and Lt Col Dan Haoua, head of the air force base in the capital Niamey.
“It’s said they are suspected of wanting to carry out subversive activities, but nothing is clear for the moment,” said a relative of Salou.
Born in 1953, Salou has done military training in Morocco, the US, France, Britain and Germany.
Issoufou’s election marked the restoration of democratic rule after a coup toppled his predecessor, Mamadou Tandja. The ruling Niger Party for Democracy and Socialism says it expects Issoufou to win in the first round.
Niger’s main opposition party has chosen former prime minister Seyni Oumarou, who came second in the last election, as its candidate.
A third candidate, opposition leader Hama Amadou, flew back to the country on 14 November and was arrested on charges of suspected involvement in a baby-trafficking scheme.
Issoufou said in the address that he remained committed to holding the elections and the electoral commission had prepared the most accurate voter register in the country’s history. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | December 2015 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
A by–election takes place in Hong Kong triggered by activists calling for universal suffrage in the territory. | HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong voted in citywide by-elections on Sunday, polls which pro-democracy groups consider to be a de facto referendum on universal suffrage aimed at pressuring Beijing to grant swifter political reforms.
The polls were triggered by the resignations of five pro-democracy lawmakers in January in a bid to reinvigorate public debate over constitutional development -- a major bone of contention between democrats and Beijing since Hong Kong’s return from British to Chinese rule in 1997.
“This is quite a watershed move for radical politics in Hong Kong,” said James Sung, a political analyst at City University.
The five democrats -- from the moderate Civic Party and more hardline League of Social Democrats -- are almost certain to be re-elected given the absence of serious rivals following a boycott by leading pro-establishment and pro-Beijing parties.
Despite that, the democrats have struggled to secure a respectable turnout to bolster their plan’s legitimacy.
A total of 3.4 million people are eligible to vote in the city of seven million, with one seat up for grabs in each of five districts.
“This is a golden opportunity for the people of Hong Kong to stand up and be counted,” said Martin Lee, a veteran democrat.
Initial turnout rates at the 500 or so polling stations, however, were far below previous legislative elections.
The referendum plan has been slammed by Beijing as a “blatant challenge” to their authority. Senior Hong Kong officials have snubbed the polls, leader Donald Tsang calling the exercise a waste of money.
Beijing has promised full democracy in Hong Kong in 2017 but the Democrats want it in 2012.
Hong Kong now has no direct say in its leader, with Tsang elected by an 800-person committee. Only half the legislature is directly elected.
The rest is comprised of special interest groups, known as functional constituencies, which the democrats want abolished.
A package of electoral reforms aimed at injecting greater democratic elements into elections in 2012 will be voted upon by legislators this summer, but the democrats have already said they’ll likely reject the package for not going far enough.
Editing by Paul Tait
| Government Job change - Election | May 2010 | ['(Straits Times)', '[permanent dead link]', '(Reuters India)', '(Radio Television Hong Kong)'] |
Zhelyu Zhelev, who became the first democratically elected president of Bulgaria, dies at 79. | Bulgaria's former President Zhelyu Zhelev (1990-1997) has died, the press office of President Rosen Plevneliev announced.
Zhelev, Bulgaria’s first democratically elected President after the fall of the Communist regime, died at the age of 79 on Friday.
He was a co-founder of the right-wing Union of Democratic Forces (UDF).
Zhelev was born on March 3, 1935 in the northeastern village of Veselinovo, Shumen district.
He completed a degree in Philosophy at the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" in 1958 and defended a PhD thesis there later.
Zhelev’s scholarly book “Fascism”, which was completed in 1967, was only published 15 years later.
Three weeks after being published, the book was banned and removed from bookstores as the authorities found that the critique of the fascist dictatorship was equally applicable to the communist system of government. Some 6,000 copies out of a total of 10,000 printed had been sold before the authorities banned the book.
Zhelev became a founding member and chair of the country’s first dissident organization, the Club for Support of Glasnost and Perestroika (1989).
Zhelev was first elected President in August 1990 by the Grand National Assembly, replacing Petar Mladenov, who had resigned.
At Zhelev's proposal, Atanas Semerdzhiev was elected Vice President.
In January 1992, Zhelev won direct presidential elections.
During Zhelev’s second term in office (1992-1997), Blaga Dimitrova was Vice President.
In 1996, Zhelev lost his party's nomination for the 1996 presidential race to Petar Stoyanov who went on to win the next presidential elections in 1997.
Zhelev was President of the Balkan Political Club founded on May 26, 2001 at his initiative.
We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you! | Famous Person - Death | January 2015 | ['(Euronews)', '(Novinite)'] |
The flight data recorder is retrieved from a mangrove swamp where the plane crashed. | Officials hope it may shed light on the cause of the crash of the Boeing 737-800 which killed all 114 people from at least 23 nations on board.
On Monday, rescuers began removing bodies from the crash site near Douala.
The plane came down shortly after taking off in heavy rain from Douala en route to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
"We found the flight data recorder," Cameroon's civil aviation director general Ignatius Sana Juma was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
"We still need to recover the cockpit voice recorder," he said. Flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders, also known as black boxes, contain a wide variety of information, including speed and altitude as wells as cockpit voice communications.
'No survivors'
The wreckage was found near the village of Mbanga Pongo, about 20km (12 miles) south-west of Douala - about 36 hours after the plane vanished from radar screens.
A Cameroonian official in charge of the recovery effort at the scene said he had surveyed the entire site and no-one had survived.
"There are no chances of finding any (survivors) under the circumstances," Luc Ndjodo said. "There is a crater filled with water and a clearing, then buried in the mud there are scattered plane parts and debris," he told AP news agency.
A team from the US National Transportation Safety Board is due to arrive at the scene, with French and US investigators already conducting aerial searches, US embassy officials said.
They will also assist with forensics and the recovery of bodies.
The International Red Cross is leading the search and recovery mission, alongside the Cameroonian government and military paramedics.
Body parts
On Monday, investigators battled through dense mangrove swamps to reach the wreckage, after parts of the jet were discovered late on Sunday.
The grim find was made by local fishermen. "I saw one body and one arm. We also saw some seats and a piece of plane about the size of a car door," Guiffo Gande told reporters in Mbanga Pongo village.
NATIONALITIES OF MISSING
35 Cameroon
15 India
9 Kenya (crew)
7 South Africa
6 China
6 Ivory Coast
6 Nigeria
5 Britain
3 Niger
2 Central African Republic
2 Democratic Republic of Congo
2 Equatorial Guinea
1 Ghana; Sweden; Togo; Mali; Switzerland; Comoros; Egypt; Mauritius; Senegal; Congo; Tanzania; US; Burkina Faso 3 unidentified
Source: Kenya Airways
The smell of death
With the site inaccessible to vehicles, the recovery of bodies and investigation will be a difficult and slow process, says the BBC's Noel Mwakugu in Douala.
Flight KQ 507 left Douala at 0005 on Saturday (2305 GMT Friday) and was due to arrive in Kenya at 0615 (0315 GMT). It sent a communication to the control tower in Douala shortly after take-off and later issued an automatic distress signal, Kenya Airways said. Search efforts initially focused on dense jungle under the plane's intended flight path from Douala and then on a swamp area where fishermen reported hearing noises the night the plane disappeared. Officials said it was too early determine what caused the crash. The aircraft was just six months old and part of a new fleet bought by the airline, which has a good safety record. In January 2000, one of its planes crashed into the sea after taking off from Abidjan, killing 169 passengers. Ten people survived. | Air crash | May 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is accused of plagiarising a speech by Franois Fillon. | French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has been accused of plagiarising defeated rival Franois Fillon in a speech she delivered on Monday.
Several sections of her speech in Villepinte, north of Paris, appear to repeat almost word-for-word comments Mr Fillon made in an address on 15 April.
An official of her National Front party said she had made a "nod" to Mr Fillon and it showed she was "not sectarian".
Ms Le Pen faces centrist Emmanuel Macron in the final round on Sunday.
The similarity in the speeches was pointed out by the Ridicule TV YouTube channel, initially set up by Franois Fillon's supporters to attack Mr Macron before the first round of voting that saw Mr Fillon eliminated from the contest.
Ridicule TV said the far right presidential candidate had plagiarised Mr Fillon's speech "word for word" and set the two speeches side by side, inviting viewers to make up their own minds.
The videos were also posted on Twitter.
Several passages imitated Mr Fillon's address word-for-word:
The Liberation newspaper said that what was supposed to have been a key speech for the second phase of voting in the election became instead a focus of ridicule for social media users.
But Florian Philippot, deputy chairman of the National Front, told Radio Classique the party had owned up to the similarities and that Ms Le Pen's speech was "nod-and-a-wink" to Mr Fillon's speech to "launch a real debate" on French identity.
He earlier told Agence France-Presse that the speech showed "she is not sectarian".
Ms Le Pen's campaign manager, David Rachline, also played down the accusations of plagiarism, saying the speech was a form of tribute to Mr Fillon, which "was appreciated" by his supporters.
The polling average line looks at the five most recent national polls and takes the median value, ie, the value between the two figures that are higher and two figures that are lower.
RTL said there was a fairly simple explanation for the similarities, in that one of those who helped with the Le Pen speech, Paul-Marie Coteaux, had written the speech for Mr Fillon.
However, Le journal du dimanche quoted Mr Coteaux as saying that, although he had provided material for Mr Fillon, he had not done so for the National Front.
Mr Fillon was a leading candidate for the presidency, representing the establishment conservative Republicans, but his campaign foundered after a funding scandal and he did not get through the first round of voting.
Recent opinion polls suggest Mr Macron is heading for victory on Sunday, carrying around 60% of the vote.
In a speech on Monday he said he would fight "until the last second" against Ms Le Pen's ideas "of what constitutes democracy".
The two candidates will go head-to-head in a TV debate on Wednesday evening.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | May 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
At least two people are killed and 200 are injured at protests against unemployment and government corruption in Iraq. Protestors also try to enter the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least two people were killed and 200 wounded in clashes in Iraq on Tuesday as security forces used tear gas, water cannon and live fire to disperse demonstrations over unemployment, corruption and poor public services.
The main protest took place in Baghdad, with some demonstrations in other areas.
A government statement and a health ministry spokesman said one person was killed, and that 40 members of the security forces were among those injured. They did not say where the death took place.
Police sources in the southern city of Nassiriya said a protester there was shot dead.
The government statement blamed “groups of riot inciters” for the violence and said the security forces were working to ensure the safety of peaceful protesters.
In Baghdad, police opened fire in the air as some 3,000 protesters tried to cross a bridge leading into Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, which houses government buildings and foreign embassies.
Reuters reporters saw several people with blood covering their faces. Ambulances rushed in to transport the wounded.
Security forces blocked roads and used stun grenades and water cannons to push back crowds. Protesters refused to leave and so security forces opened fire.
Since similar but more deadly protests took place last year, public anger has simmered over a chronic shortage of job opportunities, electricity and clean water.
Iraqis blame politicians and officials for endemic corruption that is preventing Iraq from recovering after years of sectarian conflict and a devastating war to defeat Islamic State.
“This is not a government, it is a bunch of parties and militias who destroyed Iraq,” said one protester who declined to give his name out of fear of reprisal.
Shi’ite Muslim paramilitary groups known as Popular Mobilisation Forces play a large role in Iraqi politics and have representation in parliament and government. They are also said to control parts of Iraq’s economy, which they deny.
Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who chaired the weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday, issued a statement promising jobs for graduates. He instructed the oil ministry and other government bodies to start including a 50% quota for local workers in subsequent contracts with foreign companies.
Oil-rich Iraq has suffered for decades under the rule of Saddam Hussein and U.N. sanctions, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and civil war it unleashed, and the battle against Islamic State, which was declared won in 2017.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | October 2019 | ['(Reuters)'] |
North Macedonia becomes the 30th member of NATO after over a year of negotiations. | BRUSSELS — North Macedonia on Friday officially became the 30th member of the NATO military alliance.
“North Macedonia is now part of the NATO family, a family of 30 nations and almost 1 billion people. A family based on the certainty that, no matter what challenges we face, we are all stronger and safer together," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement.
North Macedonia’s flag will be raised alongside those of the other 29 member countries at NATO headquarters in Brussels and two other commands simultaneously on Monday.
Given the impact of the new coronavirus around the world, Macedonian President Stevo Pendarovski said: "We cannot rejoice and mark the event as it should [be marked] … But, this is a historic success that after three decades of independence, finally confirms Macedonian security and guarantees our future. Congratulations to all of you! We deserve it!”
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the country’s membership "will support greater integration, democratic reform, trade, security, and stability across the region. North Macedonia’s accession also reaffirms to other aspirants that NATO’s door remains open to those countries willing and able to make the reforms necessary to meet NATO’s high standards, and to accept the responsibilities as well as benefits of membership.”
It marks the end of a long quest for the former Yugoslav republic. Joining NATO and the European Union has been a priority for its leaders, but a dispute with neighboring Greece over the country’s name stalled progress for more than two decades.
North Macedonia previously was known as Macedonia, a name it shared with a Greek province. Under a 2017 deal with Athens, the country changed its name and Greece agreed to drop objections to its NATO and eventual EU membership.
It’s been a big week for North Macedonia. On Thursday, EU leaders gave the small Balkans country the green light to begin membership talks. | Join in an Organization | March 2020 | ['(Defense News)'] |
Nigerian police claim to have captured a senior commander of the radical Islamist militant group Boko Haram. | Nigerian police say they have arrested a senior commander of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The group has carried out numerous attacks across northern Nigeria, killing hundreds of people. The detainee, Suleiman Mohammed, is said to be a Boko Haram commander in the northern city of Kano. It has been the scene of several deadly attacks, including one on a church service two weeks ago that left 16 people dead.
Another attack in January killed more than 180. It has, however, been impossible to independently verify whether or not Suleiman Mohammed is indeed a key figure in the Boko Haram group, the BBC's Will Ross reports from Lagos. The commissioner of police for Kano State said the man was with his wife and children in what he described as a hideout in Kano when he was arrested. Explosives, ammunition and guns were found there, police said. The suspect has been flown to the capital, Abuja, for questioning. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | May 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
At least one person is reportedly killed and others are taken hostage after an armed group seized control of the police headquarters in the Erebuni District of Yerevan, Armenia. The gunmen are demanding the release of jailed opposition figure, Jirair Sefilian, according to Armenia's National Security Service. | The hostage takers are being described as terrorists by local authorities.
“During the ongoing negotiations authorities are trying to convince the terrorists to refrain from any movements that can endanger people’s lives, to free hostages, give up their arms and surrender to the officials,” the statement published by the Armenian National Security Agency reads.
The local police chief, Valery Osipyan, is among the hostages, authorities confirmed to Armenian news agency Arminfo.
Troops have been dispatched to the area, and the head of the country’s security forces, Vladimir Gasparyan, is on the scene as well.
"SWAT police units and other law enforcers are in a combat-ready state, but they have not received the order to begin a special operation so far,” Unan Pogosyan, Armenia’s vice-police chief said as quoted by RIA news agency.
Police also claim that it’s ready to do all it takes to resolve the situation peacefully, however it said that storming the building is not being ruled out. “We have enough resources to disarm and arrest them,” Pogosyan went on to tell reporters as cited by Arminfo.
The attack began when an armed group in trucks rammed through the gates of the police headquarters and took control of the building.Two hostages have been freed by special forces, Armenia’s national Security Service said in a statement.
“Law enforcement is in full control of the situation and doing everything necessary to achieve a resolution.”
The attack was launched to demand the release of Armenian opposition figure Jirair Sefilyan, who was detained on June 20 after authorities allegedly uncovered a plot to seize several buildings and telecommunication facilities in Yerevan.
“That demand cannot be fulfilled,” Armenia’s vice-police chief told reportersEarlier supporters of the attackers have been spreading information about “an armed rebellion” via social networks.
“This information being spread isn’t consistent with reality. State government bodies are working in standard operating mode, and law enforcement authorities are conducting activities to ensure public order and state security.”
People are being evacuated from apartment buildings near the scene, local media report.
Sefilyan’s supporters had declared earlier that they intended to “change the state of things in Armenia” by inciting “an armed rebellion.”
“We have already seized one of the main police hubs in Yerevan and are in control of the Erebuni,” their statement said, referring to an area in the south of the Armenian capital.
Last October, Jirayr Serfilyan and his opposition movement, “New Armenia,” announced that they would launch a “process of the civil disobedience and change of power.”
“Achieving the shift of power only through elections is impossible; it can be achieved only by an armed rebellion of the people,” Sefilyan said at a public demonstration at the time. | Riot | July 2016 | ['(RT)'] |
The appeal of Ajmal Kasab against the death sentence imposed by an Indian court for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks begins in Mumbai. | There is tight security in Mumbai where a court has begun hearing an appeal by the sole surviving gunman of the 2008 attacks on the Indian city.
Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, a Pakistani national, is contesting the death sentence passed in May.
Due to security concerns, the 23-year-old appeared at the high court in Mumbai via a video link from prison. More than 170 people died when Qasab and nine other militants attacked various targets. Qasab was found guilty of mass murder and waging war against India. The BBC's Prachi Pinglay, who was inside the court in Mumbai on Monday, says Qasab wore white clothes that looked like prison uniform as he appeared via video link during the proceedings. The death row inmate, who had a thin moustache and stubble, smiled frequently as he looked into the camera, our correspondent says. The appeal opened with the prosecution arguing why the death sentence should be upheld. Qasab's lawyers will open their arguments later.
Earlier, police set up barricades outside the court and those entering the building had to go through security checks.
During the appeal hearing - which is expected to last about three months - a panel of judges will review evidence previously submitted. If Qasab loses, he has the right to appeal to the country's Supreme Court and then to India's president. Ten gunmen attacked Mumbai on 26 November 2008. All of them except Qasab were killed during the attacks. He and an accomplice carried out the assault on the city's main railway station, killing 52 people.
Last month, the High Court in Mumbai heard that Qasab had attacked prison officials after they caught him carrying out an unspecified illegal act.
During that hearing, prosecutors said Qasab had to be closely monitored because of his "dangerous nature and wild behaviour".
The court in Mumbai is also due to hear a prosecution appeal against the acquittal of Qasab's two Indian co-defendants.
Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed were accused of providing the gunmen with hand-drawn maps.
But during the trial, the judge rejected the case against them as too weak. Bombay High Court | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | October 2010 | ['(BBC News)'] |
The Hong Kong Election Committee meets to select a new Chief Executive. Carrie Lam becomes the first female Chief Executive. , | HONG KONG — A committee dominated by supporters of the Chinese government chose Carrie Lam as Hong Kong’s next leader on Sunday, opting for Beijing’s preferred candidate in a move likely to dismay residents who see the city’s freedoms as being under threat from China.
Mrs. Lam, a former No. 2 official in the city, received 777 out of 1,163 votes cast to become the next chief executive, as Hong Kong’s leader is called. She defeated John Tsang, a former finance secretary who polls indicated was more popular with the public.
The leader of this semiautonomous Chinese city of 7.3 million is chosen by just 1,194 electors, most of them business and political figures who have close ties to Beijing.
In an apparent act of protest, one elector drew a cross on the ballot with check marks, and another wrote an obscenity on it.
Hong Kong is guaranteed civil liberties and a high degree of autonomy under the terms of the 1997 handover that returned the city, a former British colony, to Chinese rule — an arrangement known as “one country, two systems.” But many believe China has violated that agreement with increasingly open interference in its affairs.
“China promised that Hong Kong people would run Hong Kong,” said Mabel Yau, 52, one of hundreds of protesters outside the voting site. “Today, only 1,200 people are representing us in electing the chief executive. Is it fair?”
Such concerns are unlikely to be eased by the choice of Mrs. Lam, who was a loyal deputy to Leung Chun-ying, the unpopular departing chief executive.
In a speech after the vote, Mrs. Lam, who will be the first female chief executive in Hong Kong history, vowed to prioritize mending social rifts. “Hong Kong, our home, is suffering from quite a lot of divisiveness,” she said. During her campaign, she added, “I heard so much more from people’s hearts and learned and experienced many new things as well as different angles to things. I see my shortcomings and understand that I must put in more efforts.”
Mrs. Lam led the failed effort to overhaul the city’s election process according to Beijing’s wishes, which prompted the so-called Umbrella Movement protests that shut down parts of the city for months in 2014.
“When the No. 2 official becomes the No. 1, there isn’t going to be much change,” said Joshua Wong, one of the leaders of those protests. “ ‘One country, two systems’ is going down the drain, and our high degree of autonomy will exist in name only,” he said.
The protests in 2014 were a response to Beijing’s plan to let Hong Kong choose the chief executive this year by direct popular vote. Under that plan, China would have screened the candidates — a restriction that made the so-called reform a sham, in the view of the student-led protesters who occupied the streets for months.
The local legislature rejected the proposal, meaning that a small committee again chose the city’s leader this year. But pro-democracy politicians have said they have no regrets, arguing that the plan would have bolstered Beijing’s grip on Hong Kong by giving the chief executive a false public mandate.
Since the Umbrella Movement protests, young people in particular have become even more resentful of the Chinese government, calling in growing numbers for Hong Kong’s self-determination and even independence from China. In the first major legislative elections after the protests, voters turned out in record numbers and elected for the first time two young, openly pro-independence politicians.
But in November, Beijing took the extraordinary step of intervening in a Hong Kong court case to prevent them from taking their seats, after they pledged allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation” during their swearing-in ceremony and inserted an anti-China snub into their oaths of office.
Fears of increasing interference from Beijing were also worsened when a bookseller and, later, a billionaire businessman disappeared from Hong Kong, later to re-emerge in police custody in mainland China. Such developments have alarmed many residents, but others are loyal to China and regard pro-democracy activists as a disruptive force.
Mrs. Lam, who will take office on July 1, will have to manage not only the city’s political turmoil, but also a rapidly aging population, low social mobility, slowing economic growth and one of the largest wealth gaps in the world.
Hong Kong’s housing is routinely ranked as even more unaffordable than London’s and New York’s, in part because of relentless demand from wealthy buyers in mainland China. Despite cooling measures enacted by the current government, average housing prices are at a record high, having more than doubled from a decade ago and far outpaced income growth.
Such economic grievances have fed calls for greater public participation in elections, although no change in that area is likely to occur quickly under the new administration. Mrs. Lam has said she will not rush to restart talks on reforming the electoral process, citing a need to avoid confrontation. | Government Job change - Election | March 2017 | ['(The Telegraph)', '(The New York Times)'] |
At least 25 people die in a bus crash in Afghanistan's Kandahar Province. | At least 35 people have been killed and several more injured in a bus crash in southern Afghanistan. Officials in Kandahar province said the bus was travelling at speed along the main road linking Kandahar city to the capital, Kabul.
The driver lost control and the bus overturned. Road traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan, and are usually blamed on bad roads, unsafe vehicles and poor driving.
Afghan officials said the accident happened in the early hours of Saturday in the Daman area, about 25 miles (40km) east of Kandahar city.
"This morning we received 35 dead and 24 injured from a bus crash incident," said the head of Kandahar Public Health, Abdul Qayoom Pokhla. A Kandahar government spokesman said many of the injured were in serious conditions.
Provincial traffic department head Mohammadollah blamed the driver for the accident, saying he was fast and reckless, according to local media reports.
Mohammadollah said a team had been despatched to the area to investigate.
The Interior Ministry issued a statement warning people to drive carefully "because a small reckless move can endanger many lives". | Road Crash | August 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
Voters in Switzerland approve a referendum that makes it easier for third-generation immigrants to become citizens. | ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss voters on Sunday approved making it easier for third-generation immigrants to become citizens, dismissing suggestions that the move could pose a security threat.
Projections by broadcaster SRF after polls closed showed the measure easily winning by a 59-41 percent margin.
Right-wing activists had used posters showing a burqa-clad woman with the slogan “no unchecked naturalization” to campaign against the proposal, which was backed by the government and parliament.
Around a quarter of neutral Switzerland’s population is foreign, a relatively high rate in comparison with other countries that make it easier for the children and grandchildren of immigrants to be naturalized.
The government had lobbied for the measure helping many young foreigners born and raised in Switzerland after their grandparents moved here. Under the current system they had faced a lengthy and often expensive naturalization procedure.
The new constitutional amendment simplifies -- but does not make automatic -- naturalization for well-integrated people no older than 25 who were born in Switzerland, went to school here for at least five years, share Swiss cultural values, speak a national language and do not depend on state aid.
| Government Policy Changes | February 2017 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters)'] |
U.S. Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert resigns at the request of National Security Advisor John R. Bolton. | President Donald Trump’s homeland security advisor, Tom Bossert, is stepping down, the White House announced Tuesday.
The administration did not give a reason for Bossert’s departure, which came as a surprise while the president pushes to ramp up border security.
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told CNBC that the move “seems like a natural turnover with a new [National Security Council] director.” John Bolton, a foreign policy hard-liner, started as Trump’s national security advisor Monday, succeeding H.R. McMaster. The official said that they were not aware of any points of difference between Bolton and Bossert.
Still, the action indicates Bolton is moving to put his own stamp on White House personnel. When a CNBC reporter pointed out that Bossert was seen as one of the most effective people in the Trump administration, another White House official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, responded: “That was likely the problem.”
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement on Bossert’s resignation:
“The President is grateful for Tom’s commitment to the safety and security of our great country. Tom led the White House’s efforts to protect the homeland from terrorist threats, strengthen our cyber defenses, and respond to an unprecedented series of natural disasters. President Trump thanks him for his patriotic service and wishes him well.”
Bossert’s resignation came two days after he took to the television airwaves to defend Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops to the border with Mexico.
“We’ve got a leaking boat on our border. And we’re all quibbling with how much water’s in the boat and how fast we’re bailing it out,” Bossert told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “I think at this point the president’s been pretty clear, enough is enough, fix the actual problem and stop that leak.”
Bossert also served in the administration of President George W. Bush and worked as a homeland security advisor during Trump’s transition period before taking office.
Last year, Bossert was reportedly tricked into giving up his personal email address by a prankster pretending to be Jared Kushner. | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | April 2018 | ['(CNBC)'] |
Hundreds of thousands of people participate in the March for Our Lives protest around the world regarding gun violence, mass shootings and school shootings in the United States. | Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across the US to call for tighter gun control.
The March For Our Lives movement arose after 17 deaths in a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month.
Student leader and Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez gave a powerful speech at the main Washington DC event.
After listing the names of the victims, she stayed silent on stage for six minutes, 20 seconds - the time it took for them to be killed. More than 800 sister protests were planned nationwide and abroad, with solidarity events taking place in Edinburgh, London, Geneva, Sydney and Tokyo. As events began to draw to a close on the US east coast, they continued on the west, including a major demonstration in Los Angeles. Huge crowds - including a high proportion of young people and children - gathered along Pennsylvania Avenue, with placards reading "Protect kids not guns" and "Am I next?". Singers Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the man behind hit musical Hamilton, performed on a stage erected in front of the US Capitol building. The music was interspersed with speeches from impassioned youth leaders.
"We will continue to fight for our dead friends," said speaker Delaney Tarr, a Parkland student.
Some came from children who are just 11 years old, including Naomi Wadler, from Virginia, who spoke "to represent African-American girls whose stories don't make the front page of every national newspaper".
By Marianna Brady, BBC News, Washington The crowds started to gather in the early hours of the morning outside the US Capitol. Chants for "no more NRA" and "no more guns" erupt every few minutes at random.
"He was my soulmate," said Victoria Gonzalez, looking down at a sign of her boyfriend Joaquin Oliver.
Valentine's Day - 14 February - started off as a great day for Victoria. "Joaquin and I exchanged gifts in the morning and he walked me to class. I was so happy."
Later that day, she would learn that Joaquin was one of 17 people shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas school.
"It wasn't real," she said, standing in a crowd of several thousand ahead of the march. "It's taken a while for it to sink in. I'm here today so no-one ever has to face this again. It gives me a lot of hope seeing how many people are out here supporting us. It feels like the whole entire world is on our side," Victoria said.
Read on: 'It feels like the world is on our side'
The 14 February massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland was one of a long line of school shootings in the US but the worst since Sandy Hook in 2012, when 26 people were killed.
Campaigning by Parkland students gained widespread support, with Ms Gonzalez one of the most outspoken figures, gaining more than a million Twitter followers in a matter of weeks. Survivors of other shootings have also joined the movement, alongside relatives of gun violence victims and anyone moved by their stories. The students staged a nationwide school walk-out earlier this month. They want to seize on public outrage to convince US politicians to take decisive action such as banning the sale of assault weapons.
On Thursday, 16-year-old Jaelynn Willey died, after being shot in the head by a classmate in Maryland earlier in the week. A second student was injured in the attack. Although the turnout during Saturday's marches has been huge, the issue still divides Americans. The right to bear arms is protected under the second amendment of the US constitution and the National Rifle Association (NRA) gun lobby remains highly influential.
On Saturday afternoon, the White House released a statement praising the "many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today". It outlined steps the government is taking to tackle gun violence:
Some protesters were disappointed that President Donald Trump, who is at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for the weekend, did not personally tweet a message of support during the protests. There were protests all across the nation, from New York and Los Angeles to Houston and Anchorage, Alaska.
A demonstration was also held in Parkland, with relatives of the victims speaking to crowds. In Scotland, families affected by the 1996 school shooting in Dunblane held a solidarity gathering outside the US consulate in Edinburgh.
In London, several hundred people - a mix of US immigrants and allies - also met at the new US embassy in Vauxhall.
The state of Florida passed a gun control law that raises the legal age for buying rifles but also allows the arming of school staff. The NRA sued the state, saying the law was unconstitutional
Several major companies cut ties with the NRA amid a #BoycottNRA campaign, while chains like Walmart and Dick's Sporting Goods announced new restrictions on gun sales.
Some 69% of Americans think gun laws should be tightened, according to a new poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, up from 61% in October 2016. | Protest_Online Condemnation | March 2018 | ['(BBC)', '(PBS)'] |
Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin'ono is granted bail after being arrested for more than a month on charges of inciting public violence over tweeting in support of anti–government protests. | Mr Chin'ono has been held in prison on charges of inciting violence after tweeting his support for anti-government protests
Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin'ono has been granted bail after being held in jail for more than a month on charges of inciting violence.
Mr Chin'ono's application for bail was approved by a magistrate who stipulated that while he awaits trial he must not post on social media such as Facebook or Twitter. The charges against Mr Chin'ono stem from the support he expressed on Twitter for an anti-government protest.
He was ordered to pay bail of 10,000 Zimbabwe dollars ($120)
Mr Chin'ono had previously been denied bail three times and his lawyers say prison authorities forced him to mingle with other prisoners despite showing symptoms "consistent" with Covid-19.
He has become ill in prison this week, according to his lawyers who say he is suffering from "a headache, fever and distorted taste," symptoms consistent with Covid-19. Lawyers are still waiting for results of tests carried out this week.
One of his lawyers, Taona Nyamakura told a magistrates' court during a routine remand hearing Tuesday that prison authorities had tricked Mr Chin'ono to think that he was going to see his private doctor but then bundled him into a waiting prison van and forced him to attend court.
This was despite a warning by Mr Chin'ono's personal physician that the reporter was a risk to other inmates due to the symptoms he is exhibiting and should be isolated from other prisoners until the results of his test are known.
Prosecutors denied Mr Chin'ono is a risk to other inmates, claiming that prison doctors have ascertained that he wasn't showing any signs of Covid-19.
Mr Chin'ono has been in detention for more than a month after he was arrested together with opposition politician, Jacob Ngarivhume, and accused of inciting violence for publishing on social media his support for an anti-government protest. That protest was foiled by the military and police on July 31.
The duo's lawyers have previously told the courts that they fear for their clients' safety as overcrowding, poor diet and lack of protective equipment put their health at risk.
Journalists' organizations, western embassies and human rights groups say Mr Chin'ono is being punished for exposing government corruption on Twitter.
Mr Chin'ono had alleged corruption involving a $60 million purchase of protective equipment for health workers. President Emmerson Mnangagwa later fired the health minister, who has been formally charged with corruption.
Mr Chin’ono, still wearing his red and white striped prison shirt, told journalists: "We have seen things (in prison) we only used to hear about, now we can write authoritatively.”
His bail conditions ban him from using Twitter, and Mr Chin’ono said this ban was “part of dictatorships. That’s what they do. So they removed me from Twitter but not from Facebook and I will continue to write for Facebook.”
He also said he will write about his experience in two state prisons and police cells since he was arrested on July 20 ahead of a banned protest on July 31.
"The reason I was put inside, is because with a lot of other guys we were putting out information exposing corruption.”
Earlier today ahead of his release, one of his lawyers, Doug Coltart said he had not yet received results of Mr Chin’ono’s test for Covid-19.
He said earlier this week that Mr Chin’ono was “unwell” and had been visited in the Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison by his private medical doctor. The state’s medical services said they had seen Mr Chin’ono and saw no signs he was ill.
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| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Release | September 2020 | ['(The Telegraph)'] |
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