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Italian President Sergio Mattarella accepts Giuseppe Conte as Prime Minister. Conte is now going to form his government, supported by the Five Star Movement and League. | Italy's President Sergio Mattarella has accepted a political novice as prime minister, paving the way for two populist parties to form a government.
The anti-establishment Five Star Movement and right-wing League chose law professor Giuseppe Conte in a bid to end 11 weeks of political deadlock.
The 53-year-old has faced claims that he embellished his CV, which he denies.
Concerns remain over the two parties, which reject years of EU austerity and want to renegotiate Italy's debt.
Speaking after emerging from talks with the president, Mr Conte said: "Outside of this palace there's a country that rightfully awaits a new government and answers. What is about to be born is the government of change."
He added that he would be the "defender of all Italians on the international and European stage". Italy has been without a government since elections on 4 March, because no political group could form a majority.
Two populist party leaders, Luigi di Maio of the Five Star Movement and Matteo Salvini of the League, finally agreed a coalition deal after days of talks and later nominated Mr Conte as their candidate to be prime minister.
The coalition deal promises tax cuts, a guaranteed basic income for the poor and deportations of 500,000 migrants - policies that are likely to put the eurozone's third biggest economy on a collision course with Brussels.
Mr Conte will now form a list of ministers to be approved by the president before a new government can be sworn in. The cabinet will then face a vote of confidence in parliament.
Fifty-three-year-old Mr Conte, a professor of private law in Florence and Rome, is not an elected MP and until now has been completely unknown in politics. Since his nomination, he has been accused of inflating his academic resume in an effort to boost his international profile.
On a CV dating back to 2013, he said he had "perfected his legal studies" at New York University, but a spokeswoman for the institution said there was no record of him having studied there.
The resume also said he had carried out "scientific research" at Cambridge University's Girton College in 2001 - a spokeswoman for the university said it could not confirm or deny his claim citing data protection laws.
Mr Conte also said he had worked on his legal studies at the International Kultur Institut in Vienna, Austria. The school - which was misspelt on the CV - is in fact a language school and does not appear to offer legal courses.
The Five Star Movement defended its nominee on Tuesday, saying that Mr Conte had never claimed to have earned degrees abroad, but "went abroad to study, to deepen his knowledge, to perfect his English legal language skills".
It added: "The defamatory campaign is so explicit and crude that it will only strengthen us."
The Five Star Movement and The League named Mr Conte for the role of prime minister on Monday. Instead of immediately accepting the nomination, Mr Mattarella took some time to decide, as concerns rose in Italy over Mr Conte's lack of experience and questions over his CV.
He has also faced controversy over unpaid taxes and fines of over €50,000 (£44,000, $51,000).
With the president's green light it is now up for the parliament to decide on the coalition. The two parties have sufficient votes in the Chamber of Deputies, but only a small majority in the upper house, the Senate.
Italy was ravaged by the 2008 financial crisis that left the economy some 6% smaller and three million more people in poverty.
The policies promised by the parties are estimated to cost at least €100bn ($117bn; £88bn), experts say, for a country with the biggest public debt in the EU after Greece.
Other proposals include:
Neither Five Star nor The League are fans of the single currency, the euro. League leader Matteo Salvini said not long ago that the euro was "a mistake" for Italy's economy, while Five Star had wanted a referendum on Italy's future membership.
But they have dropped their initial ambition of exit from the euro and now talk of trying to reform it from within. | Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | May 2018 | ['(BBC)'] |
An air ambulance helicopter crashes in Iran's southern Fars Province, killing everyone on board. The official Islamic Republic News Agency put the death toll at 10. | ANKARA (Reuters) - An air ambulance helicopter crashed on Friday in Iran’s central province of Fars, killing everyone on board, Iranian media reported.
State TV said the helicopter was taking a patient from a remote area to the city of Shiraz when it crashed. The patient, four medics and two crew were killed, the broadcaster said.
The semi-official Fars news agency said nine people were killed, including five injured in a car accident, it quoted police official Mohammad Hossein Hamidi as saying.
The official IRNA news agency put the death toll at 10.
A local official told state TV the cause of the crash was under investigation. Iran’s official news agency IRNA said the area had experienced storms and heavy rainfall in recent days.
| Air crash | March 2016 | ['(IRNA)', '(Reuters)'] |
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette charges five people, including the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, with involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the Legionnaires' disease outbreak that led to 12 deaths. |
The Michigan attorney general’s office on Wednesday charged the director of the state’s health department and four other public officials with involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the Flint water crisis, which has stretched into its fourthyear.
Nick Lyon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, also faces a felony count of misconduct in office.
While much of the attention in Flint has focused on the lead-tainted water that exposed thousands of young children to potential long-term health risks, the crisis also has been linked to an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease that contributed to at least a dozen deaths. Those cases ultimately led to the charges Wednesday for Lyon, as well as for the state’s chief medical executive, Eden Wells, who faces charges of obstruction of justice and lying to a police officer but is not accused of manslaughter.
Attorney General Bill Schuette also charged four other state and city officials, who already were facing various criminal accusations, with involuntary manslaughter: Stephen Busch, a water supervisor for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality; Darnell Earley, who had been a state-appointed emergency manager for Flint; Howard Croft, former director of the city’s public works department; and Liane Shekter-Smith, who served as chief of the state’s Office of Drinking Water.
Lyon was aware of the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak by early 2015 but “did not notify the public until a year later,” according to charging documents filed in court and reviewed by the Detroit Free Press. According to the documents, he “willfully disregarded the deadly nature of the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak,” later saying “[we] can’t save everyone,” and “everyone has to die of something.”
The attorney general’s officealleges that Lyon was personally briefed on the situation in Genesee County, where figures showed the number of Legionnaires’ cases was more than three times the annual average. Lyon allegedly also refused an early offer of help from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and hindered scientists from researching whether the spike in Legionnaires’ cases was linked to the city’s switch to water from the Flint River.
Those failures, investigators claim, led to the 2015 death of Robert Skidmore, an 85-year-old man who was treated at McLaren Flint hospital.
Investigators separately accused Wells of threatening to hold back funding for the Flint Area Community Health and Environment Partnership if the organization did not stop looking for the source of the outbreak. She also was charged with lying to an officer about when she became aware of the sharp increase in Legionnaires’ cases.
“We absolutely, vehemently dispute the charges. They are baseless,” Lyon’s attorney, Chip Chamberlain, said Wednesday. “We intend to provide a vigorous defense of Mr. Lyon. We expect the justice system to vindicate him entirely.”
In a statement, Gov. Rick Snyder (R) also defended Lyon and Wells, saying they have his full confidence and would remain employed at the health department.
“Nick Lyon has been a strong leader at the Department of Health and Human Services for the past several years and remains completely committed to Flint’s recovery,” Snyder said. “Director Lyon and Dr. Eden Wells, like every other person who has been charged with a crime by Bill Schuette, are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Some state employees were charged over a year ago and have been suspended from work since that time. They still have not had their day in court. That is not justice for Flint nor for those who have been charged.”
Schuette on Wednesday addressed the pressure he has gotten to charge Snyder, who has heard repeated calls to resign for his appointment of emergency mangers in Flint and the state’s delayed and inadequate response there.
“We only file criminal charges whenevidence of probable cause to commit a crime has been established,” Schuette said. He later revealed that investigators have been unable to speak with Snyder about his role in the catastrophe.“We attempted to interview the governor. We were not successful,” he said.
Flint in crisis: Tainted water, little hope
Mona Hanna-Attisha, the Flint doctor who went public with test results showing the spike in high blood-lead levels in the city’s children, said Wednesday that, regardless of the charges, Wellswas instrumental in getting top state officials to acknowledge the growing disaster after they initially dismissed its seriousness.
“I do want to remind everyone that after my research went public, and the state went after me, Dr. Wells was critical in getting her colleagues in the Snyder administration to finally understand and respond to the gravity of the crisis,” Hanna-Attisha said. But, she added, “restorative justice and accountability are critical to the journey toward healing Flint.”
For decades, Flint paid Detroit to have its water piped in from Lake Huron, with anti-corrosion chemicals added along the way. But in early 2014, with the city under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, officials switched to Flint River water in an ill-fated effort to save money.
State officials failed to ensure proper corrosion-control treatment of the new water source. That failure allowed rust, iron and lead to leach from aging pipes and wind up in residents’ homes. The ensuing catastrophe exposed thousands of children to high levels of lead, which can cause long-term physical damage and mental impairment.
Since a task force began probing the debacle in early 2016, Schuette has filed more than 50 criminal charges against 15 state and local officials many of whom now face multiple felonies as well as civil suits against outside companies that worked with the Flint water system. He and his team have insisted they will continue to follow where the evidence leads.
Former Wayne County prosecutor Todd Flood, who is helping lead the Flint investigation, said the latestcharges reflect a “willful disregard of duty” on the part of numerous public servants. He said that while he hopes the charges bring accountability and a sense of justice to Flint residents, there was little cause for celebration.
“There are no winners here,” he said. “We cannot bring back Mr. Skidmore. We can’t bring back the lost loved ones that died from legionella. I wish we could turn back the hands of time, but we can’t.”
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | June 2017 | ['(The Washington Post)', '(Detroit Free Press)'] |
Three fishermen are killed, and six others injured, during the crash of a van in Atka, Alaska, United States. | A patient is taken out of an ambulance at the Adak clinic after a vehicle rollover in Atka on Tuesday.
Three of the nine people injured in Tuesday's van crash on Atka have died, Alaska State Troopers say.
None of the people involved in the crash were named in a trooper dispatch issued just after midnight, pending notification of relatives. Troopers said they were notified of the single-vehicle wreck just after 6 p.m. Tuesday.
The van was traveling from the Atka Pride Seafoods fish processing plant to a bunkhouse for dinner, the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association said in a statement. Atka Pride Seafoods is a subsidiary of the association.
Luis Ingram, an Anchorage-based meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said an automated sensor station on Atka reported winds gusting from 25 to 36 mph at 5 p.m. Tuesday, when locals said the crash occurred. Sustained wind speeds for the afternoon were between 15 and 30 mph.
"It looks like generally the winds were gusting from the southwest," Ingram said. "There was no precipitation occurring at the time."
Local health care workers said they were treating nine patients Tuesday after the rollover. Ellen Krsnak, a spokeswoman for the community development association, said she was not able to confirm late Tuesday the severity of the injuries.
"We are devastated by the news of this accident and will do everything possible for our employees and their families," said Larry Cotter, the association's chief executive officer, in a statement.
Susie Hill, a community health aide at Atka's clinic, spoke over the phone from the clinic late Tuesday, where she said she had returned to get more supplies. Hill said she could not immediately comment on the extent of injuries.
"I just have to get back to them," she said. About 64 people live in Atka, according to the latest U.S. Census estimates. Those injured had to be flown to Adak, a larger Aleutian town, Tuesday evening for medical treatment and later picked up by a Coast Guard plane and taken to Anchorage, about 1,300 miles away, according to Coast Guard Petty Officer Meredith Manning.
Manning said Guardian Flight, an air Medevac provider, first flew those injured from Atka to Adak. The Coast Guard plane, typically stationed in Kodiak, was re-routed to Adak from Cordova; it picked up six patients and landed at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport at about 5:45 a.m., transferring them to local medics.
Alaska State Troopers will arrive in Atka Wednesday to investigate the crash, according to the statement from the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association.
Tegan Hanlon was a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News between 2013 and 2019.
Chris Klint, a lifelong Alaskan and UAA graduate, covers breaking news in the mornings. He spent more than five years at Anchorage TV station KTUU before joining Alaska Dispatch News. | Road Crash | June 2016 | ['(Alaska Dispatch News)'] |
Super Typhoon Mangkhut approaches the Philippines as one of the strongest in its history, with sustained winds of 205 kilometres per hour and gusts of up to 285 km/h . | Five million could be hit by super storm as gusts of up to 255km/h are expected
First published on Fri 14 Sep 2018 03.19 BST
The Philippines is braced for one of the strongest typhoons in its history, as authorities evacuate families in their thousands, close schools and put rescuers and troops on full alert in the country’s north.
Five million people are expected to be affected by Typhoon Mangkhut, which experts have categorised as a super typhoon with powerful winds and gusts equivalent to a category-5 Atlantic hurricane.
By Friday morning, almost 10,000 people across three regions had been evacuated and 22 domestic flights cancelled. By the evening, strong winds had already downed trees in Tuguegarao, a city in the main northern island of Luzon, where almost all businesses had been shuttered and police were patrolling otherwise quiet streets.
Weather experts said the storm almost matched the strength of Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and displaced more than five million in the central Philippines in 2013.
Mangkhut was on course to hit north-eastern Cagayan province early on Saturday local time. It was tracked on Friday about 250 miles (450km) away in the Pacific with sustained winds of 205km/h and gusts of up to 255km/h, Philippine forecasters said. Forecasts indicated that waves could climb to six metres on the coasts of Cagayan.
It was predicted to travel across the South China Sea and pass within 62 miles of Hong Kong on Sunday morning.
With a massive rain-cloud band 560 miles wide, combined with seasonal monsoon rains, the typhoon could bring intense rains that could trigger landslides and flash floods, the forecasters said. Storm warnings were raised in 25 provinces across Luzon, restricting sea and air travel.
Ricardo Jalad, the country’s civil defence chief, told an emergency meeting led by President Rodrigo Duterte that about 4.2 million people in Cagayan, nearby Isabela province and outlying regions were vulnerable to the most destructive effects near the typhoon’s 78 mile eye. Nearly 48,000 houses in those high-risk areas are made of light materials and vulnerable to Mangkhut’s winds.
Video shows Super Typhoon Mangkhut tearing through Guam, in the western Pacific. It has caused widespread flooding and power loss, with parts of the US territory still without electricity on Thursday morning. Across the north, residents covered glass windows with wooden boards, strengthened houses with rope and braces and moved fishing boats to safety.
Manuel Mamba, the governor of Cagayan, said that evacuations of residents from risky coastal villages and island municipalities north of the rice-and corn-producing province of 1.2 million people have started and school classes at all levels have been cancelled.
“The weather here is still good but we’re moving them now because it’s very important that when it comes, people will be away from peril,” Mamba said.
A change in the typhoon’s track prompted authorities to rapidly reassess where to redeploy emergency teams and supplies, Mamba said.
Duterte asked cabinet officials from the north to help oversee disaster-response work if needed, but told reporters it was too early to consider seeking foreign aid.
“It would depend on the severity of the crisis,” Duterte said. “If it flattens everything, maybe we need to have some help.”
The typhoon is approaching at the start of the rice and corn harvesting season in Cagayan, a major agricultural producer, and farmers were scrambling to save what they could of their crops, Mamba said. The threat to agriculture comes as the Philippines tries to cope with rice shortages.
Officials said other northern provinces started evacuating residents from high-risk areas, including in northern mountain provinces prone to landslides.
More than 43 million people could be affected by Super Typhoon #Mangkhut, predicted to be most powerful storm since records began and Hong Kong could take direct hit:Duterte cancelled his appearance at a missile test firing aboard a navy ship off northern Bataan province due to the approaching typhoon.
On Guam, where Mangkhut passed, residents dealt with flooded streets, downed trees and widespread power outages. Government agencies were conducting damage assessments and clearing roads, according to the Pacific Daily News. About 80% of the US territory was without power but it was restored by Thursday morning.
Mangkhut, a Thai word for the mangosteen fruit, is the 15th storm this year to batter the Philippines, which is hit by about 20 a year and is considered one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries. | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | September 2018 | ['(Ompong)', '(127\xa0mph)', '(177\xa0mph)', '(The Guardian)'] |
Two people are killed and two are injured in a shooting at a youth training center in Arvada Colorado, United States. | (CNN) -- Police in Arvada, Colorado, searched for a killer on Sunday, while a school for missionaries mourned the deaths of two of the gunman's victims and prayed for two others whom he wounded. Investigators were looking for any connections between the shootings and a later assault on a church in Colorado Springs, but police officials would not discuss possible links Sunday afternoon.
In the Colorado Springs incident, a gunman attacked worshippers, killing one person and wounding four others before being killed by a security staff member, police said.
"We are not in a place to confirm any information about any possible similarities to these incidents, being widely reported throughout the media," Arvada Police Chief Don Wick told reporters. "I'm asking that all of our communities be vigilant until we determine who's responsible for these crimes."
Authorities described the Arvada gunman as a white male, roughly 20 years of age, wearing a dark jacket. He may have a beard or mustache and may be wearing glasses and a dark skull cap or beanie, police said.
Police confirmed that two of the four people shot early Sunday at the live-in training center for young Christian missionaries were dead, and identified them as Tiffany Johnson and Philip Crouse. At about 12:30 a.m. Sunday, the gunman entered a building where Youth With a Mission members were cleaning up from a Christmas banquet, said Peter Warren, the center's co-founder.
He asked for housing for the night, Warren said, which Johnson refused to give him.
"She said, 'We really can't do that right now,' " Warren said.
"And then he opened fire."
Police had tried to track the gunman through fresh snow with the help of dogs, but lost his trail in a heavily walked area, deputy police chief Gary Creager told CNN. Watch police swarm around missionary center
Johnson, 26, was from Minnesota and Crouse, 24, was from Alaska, police said in a statement. Warren said both Johnson and Crouse died in surgery. The two other shooting victims are men, ages 22 and 23, police said. One was in critical condition with a bullet wound in his neck and the other was in stable condition with wounds on his legs.
Paul Filidis of Youth With a Mission's Colorado Springs office identified the wounded men as Charlie Blanch and Dan Griebenow, CNN affiliate KUSA reported. Both are staff members, according to the organization's Web site.
Johnson has been affiliated with the organization since 2006, and joined the staff in spring 2007, the Web site says.
Warren said a memorial service for the two dead would likely be held Tuesday or Wednesday. "These kids were like our kids, you know?" he told KUSA. "It's just such a tragedy."
Warren said the center was bringing the 80 or so other people who live at the Arvada campus to the group's mountain campus in Golden, Colorado.
"We're just going to be honest, and pray for one another, and cry with one another," | Armed Conflict | December 2007 | ['(CNN)'] |
Iranian Para-cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad dies after being involved in a crash during the men's C4-5 road race. | THE PARALYMPICS have been marred by tragedy after a competitor in the men's cycling road race died following a crash in the race.
Iranian Bahman Golbarnezhad was rushed to hospital after a fall competing in the C4-5 event in Rio today.
The rider suffered a cardiac arrest after hitting his head against a rock but despite receiving emergency treatment on the course and on the way to hospital, the 48-year-old was pronounced dead in hospital.
The race was also marred by another crash just yards from the finishing line when two rivals competing for gold tumbled over each other.
International Paralympic Committee president Sir Philip Carven said: “This is truly heart-breaking news and the thoughts and condolences of the whole Paralympic Movement are with Bahman’s family, friends, and teammates as well as the whole of the National Paralympic Committee (NPC) of Iran.
“The Paralympic Family is united in grief at this horrendous tragedy which casts a shadow over what have been great Paralympic Games here in Rio.”
It is with deep sadness and regret that the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) confirms the death of the Iranian Para cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad following an accident in this morning’s (17 September) road race at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.
Golbarnezhad, 48, was involved in a crash at around 10:40am on the first section of the Grumari loop, a mountainous stretch of the course.
The athlete received treatment at the scene and was in the process of being taken to the athlete hospital when he suffered a cardiac arrest.
The ambulance then diverted to the nearby Unimed Rio Hospital in Barra where he passed away soon after arrival.
The athlete’s family who are in Iran was informed this afternoon and the Iranian team was brought together in the Athlete Village earlier this evening and told of the news.
Sir Philip Carven, IPC President, said: “This is truly heart-breaking news and the thoughts and condolences of the whole Paralympic Movement are with Bahman’s family, friends, and teammates as well as the whole of the National Paralympic Committee (NPC) of Iran.
“The Paralympic Family is united in grief at this horrendous tragedy which casts a shadow over what have been great Paralympic Games here in Rio.”
Carlos Nuzman, President of Rio 2016, said: “This is very sad news for sport and for the Paralympic movement. Our hearts and prayers are with Bahman’s family, his teammates and all the people of Iran.”
Brian Cookson, UCI President, said: “I am devastated to hear about the death of Iranian rider Bahman Golbarnezhad. Our thoughts are with his family and friends, and the NPC of Iran to whom we offer our most sincere condolences.”
Following Golbarnezhad‘s passing the Iranian Flag has been lowered to half-mast in the Paralympic Village.
The Paralympic flag will also be flown at half-mast in the Paralympic Village and at the Rio Centro venue where Iran on Sunday (18 September) will play Bosnia and Herzegovina in the sitting volleyball gold medal match.
During tomorrow’s Closing Ceremony a moment of silence will be held.
An investigation into the circumstances of the accident has been launched.
Golbarnezhad was born in Shiraz, Iran. He also competed in the London Paralympics and didn't medal.
The road races began at Pontal and included the Grumari circuit incorporated in the Rio Olympics road races.
The Vista Chinesa circuit - which included a treacherous descent where Holland’s Annemiek van Vleuten crashed into the curb, sustaining heavy concussion - was not part of the Paralympic course.
Golbarnezhad was 14th in the time-trial on Wednesday and was Iran’s sole cyclist at the Rio Games.
Iran’s NPC said in a statement: “Regretfully, I.R.IRAN NPC announces that Mr. Bahman Golbarnezhad, passed away because of his accident during the competition.”
We are devastated by the news of Bahman Golbarnezhad's passing. Our thoughts are with our friends and colleagues from NPC Iran.
Our thoughts are with the friends, family and teammates of Team Iran's inspirational cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad.
Mount comes close and Stones hits post as Three Lions pile on pressure
UK's longest Covid patient, 49, who spent 14 months in hospital dies
Moment mum dragged from car by knife thugs as she begs to let her save baby
I got my baby a £500k ring & my teens have unlimited credit cards, I’m so lavish
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Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes. For further details of our complaints policy and to make a complaint please click this link: thesun.co.uk/editorial-complaints/ | Famous Person - Death | September 2016 | ['(BBC)', '(The Sun)'] |
A Saudi-led military coalition bombards government buildings and residential neighborhoods in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, killing about 30 people, including civilians. Rescuers continue searching for other possible victims buried under the rubble. , | An elderly man sits under a mural depicting a Saudi-led airstrike hitting Sanaa with Arabic writing that reads,"using bombs internationally banned " in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. The overnight airstrikes against Yemen's Shiite rebels and their allies have killed almost 30 people, including civilians, in the capital Sanaa, security and medical officials there said Saturday. The coalition' airstrikes hit an apartment building in the center of the capital, a UNESCO world heritage site, killing a family of nine, the officials who remain neutral in the conflict that has divided Yemen's security forces said. Civilians and security forces gather near a house damaged in a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People stand amid the rubble of a house damaged by Saudi-led airstrike in the old city of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People look at a house damaged by a Saudi-led airstrike in the old city of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People carry bodies of victims who were killed in a Saudi-led airstrike during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People carry the body of a Yemeni who was killed in a Saudi-led airstrike during the funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People carry bodies of victims who were killed in a Saudi-led airstrike during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People carry the coffin of a woman who was killed in a Saudi-led airstrike during her funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. The coalition' airstrikes hit an apartment building in the center of the capital, a UNESCO world heritage site, killing a family of nine, the officials who remain neutral in the conflict that has divided Yemen's security forces said. Residents look out from a window of their house that was damaged in a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. The overnight airstrikes against Yemen's Shiite rebels and their allies have killed almost 30 people, including civilians, in the capital Sanaa, security and medical officials there said Saturday. A man, left, stands guard amid the rubble of a house damaged in a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. An elderly man sits under a mural depicting a Saudi-led airstrike hitting Sanaa with Arabic writing that reads,"using bombs internationally banned " in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. The overnight airstrikes against Yemen's Shiite rebels and their allies have killed almost 30 people, including civilians, in the capital Sanaa, security and medical officials there said Saturday. The coalition' airstrikes hit an apartment building in the center of the capital, a UNESCO world heritage site, killing a family of nine, the officials who remain neutral in the conflict that has divided Yemen's security forces said. Civilians and security forces gather near a house damaged in a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People stand amid the rubble of a house damaged by Saudi-led airstrike in the old city of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People look at a house damaged by a Saudi-led airstrike in the old city of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People carry bodies of victims who were killed in a Saudi-led airstrike during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People carry the body of a Yemeni who was killed in a Saudi-led airstrike during the funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People carry bodies of victims who were killed in a Saudi-led airstrike during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. People carry the coffin of a woman who was killed in a Saudi-led airstrike during her funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. The coalition' airstrikes hit an apartment building in the center of the capital, a UNESCO world heritage site, killing a family of nine, the officials who remain neutral in the conflict that has divided Yemen's security forces said. Residents look out from a window of their house that was damaged in a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. The overnight airstrikes against Yemen's Shiite rebels and their allies have killed almost 30 people, including civilians, in the capital Sanaa, security and medical officials there said Saturday. A man, left, stands guard amid the rubble of a house damaged in a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. An elderly man sits under a mural depicting a Saudi-led airstrike hitting Sanaa with Arabic writing that reads,"using bombs internationally banned " in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. The overnight airstrikes against Yemen's Shiite rebels and their allies have killed almost 30 people, including civilians, in the capital Sanaa, security and medical officials there said Saturday. The coalition' airstrikes hit an apartment building in the center of the capital, a UNESCO world heritage site, killing a family of nine, the officials who remain neutral in the conflict that has divided Yemen's security forces said. Civilians and security forces gather near a house damaged in a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen on Saturday. SANAA, Yemen Airstrikes carried out by a Saudi-led coalition against Yemen’s Shiite rebels and their allies have killed 29 people, including civilians, in the capital Sanaa, security and medical officials in the city said Saturday.
The coalition’s airstrikes overnight hit an apartment building in the center of the capital, an area that is a UNESCO world heritage site, killing a family of nine, said the officials, who remain neutral in the conflict that has divided Yemen’s security forces.
Another civilian was also killed and rescuers were searching for other possible victims buried under the rubble. The rebels, known as Houthis, lost 19 fighters in the overnight attack, the officials said.
“It was a terrifying night,” Sanaa resident Mohsen Faleeh said. “The airstrikes were heard in every corner of the city.”
Yemen has been torn by a ferocious war pitting the Houthis and forces fighting for former President Ali Abdullah Saleh against fighters loyal to exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, as well as southern separatists, local militias and Sunni extremists.
The strikes targeted some of Saleh’s estates, prompting pro-Saleh media to circulate a defiant statement from the former president, saying “the person they are searching for lives in the hearts of 25 million Yemenis.”
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief reporters.
Also in Sanaa, a hundred people staged a protest Saturday in front of a Houthi headquarters building, a rare sign of dissent against the rebels since they overran the capital in September. The demonstrators called for the release of Mohammed Qahtan, a leader of Yemen’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and others.
“They beat us with batons and heaped threats and insults on us,” protester Ahmed Moslah told The Associated Press. Marwan Damag, secretary-general of the press sydnicate, confirmed Moslah’s account, adding that at least five people were arrested.
Also Saturday, Oman’s foreign ministry said the home of its ambassador in Sanaa was attacked in fighting Friday and it called on all sides in the conflict to resolve their disputes.
The ministry did not give details on the incident or assign blame in its statement. It cited its “deep regret” over the targeting of the residence and said the attack is “a clear violation of the charters and international norms that emphasize the inviolability of diplomatic premises.”
The ministry called for an end to the fighting before it poses “a serious threat to the security of the region.”
A day earlier, the United Nations’ children’s agency said it was “appalled” that vital water supplies, which were intended to help 11,000 people, were destroyed in the bombing of a warehouse used by the agency in southern Sanaa.
UNICEF didn’t assign blame but Sanaa is a rebel stronghold constantly targeted by coalition airstrikes.
| Armed Conflict | September 2015 | ['(AP via Orange County Register)', '(Xinhuanet)'] |
The security officers of Georgia arrest nearly 30 members of the opposition political party "Samartlianoba" and its satellite organizations on suspicion of plotting a coup against the government. The party, which advocates closer political ties with the Russian Federation, is led by the nation's fugitive security chief Igor Giorgadze who is wanted by Interpol for his alleged involvement in the 1995 attempt on former Georgian President Shevardnadze's life. | They say those detained are supporters of Igor Giorgadze - the fugitive former head of the state security service. Lawyers for those arrested deny the coup accusations, saying the arrests amount to political persecution.
Mr Giorgadze fled Georgia after being accused of trying to assassinate then President Eduard Shevardnadze in 1995 - a charge he denies.
Some 450 police officers took part in the morning raids on houses and offices across Georgia, the BBC's Matthew Collin in Tbilisi reports.
"They will be charged under Article 315 of the Georgian criminal code - plotting against the state and overthrowing the government," Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili told reporters.
Among those detained are officials of two opposition parties - the pro-Russian Justice Party and the Conservative Monarchists.
Tensions with Russia
The Justice Party was founded by Mr Giorgadze in exile. Mr Giorgadze remains a wanted man in Georgia, but has appeared on television in Russia, our correspondent says.
Tbilisi says it will demand an explanation from Moscow about where the funding for the Justice Party comes from. The raids come amid growing tensions between the two countries. Georgia accuses Moscow of backing separatists in Georgia's breakaway regions, while Russia has banned the import of certain Georgian goods. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | September 2006 | ['(Justice)', '(BBC)'] |
An inquest opens into the deaths of 7 people killed in last Friday's multiple vehicle pile–up on the M5 in the English county of Somerset. | The inquest into the deaths of the seven people killed in a crash on the M5 in Somerset last Friday has opened.
All of the bodies were officially released by the West Somerset coroner Michael Rose, at the hearing in Taunton.
He said: "Each one of these deaths is a tragedy. People bound on a normal evening's journey suddenly thrust into the middle of an horrific accident."
Thirty four vehicles were involved in the crash, and 51 people were injured.
Mr Rose also thanked the work of the emergency services, who "responded with incredible speed and in many cases considerable bravery".
Those killed in the crash were lorry drivers Terry Brice, from Patchway, South Gloucestershire, and Kye Thomas, from Gunnislake, Cornwall; father and daughter Michael and Maggie Barton, from Windsor, Berkshire; grandparents Anthony and Pamela Adams, from Newport, South Wales; and battle re-enactor Malcolm Beacham, from Woolavington, near Bridgwater, Somerset.
Michael Barton, died of chest injuries, Maggie Barton died of neck, chest and abdominal injuries, and Malcolm Beacham died of head injuries.
Post-mortem examinations of three of the victims, Kye Thomas, Terry Brice, Anthony and Pamela Adams, failed to establish a cause of death.
Staff at Samworth Brothers paid tribute to their lorry drivers, Terry Brice and Kye Thomas.
Max Johnson, operations manager, said: "Terry only joined just over six months ago but his friendly and generous nature will be missed by all of us here."
Tara Davis, transport manager, said: "Kye had driven for us for 15 years and was a very well-known and respected member of our team.
"He was a genuine and warm friend to everyone here. We also knew him as a dedicated husband and father.
"The news is heartbreaking and our thoughts are with his wife Becki, their four children, family and friends."
Speaking outside the inquest, Det Supt Mike Courtiour, of Avon and Somerset Police, said: "Since this heartbreaking event occurred we have been working non-stop to establish what happened and those investigations are still very much ongoing.
"We have received a huge number of calls and messages from members of the public and I am very grateful for this. "This has raised nearly 200 actions for us to follow up.
"We are working hard to speak with everyone as quickly as possible, however we need to do so sensitively because some have been injured and understandably are deeply distressed and upset by what they saw. "Therefore you will understand that this is likely to take some time."
The public will not be able to attend a vigil being held on Friday at Sainsbury's car park in Hankridge, near the crash site, as originally planned.
Police expressed concerns about the number of people who might attend, but space is being set aside at the car park for public tributes to be laid from Saturday.
| Road Crash | November 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
In the Netherlands a 45yearold man is arrested following a DNA profiling match in connection with a highprofile rape and murder case of a sixteenyearold girl on May 1, 1999. | Police in Friesland have arrested a local man in connection with the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl in 1999.
The man was picked up following the mass dna testing of men living close to the field where Marianne Vaatstra’s body was found. According to television crime reporter Peter R de Vries, who has been central to keeping the case open, the dna match is 100%. ‘In ordinary words, you could say ‘the case is solved’’, De Vries told Nos radio. Farmer The suspect is said to be a white, 44-year-old man from the village of Oudwoude. ‘It is a farmer with his own company,’ De Vries said. The Telegraaf later identified the man as Jasper S, who has two children and whose wife is very active in village life. The man’s farm is some two kilometres from the field where Marianne’s body was found. He was 31 at the time of her death. According to media reports, he had voluntarily given a dna sample when police made an appeal this summer. Traces Nearly 6,600 men voluntarily gave a dna sample in a last ditch attempt to solve the murder earlier this year. The decision to launch the dna appeal came after De Vries in May broadcast information about a Playboy cigarette lighter found in Vaatstra’s bag which contains dna traces that match the traces found on the schoolgirl’s body. Tip-offs following the broadcast showed the lighter was on sale in the local area at the time, including in the village of Zwaagwesteinde where she lived. Police are due to give a news conference about the arrest later on Monday.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | November 2012 | ['(DutchNews)'] |
Several demonstrations, some of them violent, take place in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Bursa, Antalya and Diyarbakir in response to the disaster, with police responding to many of the protests with force. | Trade unions in Turkey have been holding a one-day strike in protest at the country's worst mine disaster, which has claimed at least 282 lives.
Thousands took to the streets in cities across the country, with clashes breaking out in Izmir.
President Abdullah Gul visited the scene of the disaster in Soma, as Turkey holds three days of mourning.
The first funerals of victims have been held in a crowded town cemetery, as excavators dug new graves.
Meanwhile a survivor of the disaster described what happened.
"We smelt the smoke and we went upstairs and heard the explosion," Ferhat Ay told the BBC. "I went back down to rescue my friends. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't go back."
Harrowing stories about victims continue to emerge, with Hurriyet newspaper reporting a note found in the hand of a dead miner which read: "Please give me your blessings, son."
Excavators have been digging new graves in the town's cemetery, as funerals are held for victims in quick succession and loudspeakers broadcast the names of the dead.
Women cried and sang improvised songs about their relatives as the bodies were lowered into the graves.
Rescue efforts continue at the mine in Soma but there is little hope of finding anyone else alive.
Eight bodies were recovered overnight, bringing the death toll to 282. Correspondents saw another body taken away during Thursday. Up to 150 miners remain missing.
The disaster triggered a wave of anger around the country.
Several unions are reportedly taking part in the 24-hour strike, and blame the privatisation of the mining sector for making working conditions more dangerous.
Some 3,000 people in the capital, Ankara, marched on the labour ministry, the BBC's Turkish Service reports.
In Istanbul, people tried to march to Taksim Square, the scene of last year's anti-government demonstrations, but were stopped by police.
It was a second day of protest, after police clashed with crowds on Wednesday.
Police fired tear gas and water cannon on some 20,000 people who took to the streets in Izmir, Turkey's third largest city situated just 120km (75 miles) from Soma. A union boss in the city was said to have been hospitalised.
There were also reports of demonstrations in Bursa, Antalya, Diyarbakir and other cities.
President Gul called on Turks to be "unified... to get over these hard times" during his visit to Soma. He was speaking after meeting injured miners in hospital and touring the scene of the disaster.
His visit was met by protests but it was not the same level of tension that greeted the prime minister on Wednesday, the BBC's Selin Girit reports from Soma.
National disasters produce lasting images, which can often change the course of a leader's time in office. US President Bill Clinton's embrace of victims of the 1995 Oklahoma bombing increased his stature, while Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's care for the victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake ensured his popularity. By contrast, here in Soma, Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have struggled to capture the mood of an angry, mourning nation. It may be that the startling photo of an Erdogan aide (in a smart suit) kicking a protester comes to symbolise what has happened here.
To government opponents, the photo encapsulates their long-held complaints - about a privileged administration which treats dissent as treason.
Scuffles broke out during Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit on Wednesday, as people booed him and kicked his car, calling for his resignation. However, it was Mr Erdogan's aide, Yusuf Yerkel, who made headlines on Thursday when photos emerged of him appearing to kick a protester in Soma.
Later pictures of the prime minister appearing to slap a protester in a local supermarket were shown in the Turkish media. Mr Erdogan's office said that whatever happened was a "reaction of the moment", but the man in question has come forward to ask for an apology.
The prime minister had been criticised for being insensitive in his reaction to the disaster, by appearing to suggest that it was a fact of life.
Power cut
The Soma mine was privatised in 2005.
The government has been accused of rejecting a recent proposal for a parliamentary inquiry into mine accidents in the area, although officials say the Soma mine was subject to regular inspections, most recently in March.
An explosion soon after midday on Tuesday sent carbon monoxide gas into the mine's tunnels and galleries, while 787 miners were underground, some 2km (1.2 miles) below the surface and 4km from the mine entrance.
Many of them died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Government officials said 363 miners were rescued in the hours after the explosion, but no survivors have been brought out since dawn on Wednesday. Coal mining is a major industry in the Soma area, helping to supply a nearby lignite-fired thermal power plant, but safety has long been a concern. Nearly 40% of Turkey's electricity production depends on coal.
| Protest_Online Condemnation | May 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
Prisoners in the U.S. state of Georgia, in particular inmates of United States Penitentiary, Atlanta, start protesting. | If the military now running Egypt is as repressive as Mubarak, you know the Egyptians will be outraged. They won’t stand for it. Whenever we in the U.S. make a brave step forward … and are pushed back a couple of steps, we should be outraged too. And we should make some noise.
On Dec. 9, thousands of prisoners in Georgia – prisoners from different prisons, of different races, ages and religions – made a very brave step forward. They all sat down at once, demanding a living wage for work, education opportunities, decent health care, an end to cruel and unusual punishment, decent living conditions, nutritional meals, vocational and self-improvement opportunities, access to families and just parole decisions. (The full list of demands, in the prisoners’ words, is reprinted below.) It was the biggest prison strike in U.S. history.
Eight days later, the newly formed Concerned Coalition to Protect Prisoners’ Rights met in Atlanta with Georgia prison officials, who, Bruce Dixon reported, told them they had “identified dozens of inmates whom they believed were leaders of the strike. They admitted confining these inmates to isolation and in some cases transferring them to other institutions.”
Now, over two months later, several cases of hideous retaliation have come to light, including that of Miguel Jackson, who was pepper sprayed, handcuffed and beaten with hammers, resulting in a fractured nose and 50 stitches to his face. Guards then tried to throw him over the railing from the second floor, his wife told the Final Call.
On Jan. 11, a Georgia prisoner sent a text message to Zak Solomon, a supporter of the Concerned Coalition to Protect Prisoners’ Rights, saying: “Since the beatings of inmates with hammers by corrections staff, another approach by staff is taking place. Instead of the staff themselves beating inmates, they are allowing the so called gang bangers and so called thugs to do it and then they compensate them in some fashion, as well as protect them from disciplinary action.”
Yesterday, legendary prisoner advocate Kiilu Nyasha received text messages from a Georgia prisoner whose close friend is Eugene Thomas, known to Bay View readers for a number of stories, most recently “Still no news of 37 missing Georgia prison strikers,” in which he wrote, “Reidsville, where we are, is hiding some of those brothers. This place has a history of hiding people, as they did Imam Jamil A. Al-Amin [the former H. Rap Brown] before transferring him to federal prison in Florence, Colorado.” [Update: Ajamu Baraka, a member of the Coalition, reported on Feb. 19 that the 37 prisoners have finally been located and that none of them are currently hospitalized. – ed.]
Brother Eugene, his friend wrote to Kiilu, is the latest victim of retaliation.
“Dear sistah,” he wrote, ”This is Mabu from the Georgia prison movement. I am a close comrade of Bro. Eugene Thomas of Georgia State Prison [also known as Reidsville], who is a known activist for prisoners’ rights and a devout Muslim. This morning I received word that he and a 56-year-old inmate by the name of Willie Mosley had been locked down and placed in the hole for alleged exposure charges.
“Anyone who has been to Reidsville knows that there are steel doors that enclose one into the showers there. Brothers usually crack the large steel doors for two reasons: one, to place your clothes and towel on the outer corner of the door so they don’t get wet. And secondly, to be able to breathe amongst so much steam and heat in the shower.
“Now a white female officer by the name of Shannon Campbell has tried to slander the brothers’ character with such filthy accusations. These brothers have never had any history of such behavior and have a number of witnesses to prove them innocent. However, most prison infractions are judged at kangaroo courts within the system not by a group of the subjects’ peers but by the staff’s coworkers. All charges will be based on officer’s ‘factual statement.’
“It is no coincidence that Bro. Eugene is being framed up at such a time. He just recently wrote an inspiring piece for the SF Bay View and submitted images of prisoners in Reidsville enjoying the paper in a study group. This is merely Georgia prison authorities’ traditional form of retaliation by criminalizing consciousness.
“Please call Georgia State Prison to see that the brothers get a fair trial and all their witnesses are allowed to file statements on their behalf and show up on the assigned court date for testimony. Otherwise they could face a long isolation sentence, store and phone restriction. Please call (912) 557-7301. In the words of Che Guavara, ‘No one is free where others are oppressed!’”
The time has come for us to express our outrage. The phone number provided by Mabu, (912) 557-7301, takes you to the office of Warden Bruce Chatman, whose appointment to that position took effect very recently, on Dec. 16, 2010. Tell him – or leave a message – that you are concerned about Eugene Thomas and Willie Mosley, that you suspect they are being falsely charged and that you want an immediate investigation.
Even more importantly, tell Warden Chatman that Eugene Thomas and all prisoners are entitled to the fundamental human right of free speech. Tell him that retaliation against a prisoner for speaking out is intolerable.
In “Still no news of 37 missing Georgia prison strikers,” Eugene Thomas also wrote: “(W)e have a situation here where three young brothers, including my old cellmate, are being held for murder and robbery of an older white prisoner … These folks have been just holding these young brothers. They haven’t indicted neither one of them, haven’t fingerprinted either of them, aren’t giving them their proper segregation hearing — just holding them in lockup. It’s an interesting story, especially in light of everything taking place in Georgia now and with this place being a massive lockdown facility. They’ve been in the ‘hole’ now five months. I call them the ‘Reidsville 3.’”
Today, I got a call from the grandmother of one of those young men. Her grandson, Maurice C. Orr, is only 18 years old. After being placed in segregation – “the hole” – he was entitled by Georgia law to an informal hearing within 96 hours, a formal hearing with legal representation within 90 days and the opportunity to appeal the decision. Yet after six months, he has received none of that – no due process whatsoever.
Like the 37 missing men identified as leaders of the historic Dec. 9 prison strike and like Imam Jamil, the Reidsville 3 have been “hidden” by Georgia prison authorities. This is one of the practices that led to the prison strike.
“The hole” is a terrible place for anyone, especially an 18-year-old youngster like Maurice Orr, diagnosed as bipolar, who suffers from anxiety, claustrophobia and asthma – the asthma intensified by stifling heat and a lack of ventilation in the bowels of the old prison. He’s rarely allowed outdoors and is getting no medical or mental health care. Ironically, according to Wikipedia, Georgia State Prison’s Mental Health Program is a model for the federal prison system.
Maurice’s grandmother, who raised him and his brother since they were toddlers, says he is constantly being humiliated by the guards, who subject him to frequent strip searches. She believes they are trying to provoke him to violence, giving them an excuse to brutalize him.
“He’s got a good heart,” she says. “He’s a very good child. He’s smart. He can do ‘most everything. Whenever he’d get sick, I’d get sick. That’s how close we are.”
Prison conditions are abominable all over the country, judging from the fistful of letters the Bay View receives every day from prisoners in every state. To a great extent, the current scourge of mass incarceration – the U.S., with 4.5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, is the world’s first prison state – is retaliation for the civil rights and Black power movements.
Too long have we tolerated this backsliding from the great advances of the ‘60s. When we are presented with a clear case of retaliation, we must protest.
Let’s begin by taking Zak Solomon’s advice: “After discussion with members and affiliates of the Concerned Coalition, it seems that the best response we can take at the moment is to call Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, at (404) 656-1776.
“Deal is an anti-immigrant former prosecutor and has little concern for the prisoners’ rights or their safety. Short of going out to Georgia, shutting down his phone lines appears to be the most effective way to let him know the world is watching.”
The governor is responsible for the wellbeing of all Georgia residents, including those who reside in its prisons, whether he likes them or not. We who do care about our brothers and sisters locked up in Georgia dungeons must convince him to stop hiding and brutalizing prisoners and instead to sit down with them to negotiate their righteous demands.
The prisoners accused of organizing the Dec. 9 prison strike “got shipped out of their home institutions and were dispersed across the state,” Ajamu Baraka, director of the U.S. Human Rights Network and a member of the Concerned Coalition to Protect Prisoners’ Rights, told the Final Call. Gov. Deal must be made to account for the whereabouts and the condition of each of them.
“Mr. Baraka said he feels one reason prison authorities moved to shut down the strike quickly was because it could serve as a possible model for prisoners across the country,” the Final Call reported. “But the outcome of the action in Georgia will determine whether there will be more and similar uprisings across the U.S., he predicted.”
Readers are urged to call
• Warden Bruce Chatman of Georgia State Prison at (912) 557-7301 concerning
o The apparently retaliatory segregation (transfer to “the hole”) of Eugene Thomas and Willie Mosley and
o The segregation and denial of due process to 18-year-old Maurice Orr and the others accused with him.
• Gov. Nathan Deal at (404) 656-1776 concerning
o The Dec. 9 prison strike demands and
o Hiding and retaliating against those accused of involvement in the Dec. 9 prison strike.
Readers are also encouraged to write words of encouragement to
• Eugene Thomas, 671488, Georgia State Prison, 2164 Georgia Highway 147, Reidsville, GA 30499, and
• Maurice Orr, 11199555, Georgia State Prison, 2164 Georgia Highway 147, Reidsville, GA 30499
• A living wage for work: In violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, the DOC [Georgia Department of Corrections] demands prisoners work for free.
• Educational opportunities: For the great majority of prisoners, the DOC denies all opportunities for education beyond the GED, despite the benefit to both prisoners and society.
• Decent health care: In violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, the DOC denies adequate medical care to prisoners, charges excessive fees for the most minimal care and is responsible for extraordinary pain and suffering.
• An end to cruel and unusual punishment: In further violation of the Eighth Amendment, the DOC is responsible for cruel prisoner punishments for minor infractions of rules.
• Decent living conditions: Georgia prisoners are confined in overcrowded, substandard conditions, with little heat in winter and oppressive heat in summer.
• Nutritional meals: Vegetables and fruit are in short supply in DOC facilities while starches and fatty foods are plentiful.
• Vocational and self-improvement opportunities: The DOC has stripped its facilities of all opportunities for skills training, self-improvement and proper exercise.
• Access to families: The DOC has disconnected thousands of prisoners from their families by imposing excessive telephone charges and innumerable barriers to visitation.
• Just parole decisions: The Parole Board capriciously and regularly denies parole to the majority of prisoners despite evidence of eligibility.
Bay View editor Mary Ratcliff can be reached at editor@sfbayview.com or (415) 671-0789. Other writings by Eugene Thomas published by the Bay View are “Georgia prisoners: Standing up by sitting down” and “Rallying, rioting, rebelling: Revolution.”
Minister of Information JR interviews long time Georgia prisoner Eugene Thomas about prison conditions that led up to the biggest prisoner strike in U.S. history, begun Dec. 9, 2010. | Protest_Online Condemnation | February 2011 | ['(AP via SanFranciscoBay)'] |
The Danish, and as a consequence of sharing the same building, the Chilean and Swedish embassies in Damascus, are firebombed by protestors denouncing the publication of what they consider sacrilegious cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The Norwegian embassy is also burned. | Protesters scaled the Danish site amid chants of "God is great", before moving on to attack the Norwegian mission.
Denmark and Norway condemned Syria for failing its international obligations and urged their citizens to leave. The cartoons have sparked Muslim outrage across the world, following their publication in a Danish paper.
One depicts Muhammad as a terrorist. Any images of the Prophet are banned under Islamic tradition.
However, several European papers reprinted the cartoons, citing free speech. The publications have prompted diplomatic sanctions, boycotts and death threats in some Arab nations. In other developments: 'We defend you'
Syrians have been staging sit-ins outside the Danish embassy since the row intensified earlier this week, when Damascus recalled its ambassador.
On Saturday, hundreds hurled stones and stormed the Danish site, before moving to the Norwegian embassy.
"With our blood and souls we defend you, O Prophet of God," they chanted outside the Danish building, which also houses the Swedish and Chilean missions. Some removed the Danish flag and replaced it with another reading: "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God." The embassy was closed, and no diplomats were reported to have been injured in either attack.
Outside the Norwegian embassy, police fired tear gas to try to disperse the protesters, but some broke in and set it ablaze. Demonstrators also tried to storm the French mission, but were stopped.
Danish 'distress' In Copenhagen, the government called on its nationals to leave Syria at once. On Friday, the Danish prime minister made a new bid to calm anger, by explaining his position over the publication to Muslim ambassadors. Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he could never apologise for a newspaper's actions, but said he was "distressed" at offence caused. The cartoons originated in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten paper and have been reprinted in newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain - who say they were exercising their right to free speech. Jyllands-Posten has apologised for causing offence to Muslims, although it maintains it was legal under Danish law to print the cartoons. | Protest_Online Condemnation | February 2006 | ['(BBC)'] |
Croatia holds parliamentary elections amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Rising infection rates and the pandemic's effects on the economy might influence the outcome of the election. | ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatia’s ruling centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) convincingly won a parliamentary election on Sunday, held at a time of rising coronavirus infections and a sharp economic downturn due to the pandemic.
The official results after around 60% of votes were counted gave the HDZ 68 seats in the 151-seat parliament, while its top opponent, the Social Democrats (SDP) and its small allies, secured 43 seats.
Nationalist and eurosceptic bloc Domovinski Pokret (Homeland Movement), led by popular singer Miroslav Skoro, came third with 15 seats followed by the conservative Most (Bridge) party with eight seats and leftist Mozemo (We can) with six seats.
The HDZ will now seek partners to form yet another ruling coalition which analysts believe should not be too difficult given their strong performance.
“They have a pretty comfortable position now as they may be able to choose their partners and may not need to negotiate with their opponents on the right-wing spectrum of the political scene,” political analyst Berto Salaj told state television.
The HDZ leader and incumbent Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said the victory brought with it an obligation to work hard.
“Croatia is facing serious challenges which require from us responsibility, knowledge and experience. That is exactly what we have offered to the Croatian voters,” he said addressing his party supporters.
The new government will have an uphill task to keep a grip on the coronavirus while trying to restore the economy, which is expected to shrink about 10% this year. Tourism revenues are forecast to slump 70%.
Croatia has reported a relatively small number of COVID-19 infections - a little over 3,000 cases and some 100 deaths so far - but infections have accelerated in the past two weeks, with the daily number of new cases peaking at about 80.
| Government Job change - Election | July 2020 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Oscar–winning American comedic actor Robin Williams is found dead at age 63 by asphyxiation. | The Marin County coroner said in a statement that the death was suspected "to be a suicide due to asphyxia."
"Robin Williams passed away this morning. He has been battling severe depression of late," said the comedian's spokeswoman Mara Buxbaum. "This is a tragic and sudden loss. The family respectfully asks for their privacy as they grieve during this very difficult time."
His wife, Susan Schneider, added: "This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am utterly heartbroken. On behalf of Robin's family, we are asking for privacy during our time of profound grief. As he is remembered, it is our hope the focus will not be on Robin's death, but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave to millions."
Williams, who won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for 1998's "Good Will Hunting," is survived by his wife and three children – son Zachary, 31; daughter Zelda, 25 and son Cody, 22. Williams married Schneider, his third wife, in 2011.
Williams, who most recently starred in the CBS comedy "The Crazy Ones," had recently entered rehab in July, though it was reported at the time that he had entered the Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center in Minnesota in order to maintain his long-term sobriety.
The actor, born in Chicago, rose to fame on the "Happy Days" spinoff "Mork and Mindy," playing the space alien Mork from the planet Ork. The actor, who struggled with substance abuse through the decades, went on to big-screen success in films such as "Good Morning, Vietnam," "The Fisher King" and "Good Will Hunting," which earned him the Oscar in the supporting actor category.
As a comedian, Williams was known for his manic genius, though he also proved adept in dramatic roles.
The Marin County Sheriff's Office Coroner Division made the following announcement:
On August 11, 2014, at approximately 11:55 am, Marin County Communications received a 9-1-1 telephone call reporting a male adult had been located unconscious and not breathing inside his residence in unincorporated Tiburon, CA. The Sheriff's Office, as well as the Tiburon Fire Department and Southern Marin Fire Protection District were dispatched to the incident with emergency personnel arriving on scene at 12:00 pm. The male subject, pronounced deceased at 12:02 pm has been identified as Robin McLaurin Williams, a 63 year old resident of unincorporated Tiburon, CA.
An investigation into the cause, manner, and circumstances of the death is currently underway by the Investigations and Coroner Divisions of the Sheriff's Office. Preliminary information developed during the investigation indicates Mr. Williams was last seen alive at his residence, where he resides with his wife, at approximately 10:00 pm on August 10, 2014. Mr. Williams was located this morning shortly before the 9-1-1 call was placed to Marin County Communications. At this time, the Sheriff's Office Coroner Division suspects the death to be a suicide due to asphyxia, but a comprehensive investigation must be completed before a final determination is made. A forensic examination is currently scheduled for August 12, 2014 with subsequent toxicology testing to be conducted. | Famous Person - Death | August 2014 | ['(MSN)', '(CNN)', '(New York Times)'] |
Turkey indicts 20 Saudis for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. | The dissident Saudi writer was killed in his country’s Istanbul consulate in 2018. But the Turkish case is unlikely to come to trial.
ISTANBUL Turkish officials on Wednesday announced the indictments of 20 Saudi nationals on charges of murder and incitement to murder in the killing of the dissident writer Jamal Khashoggi, concluding their investigation into the case.
In a statement, the Istanbul prosecutor’s office said the indictments, which have yet to be made public, would show the attack had been planned. It said Mr. Khashoggi had been strangled and dismembered in a planned murder inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. The same conclusion had been reached by American intelligence.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | March 2020 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
Greensburg, Kansas Tornado Outbreak: A massive tornado kills nine people in Kansas including 8 people in Greensburg, Kansas with the town suffering widespread damage. | Nine people are dead after a massive tornado wrecked a small town, crushing a hospital and levelling homes in the US state of Kansas.
Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for Kansas Emergency Management, said eight people were killed in Greensburg, southern Kansas, after the storm made a direct hit on the small prairie town.
She said another person was killed in nearby Stafford County by the storm late Friday (local time). More than 50 people are reported to have been injured.
The American Red Cross is setting up 125 cots in a high school gym in Mullinville, Kansas. There are other shelters in nearby towns, but many residents are staying with family in other parts of the state. "There's a lot of shock and concern," said Ralph Rojas, a Red Cross volunteer. "There's a lot of concern for family members they can't locate." Thirty people were pulled from the rubble of Kiowa County Memorial Hospital in Greensburg as the storm ripped homes off their foundations and even damaged below-ground shelters, according to reports. The US National Weather Centre meanwhile warned of more severe weather in the US midwest Saturday (local time) and two new tornadoes were reported in Nebraska to the north. A tornado warning was issued for a huge swath of land touching seven states from northern Texas to South Dakota, the core of the country's 'Tornado Alley'.
The National Weather Service warned of "an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation" for central Nebraska due to the threat of severe tornadoes. City administrator Steve Hewitt said 90 per cent of local homes and buildings were destroyed in Greensburg, about 200 kilometres west of Wichita, and communications in the area were severely disrupted. "This is a huge catastrophe for this small town. My home's gone, my staff's homes are gone," he said in a press conference. The town's 1,400 residents were evacuated and ordered not to come back as emergency squads continued to examine the wreckage using tractors and dogs to see if any survivors remained. "The search and rescue continues. We want to make sure we can find everybody," Mr Hewitt said. Television images showed the town virtually levelled, with roofs shredded, branches sheared off trees and school buildings wrecked. "It sucked the door off of our storm shelter," Greensburg resident Kevin Hillhouse told Wichita television KAKE. Emergency workers said they were rushing to re-establish communications facilities after the storm wiped out both land line and mobile phone services. The massive wedge-shaped tornado, caught on film by self-styled 'storm chasers', struck at about 10pm (local time). People in the town said warning sirens went off about 20 minutes beforehand, giving most a chance to get into storm cellars. National weather reports put the tornado at between F3 (severe) and F4 (devastating) on a scale of F0 to F5. An F4 storm carries winds of 331-416 kilometres per hour. "We are definitely thinking a mile wide" Darin Brunin, one of the storm chasers told CNN about the extraordinary size of the storm. - AFP/Reuters | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | May 2007 | ['(AFP/Reuters via ABC Online)'] |
Chinese ambassador to Israel Du Wei is found dead in his home in Tel Aviv, aged 57. | Team, which will not be required to quarantine upon arrival, will conduct an internal investigation, and handle flying arrangements for the body, as well as coordinate embassy activities
China will send a special team to investigate the death of its ambassador to Israel on Monday, Du Wei, whose body was found in his Tel Aviv apartment on Sunday, sources have told Haaretz.
Du, 58, was found dead in his bed and appears to have died in his sleep. He left behind a wife and a son. He was appointed as China’s envoy to Israel in February.
| Famous Person - Death | May 2020 | ['(Haaretz)'] |
A car bomb kills at least 11 people and injures 25 others in Peshawar, Pakistan. | . The scene moments after the bomb exploded
A car bomb has exploded in Pakistan's north-western city of Peshawar, killing at least 11 people and injuring many others, police say.
The explosion occurred in a busy street in the densely populated Kashkal area, as a school bus passed by, they said. At least 25 people were injured in the blast - two were said to be in a critical condition. Earlier officials in Islamabad said at least 10 people were killed by a suspected US drone in north Pakistan. The unmanned aircraft fired missiles at a building and a vehicle in the North Waziristan tribal region. The officials said two foreign militants were among those killed, and several more people were injured. 'Huge' blast
A reporter for AFP news agency in Peshawar said body parts were flung across the site of the blast which was shrouded in acrid black smoke. About 17 vehicles were caught up in the explosion, five of them catching fire, the agency said. City police chief Sifwat Ghayyur told Reuters news agency that four children and two women were among the dead It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack in Peshawar. In the wake of the drone attack, there was no comment from US forces, but in the past they have used drones to target al-Qaeda militants.
Pakistani officials said the attack took place in the Khaisor area of North Waziristan - a region populated by ethnic Pashtuns. One report quoted officials as saying the building hit was an Islamic school, but others described it as a compound or house. On Tuesday, at least eight people were killed when a suspected US drone destroyed a house in Sra Khawra village in nearby South Waziristan district. There are estimated to have been more than 30 strikes by US forces based in Afghanistan since August. Some 340 people are reported to have been killed, most in the North and South Waziristan tribal regions. The Pakistan government has criticised the attacks, saying that civilians are among the casualties and that the raids boost support for the militants. The US military has in the past announced the killing of several al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan's border area but seldom confirms the use of drones. The latest violence comes as Pakistan's army continues its offensive against Taleban rebels in the Swat valley in country's north-west. Nearly one million people have fled from heavy fighting in the past two weeks, the UN says. The UNHCR says the crisis could destabilise the entire region unless there is a massive response from the international community. It is expected to launch an emergency appeal for Pakistan in the next few days. Pakistan's Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, has described the situation as the country's worst refugee crisis since the bloody partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 at the end of colonial rule. | Armed Conflict | May 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
A gunman opens fire on an Amsterdam to Paris train leaving four people wounded. , | Follow NBC News A gunman opened fire on a train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris on Friday afternoon, wounding an American passenger who helped to thwart the attack, according to a French official.
The shooting, which happened at 5:45 p.m. local time near Arras, France, left two people seriously injured, "including one American who neutralized an extremely violent person," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said during a news conference. A third person was being treated for minor injuries, according to The Associated Press.
"It's important for me, together with the president of the Republic and the prime minister, to express to the two American passengers, who have been particularly brave, who acted during a very difficult situation, all our gratitude for what they did," Cazeneuve said.
"Without them we could have faced a terrible tragedy," Cazeneuve said. The suspected gunman was arrested.
A National Guard soldier from Oregon, Alek Skarlatos, and his friend, Spencer Stone, who is in the Air Force, subdued the attacker, NBC station KGW in Portland reported. Two others, American college student Anthony Sadler and British man Chris Norman, jumped in to help, they said in an interview with Reuters.
President Barack Obama was briefed on the attack and offered prayers to the victims. "Echoing the statements of French authorities, the President expressed his profound gratitude for the courage and quick thinking of several passengers, including U.S. service members, who selflessly subdued the attacker," said a White House official.
The alleged attacker is a 26-year-old Moroccan, Sliman Hamzi, an official with police union Alliance, said on French television i-Tele.
The suspect was armed with an automatic rifle and a knife, said Christophe Piednoel, spokesman for national railway operator SNCF.
Christina Cathleen Coons, a social worker from New York who is traveling in France and was on the train, said she heard gunfire, dived under her seat and opened a pull-down table.
"I saw the man who was shot in the neck stumble," she recalled in an interview with NBC News over Facebook. "He dropped his bloody duffel bag right in the seat across from me, and he collapsed to the floor."
While taking cover, Coons said, she thought to herself, "Maybe I'm next. Is this train going to get shot up?"
A French Interior Ministry spokesman said investigators were working determine a motive. He added that it was too soon to determine any "terrorist lead."
But a spokesperson for the Paris prosecutor's office confirmed to NBC News that its anti-terrorist section had taken over the judicial investigation of the train shooting.
"Everything is being done to shed light on this tragedy and obtain all the necessary information about what happened," Hollande said.
France has been on high alert since terror attacks in January that left 17 people dead, including 12 at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office. In June, a man with links to radical Islam decapitated his boss and attempted to blow up an American-owned industrial gas plant. | Armed Conflict | August 2015 | ['(The Guardian)', '(NBC news)'] |
In separate events, 29 people are killed in a suicide attack on a prison van, six NATO oil tankers are torched, and the Pakistan Army attacked Taliban fighters. | Updated: Apr 24, 2010 23:27
ISLAMABAD: A suicide car bomber attacked a prison van while gunmen torched six NATO oil tankers in separate strikes Saturday that killed four Pakistani police officers and wounded 10 others, authorities said.
The army, meanwhile, kept up its pressure on the Pakistani Taleban in the tribal belt, killing 20 suspected fighters, while apparent US missiles killed five alleged insurgents in a nearby northwest region, officials said.
The oil tankers were hit in Chakwal district a rare, possibly unprecedented such assault in Punjab province. Militants and ordinary criminals frequently attack trucks that travel along supply routes used by NATO and US forces in Afghanistan, but usually in the northwest Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa or southwest Baluchistan provinces.
Suspected militants in two pick-up trucks rode up to the gas station where the tankers were parked and opened fire before setting the vehicles aflame, police officer Aslam Tareen told The Associated Press. Four police officers who responded to the scene were killed, he said.
The drivers of the oil tankers said they were headed for NATO troops in Afghanistan, Tareen said. The militants managed to flee. Chakwal is not far from the Punjab border with the northwest province.
On Saturday morning, a suicide car bomber targeted a prison van as it arrived at a jail in Timergarah to pick up prisoners to take to the nearby Swat Valley, senior police official Shakeel Khan said.
No prisoners were in the van at the time, but 10 police officials were wounded.
Timergarah is in Lower Dir district, which is near the Afghan border. It was a militant stronghold until spring 2009 when a military offensive there and in Swat largely reclaimed the areas from insurgents.
Pakistan followed that offensive with one in South Waziristan tribal region, the key haven for the Pakistani Taleban.
Many militants there have since fled to other areas such as Orakzai, another part of the lawless tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, leading the army to open new fronts.
Troops on Saturday raided a militant ammunition depot in Sangra village of Orakzai, killing 10 alleged insurgents, local administrator Jehanzeb Khan said. One soldier was wounded.
Air strikes later destroyed three more hide-outs, killing another 10 suspects, Khan said.
The information is nearly impossible to verify independently access to the tribal belt and regions such as Dir is difficult to obtain due to the dangerous, remote nature of the terrain and legal restrictions.
The US has relied heavily on its covert campaign of missile strikes to take out targets in the tribal areas.
A suspected US missile strike in the Machi Khel area of North Waziristan tribal region killed five alleged insurgents at a compound, said two intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
North Waziristan is dominated by militant factions whose primary focus is battling American and NATO forces across the border. Washington wants Islamabad to take action against these groups, but Islamabad has resisted, saying it has its hands full with offensives against the Pakistani Taleban, a network that has focused on overthrowing the Pakistani state.
| Armed Conflict | April 2010 | ['(Arab News)'] |
The Hellenic Parliament approves Prime Minister of Greece Alexis Tsipras's bailout package, despite opposition by almost one-third of his Syriza party. This third bailout plan is almost identical to the one rejected by the Greek people in the referendum. Tsipras will seek a vote of confidence following the country's August 20th payment to the European Central Bank. , | Prime minister could face a confidence vote next week as he falls short of 120 votes he needs to survive a censure motion
First published on Fri 14 Aug 2015 07.42 BST
After a tumultuous, often ill-tempered and at times surreal all-night debate, Greek MPs voted early on Friday to approve a new multibillion euro bailout deal aimed at keeping their debt-stricken country afloat.
But a fierce rebellion in the ranks of his leftist Syriza party saw prime minister Alexis Tsipras fall short of the 120 votes he would need to survive a censure motion, leading to speculation he would call a confidence vote next week and snap elections as early as next month. More than 40 Syriza hardliners, including controversial former finance minister Yannis Varoufakis, failed to toe the party line, angry at the punishing terms of the €85bn (£60bn) package and what they said was a sell-out of the party’s principles and a betrayal of its promises.
Tsipras needed the support of opposition parties after the marathon session to win parliament’s backing for the bill in a 9.45am vote, which the government eventually won by a comfortable margin of 222 votes to 64, with 11 abstentions. The prime minister told MPs before the vote that the rescue package was a “necessary choice” for the nation, saying it faced a battle to avert the threat of a bridge loan - which he called a return to a “crisis without end” - that Greece may be offered instead of a full-blown bailout.
The draft bailout must now be approved by other eurozone member states at a meeting of finance ministers in Brussels on Friday afternoon, and ratified by national parliaments in a number of countries – including Germany, which remains sceptical – before a first tranche can be disbursed allowing Greece to make a crucial €3.2bn payment to the European Central Bank due on 20 August.
The Athens parliament did not start debating the 400-page text of the draft bailout plan until nearly 4am after parliamentary speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou, a Syriza hardliner, ignored Tsipras’s request to speed up proceedings and instead raised a lengthy series of procedural questions and objections.
In angry exchanges, the conservative opposition rounded on the government, warning it not to take its support for granted. “If you want to provoke us - and for us to vote for it - you can’t have it both ways,” New Democracy leader Vangelis Meimarakis told finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos.
On the left, former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who leads a rebel bloc of around a quarter of Syriza’s 149 MPs, pledged to “smash the eurozone dictatorship”, while in her concluding pre-vote remarks, Konstantopoulou announced: “I am not going to support the prime minister any more.”
Earlier, the government spokeswoman, Olga Gerovasili, had conceded that divisions within the leftist party, which swept to victory in January’s elections on a staunch anti-austerity platform, were now so deep that a formal split was probably inevitable. Germany, the biggest single contributor to Greece’s two previous bailouts, cautioned on Wednesday that eurozone support for the package – which includes more tough spending cuts and tax hikes and surrenders unprecedented powers over large areas of Greek economic and social policymaking to the country’s international creditors – was not yet guaranteed.
“Germany isn’t the only country that is still asking questions at the moment,” deputy finance minister Jens Spahn said, pointing in particular to the issues of International Monetary Fund support for the deal and concerns about a planned privatisation fund to sell off Greek state-owned property.
Germany has repeatedly signalled it might prefer to back a bridging loan to help Greece meet its ECB payment rather than agree to an imperfect longer-term deal that might not work – a solution Athens is unwilling to accept. It emerged overnight, however, that senior EU finance officials had asked the European Commission to draw up a “contingency plan” for a new interim loan as a safety net to buy more time for eurozone members to finalise the plan.
The debate followed better-than-expected Greek economic growth figures, with official estimates on Thursday showing the economy had expanded by 0.8% in the second quarter of 2015 despite the imposition of capital controls to prevent a bank run. The national statistics agency, ELSTAT, also revised upwards its first-quarter growth estimate, from a 0.2% contraction to zero growth.
But Greece’s European creditors on Thursday also underlined the temporary nature of the country’s surprise return to growth, warning they have “serious concerns” about the spiralling debts of the eurozone’s weakest member.
According to an analysis completed by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the eurozone bailout fund, Greece’s debts will peak at 201% of its national output (GDP) in 2016. | Government Policy Changes | August 2015 | ['(with 222 yes votes)', '(The Guardian)', '(The International New York Times)'] |
Russian President Vladimir Putin signs a law – voted by the State Duma on 22 May and approved by the State Council on 30 May – with countermeasures against actions of the United States and other "unfriendly" countries. | MOSCOW, June 4. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the law on countermeasures against unfriendly actions of the United States and other foreign countries. The document passed by the State Duma on May 22 and approved by the Federation Council on May 30 was posted on the official Internet portal of legal information.
According to the document, the government is empowered to introduce on the basis of the Russian president’s decision various countermeasures, provided they do not apply to vital goods not manufactured in Russia and other countries. Corresponding decisions may also be made by the President on the basis of proposals from the Security Council. The government will cancel the counter-measures if the circumstances serving as the reason to introduce them are eliminated.
The bill was proposed by a group of lower house members led by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, on April 13 and adopted in the third reading on May 22. It had sparked lively debate and some of its provisions drew strong criticism. Between the first and second readings the bill underwent considerable amendments.
The names of specific branches of the economy, goods and services were removed from the bill and the list of possible counter-measures was reduced. Companies from the United States and other unfriendly countries will be prohibited from participating in state purchase contracts and privatization of public assets.
The Cabinet of Ministers is empowered to terminate or suspend international cooperation with unfriendly countries and organizations under their control.
Also, the Russian government can prohibit or restrict export-import operations with the United States and other unfriendly countries. The counter-measures against Russian sanctions do not apply to goods that Russian or foreign nationals may bring into the country for personal use. | Government Policy Changes | June 2018 | ['(TASS)'] |
Google's DeepMind AlphaGo artificial intelligence program defeats South Korean grand master Lee Se–dol in the ancient game of Go. | A Google computer program trounced one of the world's top players on Wednesday in a round of Go, which is believed to be the most complex board game ever created.
The match between Google DeepMind's AlphaGo and the South Korean Go master Lee Se-dol was described beforehand as an important test of how far research into artificial intelligence, or AI, has come in its quest to create machines smarter than humans.
South Korean professional Go player Lee Se-dol after the match against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo.Credit:Getty Images
"I am very surprised because I have never thought I would lose," Lee said at a news conference. "I didn't know that AlphaGo would play such a perfect Go."
Lee acknowledged defeat after 3½ hours of play in the ancient Chinese game of strategy that has fascinated people for thousands of years.
CEO of Google DeepMind Demis Hassabis after the Google DeepMind challenge match between South Korean professional Go player Lee Se-dol and Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, in Seoul.Credit:AP
Demis Hassabis, the founder and chief executive of Google's artificial intelligence team DeepMind, the creator of AlphaGo, called the program's victory a "historic moment".
The match, the first of five scheduled, took place at a Seoul hotel amid intense news media attention.
Hundreds of reporters, many of them from China, Japan and South Korea, where Go has been played for centuries, were there to cover it. Tens of thousands watched the contest live on YouTube.
Go is a two-player game of strategy said to have originated in China 3000 years ago. Players compete to win more territory by placing black and white "stones" on a grid measuring 19 squares by 19 squares. The play is more complex than chess, with a far greater possible sequence of moves, which had led many researchers to predict that mastery of the game by a computer was still a decade away.
South Korean professional Go player Lee Se-dol, right, puts the first stone against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, with Google DeepMind's lead programmer Aja Huang, left.Credit:AP
To researchers who have been using games as platforms for testing artificial intelligence, Go has remained the great challenge since the IBM-developed supercomputer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
"Really, the only game left after chess is Go," Hassabis said on Wednesday.
An audience watches a screen showing the live broadcast of the Google DeepMind challenge match in Seoul.Credit:Getty Images
AlphaGo made news when it routed the three-time European Go champion Fan Hui in October, 5-0.
But Lee, 33, is one of the world's most accomplished professional Go players, with 18 international titles under his belt.
South Korean professional Go player Lee Se-dol, right, attends a press conference after the match against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo.Credit:Getty Images
He has called the European champion's level in Go "near the top among amateurs".
AlphaGo has become much stronger since its matches with Fan, its developers said. It challenged Lee because it was ready to take on someone "iconic, a legend of the game", Hassabis said.
Google offered Lee $US1 million if he wins the best-of-five series.
Hassabis said AlphaGo does not try to consider all the possible moves in a match, as a traditional artificial intelligence machine like Deep Blue does. Rather, it narrows its options based on what it has learnt from millions of matches played against itself and in 100,000 Go games available online.
Before the first match, Lee had said he could win 5-0 or 4-1, predicting that computing power alone could not win a Go match. Victory takes "human intuition", something AlphaGo has not yet mastered, he said.
But after reading more about AlphaGo, he became less upbeat, saying that AlphaGo appeared able to imitate human intuition to a certain degree and predicting that artificial intelligence would eventually surpass humans in Go.
AlphaGo posed Lee a unique challenge. In a human-versus-human Go match, which typically lasts for several hours, the players "feel" each other and evaluate styles and psychologies, he said.
"This time, it's like playing the game alone," Lee said on the eve of the match. "There are mistakes humans make because they are humans. If that happens to me, I can lose a match."
Hassabis said a central advantage of AlphaGo was that "it will never get tired, and it will not get intimidated either".
Kim Sung-ryong, a South Korean Go master who provided commentary during Wednesday's match, said AlphaGo had made a clear mistake early on but that, unlike most human players, it did not "lose its cool".
"It didn't play Go as a human does," he said. "It was a Go match with human emotional elements carved out."
Lee said he knew he had lost the match after AlphaGo made a move so unexpected and unconventional that he thought "it was impossible to make such a move".
"I'm not surprised at all," said Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford University computer scientist who is director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. "How come we are not surprised that a car runs faster than the fastest human?"
On Tuesday, before the match began, Oren Etzioni, the director of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a nonprofit research organisation in Seattle, conducted a survey of the members of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Of 55 scientists, 69 per cent believed that the program would win, and 31 per cent believed that Lee would be victorious. Moreover, 60 per cent believed that the achievement could be considered a milestone toward building human-level artificial intelligence software.
That question remains one of the most hotly debated within the field of artificial intelligence. Machines have had increasing success in the past half-decade at narrow humanlike capabilities, such as understanding speech and vision. | Sports Competition | March 2016 | ['(The New York Times via Melbourne Age)'] |
Afghan protesters attack a Norwegian base in Faryab province on the Turkmenistan border. | KABUL, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Around 400 protesters hurled rocks and set fire to cars at a Norwegian-led military base in northern Afghanistan on Thursday, as part of nationwide demonstrations against the burning of copies of the Koran at a NATO air base.
Norway's ambassador to Kabul, Tore Hattrem, told Reuters no one was hurt and there was minimal damage to the base.
The base, in Faryab province on the Turkmen border, consists of around 500 soldiers and civilians from Norway, Latvia, Macedonia, Iceland and the United States. (Reporting by Rob Taylor, Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Michael Georgy) | Armed Conflict | February 2012 | ['(Reuters via Alertnet)'] |
President Barack Obama issues an executive order on Cuba lifting monetary limits on the amount of Cuban products, including cigars and rum, which Americans can bring back for personal use, allowing Cubans and Americans to engage in joint medical research, and allowing Cubans to buy certain U.S. consumer goods online. , , | open-minded writing HAVANA TIMES — In what could be his last effort to warm relations with Cuba, President Obama today announced his approval of new regulations to facilitate business and trade.
One of the most significant actions was to rescind the ban on receiving cargo ships in US ports for six months after having docked in Cuba. This provision could make much more viable the deep water port that the Castro government built with Brazilian funding at Mariel west of Havana.
Likewise, restrictions on the amount of rum and cigars, two important Cuban exports, will be lifted as of Monday, October 17th. The same goes for other products. Duties as normally applied to imports from other countries will still have to be paid but the quantity allowed for personal use will lose its ceiling.
During the last period imports from Cuba by travelers was limited to a value of $400 including $100 of rum and/or cigars.
The decision comes less than a month before the US elections with the two candidates differing on the measures taken by Obama. Hillary Clinton is in favor of the administration policy and Donald Trump is now opposed until Cuba meets new demands.
Another area of interest is that now US institutions and companies and Cuba will be able to carry out joint medical research.
“The new rules also expand the opportunities for Cubans to receive grants and scholarships to study in the United States, streamline some previous trade authorizations and allow U.S. nationals to provide services to Cuba or Cuban nationals related to developing, repairing, maintaining and enhancing Cuban infrastructure in order to directly benefit the Cuban people,” noted the Miami Herald.
“These amendments will create more opportunities for Cuban citizens to access American goods and services, further strengthening the ties between our two countries,” said US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. “More commercial activity between the US and Cuba benefits our people and our economies.”
Read the full statement from President Obama:
Today, I approved a Presidential Policy Directive that takes another major step forward in our efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. This Directive takes a comprehensive and whole-of-government approach to promote engagement with the Cuban government and people, and make our opening to Cuba irreversible.
In December 2014, following more than 50 years of failed policy, I announced that the United States would begin a process of normalizing relations with Cuba. Since then, we’ve worked with the people and the government of Cuba to do exactly that – re-establishing diplomatic relations, opening embassies, expanding travel and commerce, and launching initiatives to help our people cooperate and innovate. This new directive consolidates and builds upon the changes we’ve already made, promotes transparency by being clear about our policy and intentions, and encourages further engagement between our countries and our people.
Consistent with this approach, the Departments of Treasury and Commerce issued further regulatory changes today, building on the progress made over the last two years, to continue to facilitate more interaction between the Cuban and American people, including through travel and commercial opportunities, and more access to information. This follows previous changes that helped facilitate interconnectivity between our peoples, and to promote economic reforms on the island by providing access to the dollar in international transactions. These changes are representative of the progress I saw firsthand when I visited Havana to personally extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. The quick flight over 90 miles of blue water belied the real barriers of the past that were crossed that day, but my interactions with everyday Cubans told a promising story of neighbors working to build broader ties of cooperation across the Americas.
Challenges remain – and very real differences between our governments persist on issues of democracy and human rights – but I believe that engagement is the best way to address those differences and make progress on behalf of our interests and values. The progress of the last two years, bolstered by today’s action, should remind the world of what’s possible when we look to the future together.
They need to earn their own freedom.Overthrow the castros.Democrats cant give you freedom.
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Comment Name * Email * Website After a full month of work the 15-member jury has given its verdicts in the 11th Havana Times Photo Contest. | Government Policy Changes | October 2016 | ['(The New York Times)', '(The Miami Herald)', '(The Havana Times)'] |
Thousands of mourners from across southern India pay their respects to the dead chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy. | Thousands of mourners from across southern India have paid their respects to the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state who died on Wednesday.
YS Rajasekhara Reddy and four others were killed in a helicopter crash. People sobbed in the streets and broke through police barricades to get a final glimpse of the coffin. Mr Reddy was a popular politician from the Congress party who championed social welfare causes. He recently won a second term in state elections. After a state funeral Mr Reddy's body was buried at his family estate. Earlier in the state capital of Hyderabad, thousands of people amassed in a sports stadium to pay their respects after Mr Reddy's body was taken through the city in a procession. Among the mourners was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress party chief, Sonia Gandhi. Crowds shouted slogans of "Long Live YSR", the Reuters news agency reported. Schools and offices closed down and flags flew at half mast across the state. Investigation The Congress party has appointed his low-profile finance minister K Rosaiah as his successor, but finding a permanent replacement will be difficult, our correspondent says. But there have already been demands that Mr Reddy's son, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, should be appointed as the new chief minister. The state government has announced a week-long mourning period during which the national flag will be flown at half mast, and no "official" entertainment programmes will be organised. Officials said an investigation has been launched into the cause of the helicopter crash. Thursday's discovery of the helicopter on a hill some 70km (43 miles) east of Kurnool followed a massive search and rescue operation launched by the state government. | Famous Person - Death | September 2009 | ['(BBC)'] |
President Alexander Lukashenko announces the arrest of main opposition rival Viktar Babaryka for possible financial crimes. | Belarussian authorities on Thursday detained President Alexander Lukashenko's rival ahead of August's election as Minsk intensified a crackdown on the opposition.
The detention of Viktor Babaryko, a 56-year-old former banker, on suspicion of financial crimes came after authorities jailed other critics including prominent opposition politician Mikola Statkevich ahead of an election in which Lukashenko is seeking a sixth term.
#Belarus. Despite arrests and mass repressions, people in #Minsk are queuing up again to leave their signatures in support of alternative candidates and to show solidarity with arrested #Babariko and #Tsikhanouski pic.twitter.com/zCpfNboO8R
Several hundred protesters gathered in central Minsk to express solidarity with the detained opposition figures.
"Babaryko is detained because he was the organizer and leader of illegal activities, (and) tried to influence witness testimony," said the head of the state control committee, Ivan Tertel.
Babaryko formerly headed Belgazprombank, a Belarus subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom.
Authorities also arrested Babaryko's 30-year-old son Eduard on suspicion of tax evasion, said his girlfriend Aleksandra Zvereva.
Minsk accused former master Russia of seeking to interfere in the country's internal affairs.
Tertel claimed Babaryko was in cahoots with "puppeteers" from Moscow — "big Gazprom bosses" or even "higher-placed" figures.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on Belarus to immediately release "all arbitrarily detained" activists.
"The rule of law must be respected," she told reporters in Brussels.
"And the Belarussian people are asking for democratic elections."
Babaryko's detention was announced after police searched his home and questioned both the former banker and his son.
National television reported that around 20 people were detained in connection with investigations linked to Belgazprombank, and some were testifying against Babaryko.
Last week, investigators raided the offices of Belgazprombank and launched probes into tax dodging and money laundering against current and former bankers.
Political analyst Alexander Klaskovsky said Babaryko's arrest was politically motivated, adding the former banker was Lukashenko's strongest election rival.
"Babaryko is a new figure in the opposition movement, he has become popular quickly," said Klaskovsky. "Lukashenko's nerves snapped."
Vitali Shkliarov, a Harvard University fellow and Belarus specialist, said Lukashenko was wrestling with a combination of record low ratings, a tough economic situation and the shocks of the coronavirus epidemic.
Shkliarov said Lukashenko's administation chose to crackdown on the opponents and accuse Moscow of interfering in the country's domestic affairs in a possible effort to get the West on its side.
"This is a very reckless move," he told AFP, stressing this could anger Moscow.
Law enforcement authorities in the former Soviet country have cracked down hard on would-be opposition candidates ahead of the August 9 election.
The run-up to the vote has seen a flurry of opposition activity which stood in stark contrast to the incumbent's traditional Soviet approach to campaigning.
Popular vlogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, 41, who coined a new insult for Lukashenko when he called him a "cockroach," has particularly stood out.
Tikhanovsky has been jailed on public order charges and authorities opened a criminal investigation against him and his supporters.
After his arrest, his wife Svetlana stepped into his place but has since faced threats against her family.
In early June, prominent opposition leader Statkevich was sentenced to 15 days in jail.
Statkevich, 63, was jailed for another 15 days on Monday, his wife said.
He challenged Lukashenko in elections in 2010 but was sentenced to six years in prison. He was released in 2015 and is barred from contesting the August poll.
Lukashenko, a 65-year-old former collective farm director, has ruled Belarus since 1994 and has raised the possibility of serving a further two terms.
The Belarussian opposition has been unable to get a foothold on political power.
Some candidates like Statkevich have spent long terms in jail, and not a single dissenting voice gained a seat in parliament in the 2019 poll.
Lukashenko has branded opposition activists "bands of criminals" who want to disrupt the election.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an international election and war monitor, has not recognized any polls in Belarus as free and fair since 1995. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | June 2020 | ['(Moscow Times)'] |
Voters in Armenia go to the polls to vote in a referendum to change from a presidential to a parliamentary form of government. | Armenians were voting on December 6 on a referendum about a government-backed proposal to switch from a presidential to a parliamentary form of government.
The government scheduled the referendum after President Serzh Sarkisian proposed the constitutional amendments, arguing the changes would "make cooperation between different branches of government more effective" and facilitate economic development and the protection of human rights.
The Armenian National Congress (HAK) and other opposition groups have been campaigning against the reforms, saying they are an effort by Sarkisian to remain in power after his final presidential term ends in 2018. Sarkisian has refused to rule out that he would seek to become prime minister or speaker of parliament if the amendments are adopted.
He declined to answer reporters' questions after casting his ballot on December 6, saying that he will "answer all questions after the election."
HAK official Levon Zurabian said on December 4 that most Armenians oppose the amendments and that the government will not be able to win the referendum without falsifying its results.
| Government Job change - Election | December 2015 | ['(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)'] |
The United States and China begin the first U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China is bringing 150 senior officials, including nearly its whole Cabinet, to the United States this week for talks whose symbolic value is likely to trump concrete achievements.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C) and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (R) welcome China's Vice Premier Wang Qishan during a family photo for the first joint meeting of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington July 27, 2009. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
The Strategic and Economic Dialogue on Monday and Tuesday may simply produce a broad outline on the way to deal with economic, security, diplomatic and environmental issues that divide the world’s two most important economies.
That is enough for now, even according to critics of Chinese economic and trade policies and experts who have long lists of policy changes they want Beijing to implement in tandem with U.S. efforts to get its economic house in order.
“If it’s successful, it will be successful by opening up lines of communications and a string of technical discussions, which hopefully will influence Chinese policy,” said Steven Dunaway, an economist with the Council on Foreign Relations.
The first Obama administration dialogue with China expands bilateral economic talks started by the Bush administration in 2006 to include foreign policy and climate change issues.
Derek Scissors, a China trade expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said it will allow the Obama team to “get their feet wet” while they work out a strategy toward China.
“It’s always nice to have senior officials, especially in countries that have a great deal of conflicting interests, talk to each other on a regular basis. I think that’s pretty much all the talks are going to accomplish,” he said.
David Loevinger, the U.S. Treasury Department’s coordinator for the talks, spelled out a broad agenda that focused on the need for both countries to keep up their monetary and fiscal stimulus programs until their economies recover.
The United States also intended to again call on China to liberalize exchange rates so the yuan currency appreciates and China’s exports stop undercutting competitors.
Currency is part of a mix of policies aimed at rebalancing China’s economy toward more consumption and less savings and cutting a Chinese trade surplus with the United States that hit a record $266 billion in 2008.
Washington also wants to talk about avoiding protectionism in government procurement, Chinese investment in the United States and ways to boost investment in China’s service sector to create jobs to soak up surplus rural labor, Loevinger said.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing -- which seeks an end to Chinese industrial subsidies, a revalued Chinese currency and other steps -- is looking for “movement forward in very general terms,” said executive director Scott Paul.
“What is reasonable to expect is some kind of broad statement that there needs to be a rebalancing of the trade relationship and that it can be beneficial to both countries.”
Any U.S. economic rebound would be a “jobless recovery” if China’s trade policies were not addressed, said Paul.
Dunaway, a former International Monetary Fund expert on China, said China’s heavy reliance on exports to the United States is no longer sustainable in a weak U.S. economy.
“One of the key objectives of this Strategic and Economic Dialogue is to convince the Chinese that time has run out on this old approach to growth,” he said.
A senior U.S. official underscored the long-term nature of the dialogue between the world’s two biggest economies.
“It’s a way to begin an interaction that we will see pay off over time,” the official said.
Additional reporting by Deborah Lutterbeck; Editing by Doina Chiacu
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. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | July 2009 | ['(AFP)', '(Xinhua)', '(Reuters)'] |
A bus carrying Hungarian students crashes near Verona in northern Italy with at least 18 people dead and 50 injured. , | A bus carrying schoolchildren has crashed and caught fire in northern Italy, killing at least 16 people, emergency officials say.
The bus, carrying pupils from Hungary, collided with a roadside column as it exited the A4 motorway near Verona late on Friday.
Italy's national fire service said that another 39 people had been injured.
The bus was returning to Budapest from France, where the pupils had been on a mountain holiday.
Italian news agency Ansa said a number of the pupils, who were mainly boys aged between 14 and 18, were thrown out of the vehicle when it collided with the pylon.
It is not known why the bus left the road.
Others were trapped inside the bus when it caught fire, Ansa said. Ten of those in hospital are seriously hurt, it said.
Ansa quoted Judit Timaffy, Hungary's consul-general in Milan, as saying a number of the pupils were saved by a sports teacher, who returned to the middle of the fire to drag them out. The teacher suffered burns as a result, she said.
The death toll is not expected to increase, the fire service added.
| Road Crash | January 2017 | ['(The Telegraph)', '(BBC)'] |
Around 150,000 people flee their homes in Sindh as the devastating floods worsen in Pakistan. | Pakistan's already creaky economy has been pushed to the verge of ruin by the devastating floods of the past month.
With foreign aid only now beginning to trickle in, the impoverished country has been forced to take out further loans while pleading for outstanding ones to be restructured.
Already burdened by heavy debt, the country's economy has suffered a major setback. Funds will have to be poured into reconstruction efforts while many sectors of the economy, especially agriculture, will suffer losses for up to several months, if not years. So far, the floods have covered a fifth of the country, cost at least 1,600 lives, displaced 4.6 million people, destroyed roads, bridges and schools, damaged power stations and dams, and swamped millions of acres of agricultural land.
About 150,000 Pakistanis were forced to move to higher ground yesterday as water from a freshly swollen Indus River submerged dozens more towns and villages in the south. Officials expect the floods to recede across the country in the next few days as the last river torrents empty into the Arabian Sea. Survivors may find little left when they return home. Already, 600,000 people are in relief camps set up in Sindh during the past month. The floods have affected about one-fifth of Pakistan's territory; at least six million people have been made homeless, and 20 million affected overall.
A top-level delegation from Pakistan's Finance Ministry will travel to Washington this week to ask the International Monetary Fund to ease the restrictions imposed on its $11.3bn (£7.3bn) support package. Before the floods, Pakistan was struggling to meet the fund's requirements. Meeting those conditions now will be impossible.
Some officials estimate that the cost of rebuilding infrastructure could be $15bn, money that Islamabad simply doesn't have. As of July, Pakistan had a debt of $55.5bn. That figure will jump to $73bn in 2015-16, as debts that were rescheduled after 9/11, in exchange for Pakistan's co-operation in the "war on terror", will come back into play.
The finance delegation's aim will be to persuade the fund to relax its conditions or draw up a fresh agreement, taking into consideration the toll exacted by the worst natural disaster the country has faced in living memory. As a result of the tragedy, the budget deficit will grow, inflation will rise, and economic growth will slow – all areas where the fund had wanted to see progress in the opposite direction.
At the same time, Islamabad has secured loans of $1bn from the World Bank and $2bn from the Asian Development Bank to help relief efforts and begin the task to rehabilitation and reconstruction. Government officials say that they were left with no option but to approach the banks as foreign aid has generated only a fraction of what's needed.
At the start of last week's special session of the UN General Assembly, only half of the Secretary General's call for $459m had been received in pledges. After impassioned appeals by Ban Ki-moon and the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, that figure rose. New pledges arrived of $60m from Washington, raising its contribution to $150m, $50m from the UK, $32m from Germany and $38.5m from the European Union. By the end of the session, Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said he was confident that the target of $459m "is going to be easily met". After days of hand-wringing, Islamabad finally accepted New Delhi's offer of $5m, soothing anxieties on both sides of the border between the arch-rivals.
But Pakistani economists say that the aid from abroad still falls short of the funds required, forcing Islamabad to resort to expensive borrowing that it cannot afford. "It's indicative of a far greater problem within Pakistan," said Akbar Zaidi, a leading economist. "The donors don't trust the government to come up with the money."
Government officials reject the criticism that Islamabad suffers from a credibility problem. The newly appointed Finance Minister, Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, is a widely respected figure who enjoys support across the political spectrum and who served as a successful minister in the government of Pervez Musharraf. Mr Sheikh has the task of setting up a system of rigorous checks to ensure that all the money goes where it is needed.
The political opposition has seized on the slow arrival of aid and the new borrowing to accuse the government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, of failing to burnish its image abroad and plunging Pakistan into a spiralling debt crisis. "The money that's come in so far is peanuts," said Mushahid Hussain, an opposition leader. "There is a yawning credibility gap between the government and how it is perceived by not just the international community but also its people. It is seen as too corrupt to deal with."
Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, has even proposed that Pakistan has no need for foreign aid. But a senior government official said that Mr Sharif's stance was an unhelpful attempt at courting and stoking nationalist sentiment amid tragedy. "It's a nutty approach," the official said. "If people are there to help you, and they want to help you, why do you want to make them uncomfortable?"
"The debt-servicing burden will just kill the country," said Ahsan Iqbal, a leading member of Mr Sharif's right-of-centre party. "We won't be able to build anything in this country of our own." Mr Iqbal says that the government could have opted instead to generate up to $3.76bn by reappropriating development budgets and slashing government funding.
Critics say that such measures would involve cuts on a scale so fearsome that it would leave George Osborne blushing, depriving the country's poorest of basic development schemes.
The disaster has revealed decades of infrastructural neglect that damns successive governments. However efficiently the current government may have been able to mobilise resources, the state's capacity was woefully lacking in the first place.
Before setting off for Washington, Mr Sheikh said that he was not prepared to put a figure on the scale of damage to the economy. "It's still too early to assess the full impact of the disaster, but the damage is colossal. It's still unfolding. It will run into billions and billions of dollars. There is a massive loss of infrastructure. Dams will have to be repaired. In the north-west, not a single bridge has survived along the Indus River. Roads will have to be rebuilt. And schools in the countryside need repair."
Some 17 million acres of agricultural land have been submerged by the floods, which are still raging in the southern province of Sindh. Key crops including wheat, cotton and rice have been affected. "We had plans to export surplus wheat," said Mr Sheikh. "It was an economic opportunity since Russia has stopped exporting wheat, raising its price. We cannot export wheat now because we have to feed our own people."
Pakistan's economy has long suffered problems because of its embarrassingly narrow tax base. Broad sections of the wealthy, including senior politicians, pay little or no tax. But Mr Sheikh said that the crisis could be an opportunity to take tough economic decisions the government has long wanted to. "We could push through a sales tax, introduce a flood surcharge on well-to-do people and get some leeway from the IMF."
There are other silver linings, Mr Sheikh said. The reconstruction effort could lead to "a spur of economic activity". For agriculture, the silt left behind by the floods will make the land in some areas more cultivable.
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
| Floods | August 2010 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(The Independent on Sunday)', '(BBC)'] |
A video shows 11 dead imams and 45 wounded Muslim holy men, 5 of whom are in a coma, alleged to have been caused by a NATO airstrike. Those attacked were said to have been at rest and sleeping while participating in a long peace march; Muslims and Christians unite in condemnation of the attack. | Libyan officials have accused Nato of "barbarically slaying" 11 Islamic imams and wounding 45 others by bombing a guest house in the eastern city of Brega, where they had gathered for a peace march into rebel-held territory.
Officials in Tripoli showed video footage of up to seven corpses whom they identified as imams killed when a bomb was dropped on the building in which they were sleeping.
The group had reportedly travelled to Brega from across the war-torn country. They had appeared on state-run television on Thursday and, according to government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, planned to move to the nearby city of Ajdabiya on Friday and then to Benghazi.
It was impossible to corroborate the government claims. However, funerals for the victims have been arranged across the country on Saturday and Christian priests joined Muslim leaders in condemning the deaths at a central Tripoli mosque late on Friday.
Nato had not offered a detailed response to the Libyan claims by Friday night. A Nato official initially said the site hit had been a "command and control centre" for the Libyan military, but did not elaborate further.
If the carnage proved to be the result of a Nato strike, it would be the most serious setback to the three-month air campaign, whose stated mission is to safeguard civilians from attacks by loyalists of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
The Libyan leader delivered a brief audio address on Friday night to rebut rumours he had been injured in an air strike and to condemn the "cowardly crusader aggressor attack" in Brega.
Gaddafi said he was hiding in a place "where you can't reach me", referring to Nato jet fighters that he believes are continually targeting him.
An air strike two weeks ago reportedly killed one of Gaddafi's sons, Saif al-Arab, and three of his grandsons.
The bomb that hit the house in which the imams were staying in Brega struck before dawn. Government officials identified the building as a guest house popular with western oil company employees.
Brega has been bitterly contested since clashes in mid-February erupted into violent revolution. The area of Brega where the imams stayed is still thought to be under government control a belief supported by the fact that state-run television had filmed the gathering on Thursday as well as the aftermath of the explosion.
Further west, loyalist forces and western-backed rebels were still striving for outright control of the city of Misrata, where the worst fighting of the past three months continues.
On Friday night rebels backed away from their earlier claims of victory. If Misrata was to be wrestled from government hands, it would put the capital in striking distance.
For now, however, Tripoli remains a city under firm regime control, despite massive fuel shortages, which are causing drivers to camp out in their cars for up to three days to fill their tanks with petrol.
There is little open sign of dissent in Tripoli, with opposition supporters so far reluctant to declare their hands. | Armed Conflict | May 2011 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
After suffering a cardiac arrest in his Malibu, California home, American singer and songwriter Tom Petty dies at the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 66. | Tom Petty, the dynamic and iconoclastic frontman who led the band the Heartbreakers, died Monday. He was 66. Petty’s death was confirmed by Tony Dimitriades, longtime manager of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, on behalf of the family. “On behalf of the Tom Petty family, we are devastated to announce the untimely death of of our father, husband, brother, leader and friend Tom Petty,” Dimitriades wrote. “He suffered cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu in the early hours of this morning and was taken to UCLA Medical Center but could not be revived. He died peacefully at 8:40 p.m. PT surrounded by family, his bandmates and friends.”
On Sunday, Petty was found unconscious, not breathing and in full cardiac arrest at his Malibu home, according to TMZ, where he was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support. EMTs were able to find a pulse when they found him, but TMZ reported that the hospital found no brain activity when he arrived. A decision was made to pull life support.
“It’s shocking, crushing news,” Petty’s friend and Traveling Wilburys bandmate Bob Dylan tells Rolling Stone in a statement. “I thought the world of Tom. He was a great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recently completed a summer tour with three nights at the Hollywood Bowl. The trek marked the band’s 40th anniversary and found him playing rarely played deep cuts like their first album’s opener, “Rockin’ Around (With You),” and a selection of Wildflowers cuts. It was intended to be his “last trip around the country.” He told Rolling Stone, though, that it wasn’t his intention to quit playing. “I need something to do, or I tend to be a nuisance around the house,” he said.
In the late 1970s, Petty’s romanticized tales of rebels, outcasts and refugees started climbing the pop charts. When he sang, his voice was filled with a heartfelt drama that perfectly complemented the Heartbreakers’ ragged rock & roll. Songs like “The Waiting,” “You Got Lucky,” “I Won’t Back Down,” “Learning to Fly” and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” all dominated Billboard’s rock chart, and the majority of Petty’s albums have been certified either gold or platinum. His most recent release, Hypnotic Eye, debuted at Number One in 2014. Petty, who also recorded as a solo artist and as a member of the Traveling Wilburys and Mudcrutch, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
Thomas Earl Petty was born in Gainesville, Florida, the son of an insurance salesman, on October 20th, 1950. His father beat him and he didn’t perform well in school, according to The New York Times, but he found solace in music. In 1961, he met Elvis Presley, who was shooting a film in Ocala, Florida, and it became a “life-altering moment” for the young Petty. Soon after, he got his first guitar as a preteen and joined his first band in the mid-Sixties. He quit high school at age 17 to join the southern-rock group Mudcrutch, which was taking off at the time. The group’s lineup featured guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench, two musicians Petty would collaborate with for much of the next five decades. But while the band was taking off, they broke up upon moving to Los Angeles in the early Seventies.
Petty started his solo career in earnest in 1975 when he cut a demo with Campbell and Tench that also featured bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch. They called themselves the Heartbreakers and, thanks to a label that signed Mudcrutch and retained only Petty on contract after they broke up, they recorded their debut, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which came out in 1976. It failed to make an impact at the time – the album’s lead single “Breakdown” didn’t even chart – but they picked up heat after touring England as support for future E Street Band member Nils Lofgren. They soon became headliners on the tour, with the album topping the U.K. chart.
The label reissued “Breakdown” in the U.S. and it reached the bottom rung of the Top 40 a year after its release. Subsequent singles from the group’s second LP, You’re Gonna Get It!, such as “Listen to Her Heart” and “I Need to Know” charted in the upper half of the pop chart. Around this time, one of Petty’s most apparent influences, the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn, recorded a cover of the self-titled album’s closing track, “American Girl,” proving Petty’s ability to write hits. Around this time, the first of a number of bad business deals stung Petty, according to the Times: He’d signed away all of the publishing rights to his songs to his label for $10,000 and had to negotiate a new deal where he got half of the royalties on songs after his fourth LP came out.
But before the decade was up, Petty found himself bankrupt after the record label MCA attempted to buy out his contract from ABC Records, which distributed Petty’s original label. It took nine months of litigation for Petty to secure a new deal so he could release the biggest record of his career, 1979’s Damn the Torpedoes, which reached Number Two on the album chart and has since been certified triple-platinum. The album contained the singles “Don’t Do Me Like That” and “Refugee,” establishing him as a full-fledged hitmaker. Within two years, he was able to leverage this credibility in a standoff with MCA, which wanted to charge $9.98 for the follow-up LP to Damn the Torpedoes; Petty threatened to titled it $8.98 until they backed down and released the record, which contained “The Waiting,” under the name Hard Promises, in 1981. He later scored a Number Three hit later that year with “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” a duet with Stevie Nicks that appeared on her Bella Donna LP.
The years that followed would prove to be tumultuous for Petty, seeing the departure of Blair from the lineup as they worked painstakingly on what would become 1985’s Southern Accents; during this time, Petty became so frustrated that he punched a wall and broke his left hand. Nevertheless, it served as home to the Number 13 hit “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” The following year, just as the band was about to set out on a tour supporting Bob Dylan, Petty’s house burned down – with arson being suspected – destroying most of his possessions. His wife, Jane Benyo, and two daughters were able to escape.
The late-Eighties were marked by both a commercial disappointment, 1986’s Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), and a success, 1988’s Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1. The latter found Petty collaborating with Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne, and it made it to Number Three on the album chart and was certified triple platinum on the strength of singles like “Handle With Care” and “End of the Line.” Petty followed this success into his first solo album, 1989’s Full Moon Fever (home to “Free Fallin'”), which Lynne produced.
Around this time, Petty also began making small overtures into acting, appearing in the 1987 comedy Made in Heaven and later in the reviled 1997 action film The Postman, which starred Kevin Costner. He’d find his acting niche by providing his voice to Mike Judge’s southern-themed comedy King of the Hill as Lucky, the husband of protagonist Hank Hill’s niece-in-law Luanne.
The unexpected success of Full Moon Fever sent Petty into the 1990s with incredible momentum, more so than just about any artist from his generation. A second Traveling Wilburys record in 1990 failed to recapture the magic of the original, but the following year he brought the Heartbreakers into the studio with Jeff Lynne and cut Into The Great Wide Open, scoring radio hits with the title track and “Learning To Fly.” “That record gave us some of our most evergreen songs,” said Petty. “It’s our biggest record in Europe. But suddenly we were in a business where you could feel bad about selling only a million and a half records and recording some songs that live forever.”
In secret, Petty had signed a $20 million, six-album deal with Warner Bros. in 1992 and wanted to focus on his solo album, Wildflowers. He didn’t want any distraction but agreed to cut two songs for a Greatest Hits album against his will in 1993. It was the only way to appease MCA. One of the two songs was “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” which hit Number 14 on the Hot 100 and, thanks to a creepy video featuring Kim Basinger as a corpse, went into heavy rotation on MTV. It should have been a moment of triumph for the Heartbreakers, but drummer Stan Lynch grew tired of feeling like a hired hand and left the group the following year. Petty would reemerge late the following year with Wildflowers, which he and producer Rick Rubin had cut down from a planned double LP. “It’s Good to Be King,” “You Don’t Know How It Feels” and the title track would be key parts of his live show until the end of his career. Rubin would later draft Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers to back Johnny Cash on the Man in Black’s Unchained LP in 1996; Petty would later join Cash on a recording of “I Won’t Back Down.”
Wildflowers also sold by the millions and earned Petty yet another new generation of fans. “[We are] getting the feeling the fans would rather hear Wildflowers than anything else,” Petty told Rolling Stone that year. “I think a lot of people out there know us mostly from this last album.”
When the tour ended, Petty’s marriage dissolved after 22 years together. He moved out of their house into what he called a “chicken shack.” To numb the pain, he turned to heroin. A therapist convinced him to check into a detox clinic. “They shoot this drug into you that literally drives the heroin out and your body goes into spasms,” he told biographer Warren Zanes. “It forces the detox process. When I woke up from that, I felt different. And I said to the nurse, ‘So, it went OK?’ She says, ‘Yeah, it went OK.’ I said, ‘How long have I been asleep?’ She says, ‘Two days.'”
He poured all of his pain into 1999’s Echo, the darkest album of his career. He would later refuse to play songs like “Room at the Top,” “Counting on You” and “Free Girl Now” after the Echo tour concluded. “I recently had a fan stop me and tell me how much that record had helped her through a bad time,” Petty told Rolling Stone in 2013. “And she said, ‘I know you don’t like it.’ And I was like, ‘It’s not that I don’t like it. It was just a really hard period in my life.'”
Making the period all the more difficult was Blair replacement Howie Epstein’s growing reliance on heroin. The Heartbreakers bassist dealt with a drug problem throughout much of the Nineties, but by the early 2000s, the four-stringer was missing shows and physically falling apart. Petty fired him shortly after the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, replacing him with original Heartbreakers bassist Blair. Epstein died of an overdose in 2003. “It’s like you got a tree dying in the back yard,” Petty told Rolling Stone that year. “And you’re kind of used to the idea that it’s dying. But then you look out there one day, and they cut it down. And you just can’t imagine that beautiful tree isn’t there anymore.”
Petty had put his life back together and remarried in 2001, to Dana York, and the band soldiered on and hit the road hard to support The Last DJ, a scathing indictment of a record industry without any regard for art or artists. “Everywhere we look, we want to make the most money possible,” he told Rolling Stone in 2002. “This is a dangerous, corrupt notion. That’s where you see the advent of programming on the radio, and radio research, all these silly things. That has made pop music what it is today. Everything – morals, truth – is all going out the window in favor of profit.”
Unsurprisingly, radio didn’t embrace The Last DJ, beginning a long period where Petty sold more concert tickets than new records. But 2006’s solo LP, Highway Companion, and 2008’s Mojo, a blues record he cut with the Heartbreakers, were still stellar albums packed with strong tunes like “Saving Grace,” “Square One” and “Jefferson Jericho Blues.” With his days as a radio hitmaker behind him, Petty felt tremendous freedom to do whatever he wanted with his career. In 2008, he shocked everyone – especially his old bandmates – by reforming Mudcrutch for a new album and tour. “I keep waiting for somebody to tap me on the shoulder and go, ‘Uh, Tom, this is a dream and it’s time to wake up,'” guitarist Tom Leadon, who hadn’t played with Petty since 1972, told Rolling Stone in 2016. “What a wonderful turn of events this is.” In 2016, they released another album and launched a more extensive tour.
“Tom is in a position where he could do anything he wants with anyone he wants,” said Heartbreakers/Mudcrutch guitarist Mike Campbell. “The beauty of this is that he wants to reconnect with his old friends, not for money, but the pure joy of revisiting the energy that we started with. It’s been very, very spiritual. It’s commendable that he’d do something so generous.”
Three years ago, Petty and the Heartbreakers reached a shocking milestone when their new LP, Hypnotic Eye, became their first Number 1 album. They supported it with a U.S. tour and went back on the road in 2017 to celebrate their 40th anniversary. “I’m thinking it may be the last trip around the country,” Petty told Rolling Stone shortly before it began. “It’s very likely we’ll keep playing, but will we take on 50 shows in one tour? I don’t think so. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thinking this might be the last big one. We’re all on the backside of our sixties. I have a granddaughter now I’d like to see as much as I can. I don’t want to spend my life on the road.”
After years of swimming upstream, Petty was at ease with his legacy in the later years of his life. “As you’re coming up, you’re recognized song for song or album for album,” he told Esquire in 2006. “What’s changed these days is that the man who approaches me on the street is more or less thanking me for a body of work – the soundtrack to his life, as a lot of them say. And that’s a wonderful feeling. It’s all an artist can ask.”
His hits have defined rock radio since the Seventies, and he never stopped writing great music. | Famous Person - Death | October 2017 | ['(Rolling Stone)'] |
Philippine elections: About 40 million Filipinos go to the polls to elect candidates for national and local positions from the President down to municipal councilors. | More than 90 people died during the campaign - 16 of them just before voting began on Monday, police said.
Opinion polls suggest President Gloria Arroyo is likely to defeat her main rival, Fernando Poe Junior, a film star with no political experience.
But the outcome is far from certain, and Filipinos may have to wait a month before they know the final results.
Correspondents say all the main presidential candidates have largely ignored the main issues facing the country - including a weak economy, Islamic militancy and a Communist insurgency.
As well as the main battle for president, thousands of local posts were also
being contested.
In all, the election will decide the president, vice president, 12 senators, 200
members of the House of Representatives and 17,000 posts such
as governor and town mayors.
About 230,000 police and troops were deployed at polling stations throughout the country in an effort to contain the violence.
Police said two campaign aides were shot in Manila on Monday morning, while seven armed men were killed in a northern province on Sunday.
A further six people were killed on Sunday in ambushes on the southern island of Mindanao, where Muslim separatists are fighting against the Manila government.
"I am praying for peace and unity in our country," Mrs Arroyo
said after casting her vote.
There are also suggestions of widespread corruption, especially in local polls.
Presidential race
In the race for the top job, Mrs Arroyo is the favourite to win a fresh six-year term.
Mr Poe traded on his fame as a movie star
She wants the chance to win a real mandate three years after she inherited the presidency from Joseph Estrada, who was ousted as leader by street protests in 2001.
The latest opinion polls give her a 6-7% lead over Fernando Poe Junior, a friend of Mr Estrada.
The BBC's correspondent in Manila, Sarah Toms, says the president's selling point is her experience, although many analysts see her three years in office as unremarkable.
In contrast, action movie hero Mr Poe - a political novice - has staged his campaign around his fame and personality.
He was mobbed by screaming fans when he turned up at a Manila polling station to cast his ballot.
But Mr Poe let an early advantage slip away by relying on image rather than substance, our correspondent says.
The other three runners - Raul Roco, a former education secretary, former police chief Panfilo Lacson, and Eduardo Villanueva, an evangelist - are expected to split about a third of the votes. | Government Job change - Election | May 2004 | ['(BBC)'] |
The trial of Schapelle Corby, an Australian facing drug smuggling charges in Indonesia, is adjourned after she collapses in the Bali courtroom. | The trial of the Australian accused of drug smuggling, Schapelle Corby, has been adjourned after the 27-year-old beauty student collapsed in court in Bali. Corby was examined by a doctor in the court before being led away.
Corby had requested a doctor be brought to the court while she was in the cells waiting for the hearing to start. Shortly after entering the court she slumped against her translator's shoulder, as her sister and defence lawyers rushed to help her. A local doctor, Conny Pangkahila, examined her on a bench in the courtroom and concluded she was suffering from extreme stress.
"Then she become hysterical," she said. "Once you are in stress, at one point if you cannot stand any more, your body is against it, so it's like a reaction. "She become hysterical, and then the blood pressure suddenly up, and then she fainted, that's all." Ms Pangkahila said she was suffering from stress and hypertension and needed to recuperate.
"I think she needs rest...maybe in the jail if they could provide a room for her that should be suitable," she said.
She will be further examined in jail. Earlier, Corby fell heavily when a prisoner she was handcuffed to fainted as they were climbing off the back of a police van.
The chief judge has asked for a full medical report next week to establish if the trial can go ahead a week from today. The Gold Coast businessman who is financially supporting Corby says she is on the verge of suicide.
Ron Bakir claims Indonesian authorities are not treating Corby for depression and says she is deteriorating day by day.
"She's lost hope, she's completely completely lost hope," he said.
"She doesn't know, she's not registering. She's not all there at all. She has no faith."
Prosecutors were supposed to tell the court today what penalty they will seek for Corby, if the judges find her guilty.
The death penalty is one option.
Corby is charged with smuggling 4.1 kilograms of marijuana into Bali, Indonesia. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | April 2005 | ['(ABC News)'] |
Former Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz is shot in the Dominican Republic during a reported robbery attempt. He is expected to fully recover following surgery. | Former Boston Red Sox slugger and Dominican star David Ortiz is out of surgery and doing "fine," according to his family, after he was shot Sunday at a club in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Ortiz's media assistant, Leo Lopez, told ESPN's Enrique Rojas that Ortiz is stable but still in intensive care.
"Doctors say he is out of danger, but he is heavily sedated and will be in intensive care for the next 24 hours," Lopez said.
Lopez, a veteran reporter, said that once Ortiz is fully stabilized they expect he will be transferred to Boston for further treatment.
According to Lopez, the operation lasted six hours and was performed by three doctors, led by Dr. Abel Gonzalez. The team had to remove part of Ortiz's intestines and colon, as well as his gallbladder. Ortiz also suffered liver damage.
"Doctors say that David is out of danger, thank God," Ortiz's father, Leo, told ESPN. "What they have told me post-op is that the doctors believe he will recover quickly."
Leo Ortiz added: "Big Papi will be around for a long time.''
Authorities say David Ortiz was ambushed by a man who got off a motorcycle and shot him in the back at nearly point-blank range around 8:50 p.m. local time Sunday at the Dial Bar and Lounge in Santo Domingo.
Ortiz, 43, was taken to the Abel Gonzalez Clinic, where he underwent surgery.
"We do not know at this point if any additional surgery is required but if it is, it will be done in the United States," Lopez said.
The gunman was initially identified by police as 25-year-old Eddy Feliz Garcia. However, authorities later said there were two suspects: the suspected shooter and Garcia, who was identified as the suspected driver of the motorcycle.
Garcia was detained by a crowd at the bar and beaten. He suffered a cranium contusion and trauma to his thorax, left knee and right leg, according to the Dominican Republic's National Health Service. He was treated at the Dario Contreras Hospital in Santo Domingo and then released to police custody.
The other suspect has not been identified.
Investigators are trying to determine whether Ortiz was the intended target, Dominican National Police Director Ney Aldrin Bautista Almonte said. Leo Ortiz told local media he has no idea why someone would have shot at his son.
Two other people were wounded, Bautista said, including Jhoel Lopez, a Dominican TV host who was with David Ortiz. Bautista said police believe Lopez was wounded by the same bullet.
Lopez was shot in the leg, and his injuries were not life-threatening, said his wife, Liza Blanco, who is also a TV host.
Police did not identify the third person or detail that person's injuries.
Dionisio Soldevila, a reporter from the Dominican Republic who hosts a radio show with ESPN's Rojas, told ESPN that he spoke with the doctor who first treated Ortiz and was told Ortiz was shot in the lower back and that the bullet went through his body. According to Soldevila, Ortiz told his doctors, "Please don't let me die. I'm a good man."
The Dial Bar and Lounge is located in eastern Santo Domingo on Venezuela Avenue, a bustling nightlife district packed with dance clubs and pricey bars that Ortiz is known to frequent. Ortiz, who lives at least part of the year in the Dominican, is often seen getting his cars washed and hanging out with friends, including other baseball players, artists and entertainers.
Hall of Fame pitcher and fellow Dominican Pedro Martinez was among several current and former baseball players to send out tweets in support of Ortiz.
I'm at peace knowing you out of danger; you a strong man Compai, can't wait to hear your voice. My thoughts and prayers are with you, see you soon. The Red Sox issued a statement late Sunday night that said in part, "We have offered David's family all available resources to aid in his recovery and will continue to keep them in our hearts."
Ortiz made 10 All-Star teams and won three World Series with the Red Sox before retiring in 2016. He was named World Series MVP in 2013, when he helped the Red Sox knock off the St. Louis Cardinals. | Famous Person - Sick | June 2019 | ['(Heavy)', '(ESPN)'] |
The European Commission passes a ban on the use of bisphenol A in baby bottles. | The European Commission has announced a ban on the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in plastic baby bottles from next year. The commission cited fears that the compound could affect development and immune response in young children. There has been concern over the use of BPA for some time, with six US manufacturers removing it in 2009 from bottles they sold in the US, although not other markets. But a UK expert said he thought the move was "an over-reaction".
BPA is widely used in making hard, clear plastic and is commonly found in food and drink containers. A European Commission spokesman said the proposal had been approved after being presented to a committee of national government experts on Thursday - months earlier than scheduled - and approved.
The European parliament had called for the ban in June.
John Dalli, Commissioner in charge of Health and Consumer Policy, said the ban was good news for European parents. "There were areas of uncertainty, deriving from new studies, which showed that BPA might have an effect on development, immune response and tumour promotion," Mr Dalli said in a statement.
EU states will outlaw the manufacture of polycarbonate feeding bottles containing the compound from March 2011, and ban their import and sale from June 2011, the Commission said.
But Professor Richard Sharpe, of the Medical Research Council's Human Reproductive Sciences Unit at the University of Edinburgh, said the commission's decision must have been made on political, rather than scientific, grounds.
"I do not know of any convincing evidence that bisphenol A exposure, in the amounts used in polycarbonate bottles, can cause any harm to babies as not only are the amounts so minuscule but they are rapidly broken down in the gut and liver.
"Babies have the necessary enzymes and are able to metabolise bisphenol A just as effectively as adults."
He added: "Personally I think this is an overreaction, but if satisfactory replacements chemicals are available then this can be done to placate those calling for action, but scientifically it's a retrograde step.
"I would be happy for a baby of mine to be fed from a polycarbonate bottle containing bisphenol A."
And Professor Warren Foster of the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at Canada's McMaster University, said the EU had acted with "extreme caution".
The National Childbirth Trust is a British charity which has campaigned for the ban. Its chief executive Belinda Phipps told the BBC: "When you put liquids into a bottle - particularly hot liquids or liquids containing fatty liquids - it leaches out of the plastic. And particularly as the bottle gets older and it gets more scratched, more and more leaches out and into the liquid."
Ms Phipps said that when a baby drinks from a bottle which contains BPA, the baby absorbs the leached chemical into its fat. "It's a chemical that mimics oestrogens, but not in a good way," she said. "It interferes with oestrogens getting into the receptors, and it can have some very unpleasant effects - and animal studies have shown significant effects."
Canada was the first country to declare bisphenol A toxic in October, after it was concluded that the chemical might have harmful effects on humans, as well as the environment and "its biological diversity".
The Canadian decision was strongly opposed by the chemical industry.
| Government Policy Changes | November 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
Mongolians go to the polls to elect a new president. The centre-right Democratic Party's Battulga Khaltmaa wins a plurality of votes, but falls short of a majority, necessitating a second round. | ULAANBAATAR (Reuters) - No candidate has won an outright victory in Mongolia’s presidential election meaning the first ever run-off between two leading candidates will be held next month, the General Election Committee said on Tuesday.
A populist former martial arts star Khaltmaa Battulga of the opposition Democratic Party won the most votes in the Monday election, but failed to secure the majority required, the committee said.
He will face ruling Mongolian People’s Party (MPP) candidate Miyeegombo Enkhbold, who came second, in a run-off on July 9, the committee’s chairman, Choinzon Tsodnomtseren, told a news briefing.
The election has been seen as a referendum on the government’s economic recovery plans and China’s role in the remote, resource-rich country known as the birthplace of Mongol emperor Genghis Khan.
Battulga, who is regarded as a resource nationalist who is suspicious of Mongolia’s giant neighbor to the south, had been confident about his chances.
“I never lose, I must win. I always win in the history of my life,” Battulga told Reuters in an interview late on Monday, before the preliminary results were announced.
After final tallies from districts came in overnight, Battulga emerged with 517,478 votes, 38.1 percent of the total, according to Mongolian state television.
Enkhbold of the ruling MPP, regarded as pro-investment and market-friendly, scraped through to the second round with 411,748 votes, 30.3 percent of the total.
Enkhbold, an establishment politician and the speaker of parliament, appears to have suffered as a result of his party’s austerity policies.
The government was forced to implement austerity measures to secure a $5.5 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund in May.
The administration raised interest rates and slashed public spending last year to try to cope with heavy debt and a precipitous fall in the value of Mongolia’s currency, the tugrik.
Enkhbold, who was favorite in the run-up to the vote, was trailing in third place for much of the count after a stronger than expected performance by Sainkhuu Ganbaatar of the breakaway Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP).
Ganbaatar finished with 30.2 percent, trailing Enkhbold by fewer than 2,000 votes, and is eliminated from the contest.
All three presidential candidates promised to fix economic problems but their campaigns were clouded by corruption allegations.
Geert-Hinrich Ahrens, leading a delegation of election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, expressed concern about electoral transparency.
Though Ahrens said attempts to bribe voters were not witnessed, “the rumors were rather massive”.
Turnout was 68.27 percent, and included more than 18,000 ballots left blank by voters protesting against the choice of candidates.
Mongolia is a parliamentary democracy. The government is run by a prime minister, but the president has powers to veto legislation and make judicial appointments.
| Government Job change - Election | June 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Adele Adkins, Kate Bush and PJ Harvey feature on the shortlist for best album at this year's Ivor Novello Awards – the first ever all–female shortlist. | Adele, Kate Bush and PJ Harvey will battle it out for best album at next month's Ivor Novello awards.
It is the first time the album shortlist has been exclusively female.
Two of Adele's tracks, Rolling in the Deep and Someone Like You, are also nominated for most performed work, alongside Take That's The Flood.
Rolling in the Deep is also up for best song muscially and lyrically. The annual awards will be presented in London on 17 May.
They celebrate British and Irish songwriting and composing and are voted for by songwriters.
While all the albums shortlisted are performed by women, producer Paul Epworth is nominated alongside Adele for 21 as he co-wrote some of the key songs.
PJ Harvey is listed for her Mercury Prize-winning record Let England Shake, a concept album about Britain at war.
Kate Bush's album 50 Words For Snow is also written around a theme, comprising a suite of seven songs "set against a backdrop of falling snow".
This year's nominees for best contemporary song are Nero's Promises, Lana Del Rey's Video Games and James Blake's The Wilhelm Scream.
Justin Parker, who helped Del Rey write Video Games, agreed the music business "seems very female-orientated" at the moment.
"It's been like that for a few years," he told the BBC.
"But it's great to have really classic songwriting represented, like Adele. Without Adele I think Lana might not have happened. She opened the door for that kind of songwriting."
Other nominees in the best song musically and lyrically are Florence and the Machine's Shake It Out and Ed Sheeran's The A Team.
Best original film score contenders are Life in a Day, The First Grader and We Need to Talk About Kevin, which was written by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.
The Shadow Line, Page Eight and Leonardo are all in competition for best television soundtrack.
Adele's second album 21 has won numerous awards in what has been a stellar year for the north Londoner.
The record recently overtook Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms in the list of best-selling UK albums.
The LP has now sold more than 4,142,000 copies in the singer's home country, making it the sixth biggest-selling album of all-time.
Her awards haul includes two Brit awards and six Grammy awards.
Last year, rapper-turned-singer Plan B won three prizes at the Ivor Novellos, including best songwriter - presented by Sir Elton John - and best album.
Special awards went to Muse, Steve Winwood, Free founder Paul Rodgers and musicals legend Stephen Sondheim.
Previous winners in other years include Sir Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Amy Winehouse and Radiohead.
This year's recipients will be announced at the ceremony. Plan B wins hat-trick at Novellos
. | Awards ceremony | April 2012 | ['(BBC)', '(The Guardian)'] |
At least 27 people are killed after drinking toxic alcohol in Pakistan. , | TOBA TEK SINGH, Pakistan, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- At least 32 people, mostly Christians, died after consuming homemade liquor in a Pakistani town on Christmas, law enforcement said.
Another 25 people were being treated in hospitals after drinking the illegal alcohol in the city of Toba Tek Singh, police officer Mohammad Nadeem told BBC Urdu.
Liquor sales are tightly regulated in Pakistan because Muslims are forbidden from buying or drinking it. Most residents of the Mubarakabad neighborhood of Toba Tek Singh are Christians, though, a minority in Pakistan. Wealthy Pakistanis buy bootlegged foreign alcohol, but poor people often drink home brews that can contain methanol, commonly used in anti-freeze and fuel.
"The men who belong to the Christian community drank liquor on the night of Dec. 25 and went home. Tragedy struck the next morning when many did not rise from their beds, while others got sick," Nadeem said.
Two local men were asked to buy alcohol at an unknown location for the party, he said.
"The local sellers were out of stock so they went and bought it from somewhere else. Both have died," Nadeem said.
A father-son duo have been arrested for making the toxic liquor, The Times of India reported.
"We are still investigating what kind of drink it was," Atif Imran Qureshi, a police official in Toba Tek Singh, told The New York Times. "We didn't find any bottles, but it would most probably be homemade liquor."
In October, 11 people died from alcohol poisoning, also in Punjab province.
In 2014 some 40 people died within a few days as a result of drinking tainted alcohol in Sindh.
And others have died in other nations, dozens in the Russian city of Irkutsk after drinking bath lotion that contained alcohol. In India, hundreds have died in alcohol poisoning incidents. | Mass Poisoning | December 2016 | ['(The New York Times)', '(UPI)'] |
The trial of 29 suspects in relation to the 2004 Madrid train bombings begins in Madrid, Spain. | Seven suspects, most of whom are Moroccan, face charges of murder and belonging to a terrorist group. The first defendant, Rabei Osman, said he had nothing to do with the bombings and denied links to Islamic extremists.
The trial is expected to last for several months and hear from hundreds of witnesses and police experts.
More than 1,700 people were injured in the multiple bomb attacks on four rush-hour trains in Madrid.
Investigators in Spain have attributed the attacks to a local cell of Islamic extremists inspired by al-Qaeda. 'No relation to the attacks'
A bullet-proof chamber was set up for 18 of the suspects, packed together on wooden benches. The other 11 sat in the main courtroom - they have been out on bail.
TRIAL IN FIGURES
29 men on trial
Six charged with 191 counts of murder and 1,755 of attempted murder
One is charged with 192 counts of murder and 1,755 of attempted murder
They face up to 40,000 years in jail each
22 others face lesser terror-linked charges
About 600 witnesses and 100 experts will give evidence
The indictment itself is 100,000 pages long
Madrid bombs: Defendants
A number of counsellors were also in the court building to offer help to attending survivors and relatives of victims.
The first defendant led to the dock was Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, also known as Mohamed The Egyptian. He refused to answer any questions from prosecutors and said he did not recognize the charges against him, but later agree to take questions from defence lawyers. "I never had any relation to the events which occurred in Madrid," he told the court, denying he was part of al-Qaeda or any other Islamic extremist group. "Obviously I condemn these attacks unconditionally and completely," he said.
He is one of six people charged with 191 murders and 1,755 attempted murders.
Hundreds of witnesses
A Spaniard believed to have supplied the explosives is accused of 192 murders - the 191 who died in the bombings and a policeman killed when seven key suspects committed suicide in a raid on a flat three weeks later - and 1,755 attempted murders. The suspects who died in the flat explosion in April 2004 included the alleged plot mastermind, Tunisian Serhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet.
Eyewitness view of trial
Of the defendants on trial who are not charged with murder, 11 are from Morocco, eight from Spain and one each from Algeria, Syria and Lebanon. They face charges including collaborating with a terrorist group and handling explosives.
Lawyers representing the accused have said that all 29 will deny the charges.
The judges will hear from all the suspects. More than 600 witnesses and 100 police and forensic experts will then testify. The hearings are expected to last until July, with a verdict expected not earlier than October. This high-profile trial is being keenly watched by victims of the bombings and the Spanish public. The legal documents have been digitised and will be projected on to screens during the court sessions, which are being broadcast live on national television, radio and the internet
On Tuesday, Spanish officials raised the country's security alert level from low to medium ahead of the trial and the third anniversary of the attacks on 11 March. Extra police and soldiers will be stationed at key public areas, and water supply and power plants, while the elevated alert is in place, the interior ministry said. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | February 2007 | ['(BBC)'] |
A man was revealed to have been arrested the previous day for attempting to blow up a car in The Pentagon parking lot. | An Arkansas man was charged Tuesday with trying to blow up an SUV in a Pentagon parking lot, federal prosecutors in Virginia said.
A Pentagon police officer was on patrol just before 11 a.m. Monday when he saw Matthew Dmitri Richardson, 19, of Fayetteville, attempting to light on fire a piece of fabric that had been inserted into the gas tank of a 2016 Land Rover, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Eastern Virginia.
When the officer confronted Richardson, he said he was going to "blow this vehicle up" and "himself,” court documents say.
Richardson sprinted away from the officer, but was caught a short time later, according to the court documents.
Federal prosecutors said the owner of the vehicle is an active duty servicemember who doesn’t know Richardson.
The suspect was charged with maliciously attempting to damage and destroy a vehicle by means of fire. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison.
Richardson's initial court appearance was slated for Tuesday afternoon, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria. Court records did not list his attorney.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | February 2020 | ['(NBC)'] |
Former Vice President Joe Biden chooses Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, making her the presumptive 2020 Democratic vice presidential nominee. She is the first black woman and first Asian-American vice presidential nominee for a major party. | Former Vice President Joe Biden named Sen. Kamala Harris to be his running mate this fall.
The moderate former prosecutor from California has spent her career breaking barriers. Here's what we know:
From CNN's Jamiel Lynch
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottom said the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ticket is needed to "show to America that our president will value diversity and there’s no better representative in that than Senator Harris."
“We need this ticket in America,” Bottoms told CNN’s Jim Acosta during "The Situation Room."
Bottoms said she talked to Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, on the phone today and he told her that she was not his choice. She called her conversation with Biden in-depth and at some points personal.
Biden did not tell Bottoms who his choice was going to be during the conversation, she said.
The Atlanta mayor went on to describe why this moment is important for younger generations.
From CNN's Jeff Zeleny
An official with Joe Biden tells CNN that the former vice president called California Sen. Kamala Harris to offer her the job of vice president 90 minutes before his announcement.
Harris tweeted later that she was "honored" to join Biden as the Democratic party's nominee for vice president, saying she'd "do what it takes to make him our Commander-in-Chief."
From CNN’s Jenn Selva
California lawmakers were quick to take to Twitter on Tuesday to praise Joe Biden’s selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate on the 2020 presidential ticket.
Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, in 1964, was the state's attorney general from 2011 to 2017 and a former district attorney of San Francisco.
Here's how California lawmakers are reacting today: California Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted his support for Harris, saying she is the "perfect choice" for Biden.
In San Francisco, where Harris was once district attorney, Mayor London Breed expressed her excitement over calling Harris "her Vice-President."
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Harris will help Biden "unite the American people, restore our nation's soul, and rebuild our country.”
On the other end of the political aisle, Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California’s 23rd Congressional District attacked Harris in a tweet.
From CNN's Maegan Vazquez
President Trump praised Vice President Mike Pence when he was asked if Kamala Harris will help or hurt Joe Biden’s chances at the presidency.
“Well I like Vice President Mike Pence much better (than Harris),” Trump said. “He is solid as a rock. He’s been a fantastic vice president. He’s done everything you can do. He’s respected by every religious group, whether it’s Evangelical, whether it’s any other group, they respect Mike Pence. He’s been a great vice president and I will take him over Kamala.”
Trump’s unprompted comments about Pence come a few days after the New York Times reported that Pence’s team had become concerned that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was going after Pence’s job.
From CNN's S. Mitra Kalita
Besides being the first Black woman on the ticket, Kamala Harris is also the first Indian American. Her mother Shyamala Gopalan was born in Chennai and immigrated to the US to attend a doctoral program at UC Berkeley. Like Barack Obama, a mixed-race heritage has allowed Harris to connect across identities and reach multiple audiences and voting blocs.
To understand what today’s announcement means to this community, I turned to the best source I know on Indian Americans and politics: Aziz Haniffa. Haniffa was executive editor and chief political and diplomatic correspondent of India Abroad that shuttered just a few months ago after 50 years of publishing, under advertising and Covid-19 strains.
He sent me an August 26, 2009, interview he did with Harris and gave me permission to excerpt portions. It's headlined, "Kamala Devi Harris: The 'female Obama' discusses her campaign for California attorney general."
The piece highlights the role of her Indian identity, sure to surface again in the coming months. Harris’ rise as the daughter of immigrants — one from Jamaica, one from India — serves a powerful counternarrative to President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.
Aziz Haniffa: What did your mom instill in you, in terms of culture and heritage?
Harris: My mother was very proud of her Indian heritage and taught us, me and my sister Maya, to share in the pride about our culture. We used to go back to India every couple of years. One of the most influential people in my life, in addition to my mother, was my grandfather P.V. Gopalan, who actually held a post in India that was like the Secretary of State position in this country. My grandfather was one of the original Independence fighters in India, and some of my fondest memories from childhood were walking along the beach with him after he retired and lived in Besant Nagar, in what was then called Madras.
He would take walks every morning along the beach with his buddies who were all retired government officials and they would talk about politics, about how corruption must be fought and about justice. They would laugh and voice opinions and argue, and those conversations, even more than their actions, had such a strong influence on me in terms in terms of learning to be responsible, to be honest, and to have integrity. When we think about it, India is the oldest democracy in the world – so that is part of my background, and without question has had a great deal of influence on what I do today and who I am.
AH: Would it be true to say then that the roots of your civil rights activism began with those walks on the beach with your grandfather, as much as in your parents’ involvement in the civil rights movement in the US during their student days at the University of California?
Harris: It is important to not say one thing to the exclusion of the other, because I don’t feel the need to do that. They are of equal weight in terms of who I am and the impact that they had on me growing up. My grandparents used to visit us in Berkeley all the time. My grandfather and grandmother enjoyed the time they spent with people of all walks of life who were involved in the civil rights movement. I believe that one of the benefits of having travelled the world and having known different cultures is that you really understand and see very clearly that people, whoever they are, whatever language they speak, have so much more in common than they do differences.
AH: Some Indian-American politicians like Bobby Jindal have, after winning election campaigns in which they sought and received the support of the community, sought to distance themselves from their Indian-American heritage. What is your view on how the ethnicity factor plays out?
Harris: I am proud to be who I am, I am proud of the influences that my family have had on my life, that my community had on my life, and similarly the influence of my mentors and colleagues and friends. One is not to the exclusion of the other – I believe that point is at the heart of this matter. We have to stop seeing issues and people through a plate-glass window as though we were one-dimensional. Instead, we have to see that most people exist through a prism and they are a sum of many factors — everyone is that way, and that is just the reality of it.
From CNN's Abby Phillip Kamala Harris experienced the ultimate vetting during the presidential primary on her experience as a prosecutor in California. Democratic activists criticized her for being too tough as a prosecutor and not doing enough to reform California’s system. Harris’s record is mixed. She did pursue reforms as attorney general, notably the “Back on Track” program that allowed first time offenders to avoid prison. But those reforms are not enough for some activists. How does the Trump campaign view it? Well, take a look at the statement put out by Trump campaign adviser Katrina Pierson, that seems to suggest that *they* believe her record shows she was tough on crime. “Clearly, Phony Kamala will abandon her own morals, as well as try to bury her record as a prosecutor, in order to appease the anti-police extremists controlling the Democrat Party,” Pierson wrote. Trump aides have long viewed Harris’s record as tough paint as extremist on crime. This statement suggests that they are going to rely on accusing Harris of having a change of heart, in order to paint her and Biden with the anti-law enforcement brush.
Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin took to Instagram to share some tips for Kamala Harris. Harris is now the third woman to serve as a vice presidential candidate for a major political party, following Geraldine Ferraro as the Democratic vice presidential pick in 1984 and Palin in 2008. Harris is the first Black woman to run on a major political party’s presidential ticket.
Read Palin's advice: From CNN's Jasmine Wright Sen. Kamala Harris’ time has finally come. Covering her campaign so closely day in and day out, despite the missteps and miscalculations that often times come with running a first national campaign, the question always felt more “when,” and not “if” Harris would reach this level. Despite her often low polling numbers and inability to garner massive Black support during the primary, people always wanted to hear from Harris. She could always command attention.
But the moment it was announced she would be leaving the race, it felt like a cosmic shift in attitude. Folks from all different strides of life who criticized her platform, they then voiced regret that she, the only Black woman to run for the 2020 Democratic nomination, would not be on the December 2019 debate stage. When issues of race would come up, people on social media called out to say they wished Harris was still around to give her take. Many women described it to me as a rug being pulled from underneath them. And every contest that Harris was not in, many said her contributions were missed.
As a Black woman who covered her campaign, the joy I see on Twitter and an innumerable number of sources calling my phone to express their views on the news, does not surprise me. Regardless of the probability that Harris had to win the ticket, many Black women saw Harris as one of them. Someone who naturally understood their concerns and took great strides to describe them in detail on public stage. A whip smart sister who dedicated her life to achieving greatness, and striving against what felt like the impossible. Harris would often wax poetically about the challenges that she faced in her career, how when you break ceilings, sometimes you get cut. But it’s what you do after that, that matters. And now as the first Black and Indian woman on a Democratic ticket, Harris has broken one of the ultimate ceilings in this country. | Government Job change - Election | August 2020 | ['(CNN)'] |
Southern Sudan chooses to become independent of Sudan with over 99% voting yes in the referendum. | Some 99% of South Sudanese voted to secede from the north, according to the first complete results of the region's independence referendum.
A total of 99.57% of those polled voted for independence, according to the referendum commission.
Early counting had put the outcome of the ballot beyond doubt, indicating Southern Sudan had secured a mandate to become the world's newest nation.
The poll was agreed as part of a 2005 peace deal to end two decades of war.
Final results from the 9-15 January vote, which Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has said he will accept, are expected early next month.
If the result is confirmed, the new country is set to formally declare its independence on 9 July.
Hundreds of officials and diplomats gathered in Juba at the grave of rebel leader John Garang for the first official announcement of the results.
'The prayer of a country'
The revered South Sudanese leader died in a plane crash just days after signing the January 2005 peace agreement ending more than 20 years of conflict between the black Christian-dominated south and the mainly Arab Muslim north.
"The prayer I say the people of Southern Sudan have been waiting for for 55 years, the prayer of a country," Episcopalian Archbishop Daniel Deng said as he opened the ceremony.
"Bless the name of this land, Southern Sudan," he said. According to the commission website, 3,851,994 votes were cast during the week-long ballot.
Five of the 10 states in Sudan's oil-producing south showed a 99.9% vote for separation, the lowest vote was 95.5% in favour in the western state of Bahr al-Ghazal, bordering north Sudan, Reuters reports.
North and south Sudan have suffered decades of conflict driven by religious and ethnic divides.
Southern Sudan is one of the least developed areas in the world and many of its people have have long complained of mistreatment at the hands of the Khartoum government.
The BBC's James Copnall, in Khartoum, says independence for the South now seems inevitable.
Our correspondent adds that though the South Sudanese are celebrating that their dream of having their own country is a massive step closer there are still issues to resolved - including underdevelopment and inter-ethnic conflict. Tough negotiations remain on how to divide up economic resources between north and south - which has the bulk of oil, he adds. Southern Sudan Referendum Commission | Regime Change | January 2011 | ['(Reuters)', '(Al Jazeera)', '(The Guardian)', '(BBC)', '(Xinhua)'] |
Eight people are killed by a fire in a medical facility in Russia's eastern Altai region. | Eight people have been killed after fire swept through a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts in Russia's eastern Altai region, officials say.
Six people were injured in the Chisty List centre near the Krasilovo lake. The officials say the blaze caused the collapse of the roof of the building.
A criminal investigation into suspected safety rules violations in now under way. Similar tragedies in the past have raised questions over safety standards in Russia's medical centres.
Last September, 37 people died in a fire that engulfed a psychiatric hospital in the north-western Novgorod region.
Several months earlier, a blaze at another psychiatric hospital near Moscow killed 38 people.
In 2009, 23 people died at an old people's home in the north-west Komi region, while in 2007, 63 were killed at a home in Krasnodar, southern Russia.
In 2006, a fire at a Moscow drug rehabilitation clinic killed 45 women. . | Fire | April 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
A fire in a mosque in the Iranian capital of Tehran leaves 59 people dead. The cause of the fire is currently unknown, but it is believed that a kerosene heater was left near a thick flammable curtain. | Some 210 people were injured in the incident in the centre of the city, the head of Tehran's security forces said. The reports said the blaze broke out as worshippers gathered in the Ark mosque near Tehran's main bazaar. Relatives of the injured have been rushing from hospital to hospital trying to locate their loved ones. A TV appeal has been made for blood donors.
An investigation has been launched into the cause of the fire, which started as hundreds of people were attending evening prayers.
Initial reports have suggested the blaze could have been caused by a kerosene heater in the women section which ignited a woman's chador.
But state television said the cause was an electrical short circuit.
A tarpaulin cloth separating male and female sections of the mosque reportedly caught fire falling on top of the crowd, and the flames soon spread.
Terrified worshippers tried to escape the flames through the main exit, causing a stampede that led to many of the injuries.
"I saw some women throw themselves out of a second floor window - some died like that, others from smoke inhalation," said one of the guards at the mosque.
"My mother and two sisters were inside and I do not know what happened to them," a girl called Manizheh told the Reuters news agency.
She was among the many who flocked to the mosque to look for loved ones after the fire. The mosque is one of the oldest in the capital. It can accommodate up to 4,000 worshippers. | Fire | February 2005 | ['(BBC)'] |
Serena Williams defeats her sister Venus Williams 6-4, 6-4 to win the women's singles and an Open era-record 23rd Grand Slam singles title. | Serena Williams is the most prolific grand slam winner of the open era after claiming her 23rd major singles title with a 6-4, 6-4 victory against her sister Venus here in Melbourne on Saturday. The triumph also made Serena a seven-times winner of the Australian Open, while Venus had to be content with offering a reminder that her own greatness remains very much in the present tense.
Whatever the result of this finale a record was going to tumble. Venus – 36-years-old, nine years on from her most recent grand slam triumph and playing in her 73rd major tournament – stood a chance of becoming the oldest champion of the open era. The woman who remains the record-holder now? Well, Serena, of course.
This was the ninth time the sisters had met in a grand slam final. Eight years on from their last, it was also surely the least likely. The early stages showed inside knowledge counts for plenty. Serena broke in the first game by guessing correctly, or perhaps just outright intuiting, that her sister would go wide to her forehand with a smash at the net. Not only did Serena retrieve it, she sent a quite sensational winner fizzing past Venus.
That set a pattern – the first four games were all breaks. Throughout the tournament Serena’s weapons-grade first serve had been such a calling card she had not dropped a set, nor faced a tie‑break, but now she was getting a taste of her own medicine as Venus attacked with relish.
Venus held first, sitting dead still and staring fiercely ahead at the changeover. It had been a slightly odd opening 25 minutes. For many in the crowd there was a genuine unreality about it all. By the third game – at the insistence of an agitated Serena, who snapped a racket in frustration – they had to be reminded by the chair umpire to stay silent during points.
Once both players had finally held, Serena made her move, breaking in the seventh game of the first set and then holding with a looping forehand winner. She closed it out 6-4 in 41 minutes, and by then led for aces (7-4) and winners (16-11), and was dealing better with being worked around the court by her savvy and experienced opponent.
Early in the second set it stayed on serve, Serena holding with conviction. But she met with plenty of roadblocks she had not encountered in her marauding run through the rest of the draw. The third game was ample demonstration of everything remarkable about Venus’s run. She saved three break points before advancing to the net and clattering a forehand winner that ignited the stadium.
The seventh game proved decisive, containing the most gripping rally of the match, which Serena won, and also the first successful break of the second set, which Serena also claimed. She was on the path to victory, but Venus made her work until the end.
After one last rally for the ages, which Venus won to pile on the pressure at 15-30, Serena finally served out in 81 minutes, dropping to the ground and then embracing her sister in the middle of the court she had dominated so thoroughly all week.
There was a certain symmetry at play in all of this. It was here where the sisters first faced each other in a grand slam match, way back in 1998, when a win to Venus grabbed attention worldwide. This is also where they contested their only shared three-set grand slam final, in 2003. Serena got that one.
In the lead-up to this final Serena had been right about many things, not least that this was an amazing story no matter what the result. Venus was eight years on from her last appearance at a grand slam final, a time when she has battled her toughest opponent of all – Sjögren’s syndrome, an auto-immune disease that causes joint pain and fatigue.
It was also a long stretch of time when every second question she has faced has been “When will you retire? It must be close?” At turns politely, jokingly, mock-indignantly, Venus has always dispatched those inquiries like another double-handed backhand into open court, when what she might have said is that she is a prideful competitor and a champion and probably could not stand the lowered stakes and intensity‑free world of legends matches and exhibitions.
Like her sister, Venus Williams is unquestionably great, but we had wrongly assumed that her salad days were behind her. What she has proved in the past fortnight is that greatness is also about what happens in that lull when they write you off and tell you you are done – all those years when time and luck rob you of moments as big as this. Venus Williams has spent close to a decade in that lull, but to get here and do this has reminded us all that she, too, is one of the game’s great treasures. As Serena said of her sister: “I don’t like the word comeback. She never left.”
Likewise, Serena further confirmed her rare distinction: to be equally great in the time before and after turning 30 – an especially remarkable achievement in a sport that historically favours youth and renewal. Now she steps past Steffi Graf and into a spot in history all her own, where she belongs.
Both winner and loser were champions, their glory unquestioned. Venus had alluded to this possibility in the lead-up to this match. “People relate to the champion,” she said. “They also relate to the person also who didn’t win because we all have those moments in our life.”
But now, Serena Williams is Australian Open champion again, and her sister did indeed experience that difficult moment she had forewarned. Equally, the rest of us were reminded that when she is finally done with big-time tennis, Venus Williams will be the one to let us know. | Sports Competition | January 2017 | ['(The Guardian)'] |
Labour's Seema Malhotra wins the Feltham and Heston by–election. | Labour leader Ed Miliband says his party's victory in the Feltham and Heston by-election is "a verdict on the government's failed economic plan".
Winning candidate Seema Malhotra secured victory in the west London seat with an increased majority of 6,203 over the Tories, a swing of 8.6%.
The Lib Dems held on to third place with 1,364 votes, fighting off UK Independence Party challenge.
Turnout was just 28.8% - the lowest in a by-election for 11 years.
The previous lowest was in West Bromwich West in November 2000 at 27.6%. The by-election was prompted by the death last month of Labour MP Alan Keen.
Visiting the constituency with Ms Malhotra and Labour's London Mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone, Mr Miliband said: "This by-election offers a verdict on the government's failed economic plan.
"It's the verdict of young people in Feltham and Heston looking for a job. It's the verdict of people who are seeing their living standards squeezed. "It's a verdict that says we can't go on with the idea that there is no alternative. It's a verdict that says there is a better way forward."
He said Labour had more to do to win back voters whose trust was lost during its time in office, but the victory showed a swing "from Conservative ideas to Labour ideas".
Mr Miliband said it was "offensive" of the Conservatives to dismiss the result as inevitable.
Ms Malhotra grew up in Feltham, and went to school in Heston. She was an adviser to Harriet Harman during her stint as Leader of the Opposition in 2010.
Labour polled a total of 12,639 votes.
Conservative chairman Baroness Warsi said the result was "disappointing" for her party, although not unexpected.
But she said the very low turnout was "deeply worrying": "By-elections generally have low turnouts, [especially] by-elections at this time of year when it's cold and just before Christmas and people are thinking about other things. "But I am concerned about the level of political engagement. It can't be right that on 12,000 votes a constituency can be won."
The Conservatives' share of the vote was down from 33% to 28%, while the Lib Dems dropped from 14% to less than 6%.
UKIP saw its share more than double from 2% to more than 5% - polling 1,276 votes - but it was unable to take third place from the Lib Dems.
The party - which campaigns for the UK to leave the European Union - said its chances had been damaged by Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to veto an EU-wide treaty at last week Brussels summit, which it believes gave the Tories a boost in the final week of the campaign.
Deputy Lib Dem leader Simon Hughes said the result was as expected. "What happened here was what normally happens in a by-election. People protest against the government, so government parties take a hit [and] the opposition normally moves forward."
He said his party was "fighting a particularly difficult corner" because it was pro-European in a country "where the majority of people still like to see us, as it were, having a go at our European neighbours".
UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the Lib Dems were "almost a busted flush".
Feltham and Heston was won by the Conservatives in 1983 and 1987 during Margaret Thatcher's premiership.
At the last general election Labour's majority in the seat, located to the west of London, was cut to 4,658 in a 4.8% swing to the Conservatives.
All the three main party leaders visited the constituency during campaigning for what is the sixth by-election during this Parliament. | Government Job change - Election | December 2011 | ['(BBC)'] |
About 250 protesters gather at the main entrance to Iraq's giant Zubair oilfield. | BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi police wielded batons and rubber hoses to disperse about 250 protesters gathered at the main entrance to the Zubair oilfield near Basra on Tuesday as unrest across southern cities over poor basic services gathered pace.
Since demonstrations began nine days ago, protesters have attacked government buildings, branches of political parties and powerful Shi’ite militias and stormed the international airport in the holy city of Najaf.
Tensions focused attention on the performance of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is seeking a second term after May 12 parliamentary elections tainted by allegations of fraud that prompted a recount.
In his weekly news conference on Tuesday, Abadi promised to work with protesters to fight corruption and said the government would improve services.
Officials and industry sources said the protests have not affected output at Zubair, run by Italy’s Eni, and the other major oilfields including Rumaila developed by BP and West Qurna 2 managed by Lukoil.
Many Iraqis believe their leaders do not share the country’s oil wealth. Some demonstrators said foreign laborers were robbing them of employment at oil companies.
Three protesters have been killed in clashes with police, including one at West Qurna 2, and dozens wounded. Dozens of policemen were also injured.
“We the people of Basra hear about the Iraqi oil and its huge revenues, but we never enjoy its benefits,” said 24-year-old protester Esam Jabbar.
“Strangers have decent jobs at our oilfields and we don’t have the money to pay for a cigarette. That’s wrong and must be stopped.” Jabbar said he was unemployed.
At the gate of Zubair field, police beat protesters on their backs and legs with batons and rubber hoses, witnesses said.
Blood ran down one policeman’s face after protesters hurled stones. Policemen also threw sand to put out tyres that the protesters had set ablaze.
Iraq is the second-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries after Saudi Arabia.
Crude exports account for 95 percent of state revenue and any disruptions could badly damage its already limping economy at a time when Iraq needs tens of billions of dollars to rebuild after the three-year war with Islamic State.
Prolonged instability in the south could drive up global oil prices. Production at the Zubair field was 475,000 bpd, an Iraqi oil official said in May.
Iraq exported an average of 3.566 million barrels per day from its southern oilfields so far in July, said senior oil officials, levels confirming that the troubles have not disrupted crude shipments from the region.
Demonstrators, who have endured sweltering heat to press their demands, show no sign of letting up. They have vented anger in Basra, the biggest city in the south, Samawa, Amara, Nassiriya, Najaf, Kerbala and Hilla.
“We will not allow anyone to tamper with security and order by encroaching on public, private and government institutions and also economic institutions,” military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told a news conference.
Politicians are struggling to form a coalition government. Populist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose political bloc won the majority in the poll, may now be in a stronger position to influence the choice of prime minister.
He defeated Iranian-backed rivals by promising to generate jobs, help the poor and eradicate corruption.
The Shi’ite heartland south has long been neglected despite its oil wealth, first by Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and then Shi’ite-led governments after him, including Abadi’s.
Fetid piles of garbage can be seen on many Basra streets. Stagnant water with sewage has caused health problems and tap water is sometime contaminated with mud and dust. Electricity is cut off for seven hours a day.
Murtadha Rahman, 22, ran barefoot on the scorching pavement to try and escape a charge by police outside the Zubair field.
“I live in a place which is rich with oil that brings billions of dollars while I work in collecting garbage to desperately feed my two kids. I want a simple job, that’s my only demand,” said Rahman, who said he was beaten by police.
“I won’t go even if you kill me I will stay her. I want a job.”
| Protest_Online Condemnation | July 2018 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Thousands rally in Kathmandu and other cities against the six–day shut down of public transport, businesses and schools across Nepal by millions of the country's poor. | A section of the people at the peace assembly held in Kathmandu against the Maoists' strike.
Asking the UCPN (Maoist) to forge consensus among political parties and withdraw the indefinite strike, a massive peace assembly was held in Kathmandu on Friday.
In a late development, the Maoists withdrew the indefinite general strike they called on Sunday. The withdrawal comes after the party faced immense pressure from all sectors.
Earlier, speakers at the peace assembly, attended by thousands of people, said they did not elect leaders to trouble the citizens, but to respect their feelings. The speakers asked political parties to come to an agreement in two days' time and ease the situation. The assembly was attended by doctors, engineers, celebrities, lawyers, teachers, students, engineers, journalists and the common people. Most people were dressed in white, carried the national flag and held placards with messages like “stop the bandh” and “we want peace.”
However, as the strike entered the sixth day, senior Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai said his party would rather change the nature of the protest now than withdraw it. On the other hand, the major coalition partner of the CPN (UML)-led government maintained that there can be no change in the government through the pressure created by the Maoists. | Protest_Online Condemnation | May 2010 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(The Hindu)', '(The New York Times)'] |
Italian author and philosopher Umberto Eco dies at the age of 84. | The Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose, has died aged 84.
According to a family member who asked not to be identified, he died late on Friday from cancer. The Name of the Rose was made into a film in 1986 starring Scottish actor Sean Connery.
Eco, who also wrote the novel Foucault's Pendulum, continued to publish new works, with Numero Zero released last year.
He also wrote children's books and literary criticism. Eco once wrote that "books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told".
"I am a philosopher," he was quoted as saying. "I write novels only on the weekends."
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi led tributes to Eco.
"He was an extraordinary example of a European intellectual," Mr Renzi said. "He embodied both the unique intelligence of the past and a tireless capacity for anticipating the future."
Listen to Umberto Eco on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs
Umberto Eco on the launch of his last novel
Eco founded the communications department at the University of San Marino in the 1980s. He was later professor emeritus and chairman of the Higher School of Humanities of the University of Bologna.
Eco was born in Alessandria, northern Italy, in 1932.
Eco shortlisted for fiction prize
Umberto Eco on his last novel
Hardliner Raisi set to be new Iran president
Cleric Ebrahim Raisi - Iran's top judge - has received most of the votes counted so far.
| Famous Person - Death | February 2016 | ['(BBC)'] |
Arizona defeats South Carolina to win its first College World Series title since 1986 and fourth overall. Arizona outfielder Robert Refsnyder is named the Most Outstanding Player. | How the game was won: Dixon, a sophomore who entered for Joseph Maggi as a defensive replacement in the sixth inning, lined a 1-1 pitch from South Carolina closer Matt Price just inside third base to the left-field corner to score Robert Refsnyder from second base. Refsnyder had singled off Price, the career CWS leader with five victories, to open the ninth. Refsnyder moved into scoring position on Seth Mejias-Brean's sacrifice before the clutch hit from Dixon. Trent Gilbert then delivered a two-out single to right field to score Bobby Brown and Dixon. Turning point: The Gamecocks stole momentum from Arizona in the bottom of the seventh inning, tying the game at 1 on Kyle Martin's RBI groundout to score Christian Walker. Two defensive lapses from the Wildcats aided South Carolina's lone run. Farris then hit Grayson Greiner to open the eighth. After a fielder's choice grounder, Chase Vergason stole second and took third base on a throwing error by catcher Riley Moore. Carolina looked ready to pounce, knocking Farris from the game. But Troupe got a called third strike on a full-count pitch to Joey Pankake. It ended the Gamecocks' threat and returned the edge to Arizona, setting the stage for its big top of the ninth.
Star player: Arizona used a simple formula of superb starting pitching to roll through an undefeated postseason. Farris kept up his end of the deal Monday. The sophomore from Gilbert, Ariz., struck out four and held the Gamecocks hitless until LB Dantzler's two-out single in the fourth inning. No Gamecock reached second base until the seventh. Even then, with Walker at third with one out, Farris got a bouncer from Martin to Dixon at first base. Dixon likely could have nailed Walker at the plate but looked toward second base, then took the sure out at first. Farris escaped the inning and kept the score tied by getting Tanner English on a fly ball to center field. NCAA Men Baseball
ESPN.com's writers and columnists will post news and notes on the road to Omaha and at the College World Series in this blog. Check back frequently for updates.
Jeremy Mills joined ESPN in September 2006 as a member of the Stats & Information team. During the day, he ensures that the scores and statistics reported by ESPN are correct; at night, he scours the world of college baseball for interesting and/or obscure happenings.
Mills' love of college baseball started while attending Rice University (honestly, what other sport was there to follow?). Before joining ESPN, he created a college baseball website to provide scores and standings for all Division I teams. | Sports Competition | June 2012 | ['(ESPN)'] |
The Supreme Court of the United States agrees to decide whether federal courts have the power to order prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay to be released into the country. | WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to decide whether federal courts have the power to order prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay to be released into the United States.
The court’s decision to hear the case adds a further complication to the Obama administration’s efforts to close the prison at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. A measure in Congress that would allow detainees to be admitted to the United States just to face trial had to overcome strong resistance before winning final passage on Tuesday. The administration has met with only fitful success in persuading foreign allies to accept prisoners cleared for release. | Government Policy Changes | October 2009 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
New laws come into effect in the state of Texas that allow for less restrictions on the carrying of guns in "schools, places of worship, foster homes where children live and apartments". | Follow NBC News As a community is still in shock over the 7 dead and 22 injured in Saturday's mass shooting in west Texas, new laws go into effect Sunday in the Lone Star State that loosen gun restrictions — drawing the outrage of gun control advocates.
The new laws, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in June, will make it easier for Texans to have guns in schools, places of worship, foster homes where children live and apartments.
That the new laws go into effect less than 24 hours after at least seven people died in the Odessa and Midland, Texas, shooting on Saturday — and more than 20 people died in the El Paso shooting earlier this month — is not lost on those fighting to tighten the nation’s gun control laws.
“Four of the deadliest mass shootings in the last decade have taken place in Texas,” Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, a national group working to end gun violence, told NBC News. “Instead of following other states' lead and passing life-saving legislation, like background checks and strong red flag laws, Texas’ governor and legislature have made even more lax gun laws,” she said.
Watts believes politicians like Abbott are allowing the gun lobbyists — like the NRA, which praised Abbott for signing the bills — to write his state’s gun laws, to the detriment of Texans.
“If more guns and fewer gun laws made us safer, we would be the safest country in the world, and Texas would be the safest state in the country,” Watts said, but that’s not the case.
Julián Castro, the Democratic presidential candidate, former United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and a Texan, echoed that sentiment in an interview with MSNBC on Sunday.
“These laws are a mistake,” Castro said on "AM Joy," adding that if this past August has proven anything, it’s that more guns aren’t the answer. “The idea that a good guy with a gun is gonna stop a bad guy with a gun, it doesn’t work that way.”
David Chipman, senior policy advisor for Giffords, the gun violence prevention organization led by former congresswoman victim of gun violence, Gabby Giffords, told NBC News that the “good guy with a gun” Castro mentioned is simply a myth.
“The problem with the ‘good guy with a gun’ myth is that the bad guy always shoots first,” Chipman said. And with the type of weapons available to civilians, Chipman noted, people can do significant damage within a matter of seconds.
Chipman pointed to the recent shooting in Dayton, Ohio, where 10 people died and more than two dozen were injured. Police were able to shoot and kill the gunman just about 30 seconds after he started firing, but that didn’t stop him from taking innocent lives.
Removing restrictions on guns, Chipman said, just feeds the myth that more guns will help. “From my perspective, I don't see how the gun laws passed in Texas are going to do anything to prevent attacks like we saw yesterday.”
In a press conference Sunday, Gov. Abbott insisted the new laws will protect Texans, pointing to the law which allows more school marshals to have guns in schools. “Some of these laws were enacted for the purpose of making our communities safer,” Abbott said.
The governor, whose office did not return NBC News’ request for additional comment, said in the press conference he has been working daily in the wake of the El Paso shooting to provide “new and different solutions” that will “deescalate” gun violence in the state.
But advocates aren’t buying the less-control-is-more approach. Watts said there is a “body count” attached to politicians' inaction to enact gun control measures that the majority of the country support, like stricter background checks and red flag laws. For those working to pass gun control legislation, these new laws come as a slap in the face.
“Yesterday Greg Abbott put out some happy words on what we need to do to make sure we are safer, but the laws he signed actually make our families in Texas less safe,” Castro said. “It’s time to do something.” | Government Policy Changes | September 2019 | ['(NBC News)'] |
A Dutch court finds Trafigura guilty of illegally dumping toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire in 2006. | A Dutch court has found multinational Trafigura guilty of illegally exporting toxic waste from Amsterdam and concealing the nature of the cargo.
In 2006, Trafigura transported waste alleged to have been involved in the injury of thousands of people in Ivory Coast. Trafigura denied any wrongdoing.
It expressed disappointment in the ruling and is considering an appeal.
The firm was fined 1m euros (£836,894) for its ship, the Probo Koala, transiting Amsterdam with its cargo.
The ship then went on to unload its cargo in Ivory Coast.
Trafigura employee Naeem Ahmed, who was involved in the ship's operation in Amsterdam, was fined 25,000 euros and the captain of the Probo Koala, 46-year-old Sergiy Chertov, was sentenced to a five-year suspended jail term.
This is the first time Trafigura has faced criminal charges since the toxic waste scandal unfolded in Ivory Coast's commercial capital, Abidjan, in 2006.
Trafigura, an oil trading company, initially tried to clean up low-grade oil by tipping caustic soda into the hold of the Probo Koala. The company tried to unload the waste in Amsterdam for treatment, declaring it as "harmless slops".
When the treatment company came back with a higher price for cleaning the waste, the cargo was shipped to Africa where it ended up in Abidjan to be handled at a much lower rate.
Presiding Judge Frans Bauduin said: "Trafigura - which by that time knew of the exact composition [of the waste] - should never have agreed to its processing at such a price."
Trafigura said it was pleased to have been acquitted of the charge of forgery, but was "disappointed by the judges' ruling on the other two, which it believes to be incorrect".
A statement from Trafigura said: "Concerning the delivery of dangerous goods, it is important that the court has noted that there was limited risk to human health from these slops, and indeed no damage occurred in Amsterdam."
Trafigura said it was considering an appeal.
A lawyer representing the company, Robert de Bree, said: "I think it's important to notice that the convictions relate to highly technical, complex legal matters and we will carefully study the judgement to look at the possibility of an appeal."
Another Trafigura lawyer, Michael Wladimiroff, was quoted by Associated Press news agency as saying the company believed the Marine Pollution Treaty applied and that the court had incorrectly applied the terms of another waste management treaty.
The firm also maintained that Mr Ahmed "did nothing wrong".
Greenpeace, which brought this case, has welcomed the outcome, saying it was a warning to firms not to export waste to developing countries.
Greenpeace toxics campaigner, Marietta Harjono, said that further legal action should be taken against Trafigura: "We must also be very clear that justice is not complete yet, because this is only the beginning, because Trafigura has not been brought to trial yet for the deliberate dumping of toxic waste in Africa."
One of those who fell ill after waste was dumped, Ivorian Guy Oulla, told the BBC: "I believe it is a very good decision because people should pay for what they do, you know. So, I agree with that decision. You know, we live in Africa and it could happen again because in Africa people do everything for money."
In 2008, a court in Ivory Coast found two non-Trafigura employees guilty of illegally dumping the waste.
A Nigerian national named Salomon Ugborugbo was sentenced to 20 years in jail. He was the head of an Abidjan firm, Tommy, which Trafigura said it contracted in good faith to handle the waste from the Probo Koala.
Essoin Kouao, who worked as a shipping agent at the Port of Abidjan and had recommended Tommy to Trafigura, received a five-year prison term. In 2007 Trafigura paid $160m (£104m) to the government of Ivory Coast without admitting liability.
Trafigura also paid $50m (£32m) in an out-of-court settlement to individuals in Ivory Coast who said they had been injured when the waste was spread on dumps around Abidjan.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | July 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(The Guardian)'] |
Rozi Khan, the Governor of the Chora District in Afghanistan, is killed in a firefight involving Australian Army soldiers. | The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has confirmed that a district governor was killed in a firefight involving Australian soldiers in Afghanistan yesterday.
The ADF says Chora District Governor and tribal leader Rozi Khan was among those killed in the incident, which involved Australian Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) soldiers.
"It is not possible at this time to determine that he was killed by ADF fire," the ADF said in a statement.
"Initial ADF reporting indicates that the Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) patrol was moving on foot towards a subsequent activity when they were fired on from a number of locations by unknown attackers. The SOTG patrol returned fire in self-defence," the statement added.
"No ADF personnel were wounded, however initial reporting indicates that a number of local nationals were killed or wounded in the exchange of fire.
"The identity of these additional personnel will be determined as part of the investigations that are now underway."
Earlier the Defence Department said Australian soldiers may have shot and killed Afghan policemen after being fired upon.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office said Mr Khan, an ally of Mr Karzai, had been killed in a "misunderstanding" involving "foreign troops" and Afghan security forces.
The ADF says it will not release additional information on the incident until ADF and International Security Assistance Force/Afghan Government investigations are complete.
Speaking earlier today, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the details of the incident were still not confirmed.
"My advice is that the International Security Assistance Force and the Government of Afghanistan are currently are involved in an investigation of this incident," he said.
"The facts are unclear at this stage according to my advice.
"As soon as they become clear then we'll have something further to say."
We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
| Armed Conflict | September 2008 | ['(ABC News Australia)'] |
Hurricane Dorian spawns several tornadoes in the Carolinas and causes power outages to 230,000 people in South Carolina. | In Wilmington, North Carolina, several tornado warnings popped up over the area Thursday morning. "Radar shows nasty mini-supercells in the outer band of #Hurricane #Dorian with tornado warnings all over the place - please take quick action if you get a warning as these storms mean business!" said National Hurricane Center specialist Eric Blake on his personal Twitter account.
Radar shows nasty mini-supercells in the outer band of #Hurricane #Dorian with tornado warnings all over the place - please take quick action if you get a warning as these storms mean business!
Soon there were reports of multiple tornadoes in the area touching down.
Hurricane #Dorian is still about 70 miles off the coast of South Carolina... But multiple tornadoes have already reportedly touched down around Myrtle Beach and Wilmington, NC. We're tracking the latest on this and what you can expect at home now on @WTVA9News.
The National Weather Service station in Wilmington shared a video of what it said was a tornado.
Video of a tornado passing near Pender County Fire Station 18 along Highway 17 near Sidbury Rd. Video courtesty of Station 18. Time was around 6:55-7:00 AM EDT Thursday Sept 5, 2019
All this was happening even as the center of Dorian was roughly 70 miles south-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and roughly 160 miles south-southwest of the city of Wilmington as of 8 a.m.
A waterspout off Emerald Isle. This was around 9 AM, Bogue Inlet Pier courtesy @surfline #dorian Please seen an interior room if you are under a Tornado WARNING along the Crystal Coast!
Nearly 200,000 power outages have been reported across South Carolina and there have been reports of flooding in the streets of Charleston. Dorian regained some strength Wednesday and returned to Category 3 status late in the day. Landfall somewhere over the Carolinas remains a possibility this week as the storm heads north and hugs the East Coast.
Heavy rain, strong winds, and dangerous storm surge remain possibilities in the forecast not just on the coast from Florida to southern Virginia, where states of emergency have been declared and mandatory evacuations have been issued, but also in some areas farther inland.
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This space is for readers to share their opinions with us. It's reserved for our magazine subscribers, but everyone will be able to read the comments. We're not going to edit what people say, but we hope everyone who joins the conversation will engage others in respectful language even when they disagree strongly. And obviously many opinions here will be ones we disagree with —— that's what debate is all about! Please choose a reason below: | Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | September 2019 | ['(Charlotte Observer)', '(Washington Examiner)'] |
Gunmen shoot dead five police officers near Giza. | Gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a security vehicle Friday killing five policemen just a short distance from some of Egypt's oldest pyramids in Giza, officials said.
The shooting in the early hours of the morning took place in the village of Abusir in Badrashin, part of Greater Cairo, and the slain policemen were part of the force tasked to guard the district of Saqqara, one of Egypt's most popular tourist sites and host to a collection of temples, tombs and funerary complexes.
Authorities cordoned off the area and ambulances rushed to the site of the attack, which is located near the famous Step Pyramid of King Djoser. It is the oldest of Egypt's more than 90 pyramids and the forerunner of the more familiar straight-sided pyramids in Giza on the outskirts of Cairo.
Attackers stole the weapons and radios of the victims and tried to set fire to the bodies but fled upon seeing people gathering nearby, witnesses said.
The Interior Ministry said that the militants sprayed the policemen's vehicle with bullets from machine guns as the security force was on the move to patrol the surroundings. They fled after one policeman returned gunfire, the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier, officials said that the attackers were masked and that they targeted a checkpoint.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The attack comes a week after Islamic militants killed 23 army personnel in Sinai Peninsula. Egypt has been under a state of emergency since April after suicide bombers struck two churches north of Cairo, killing scores of Christians.
Insurgents have carried out a number of attacks in Egypt since the 2013 military ouster of an elected Islamist president. The violence has been concentrated in the northern Sinai Peninsula, but attacks spread in the mainland, including in the capital where suicide bombers have struck churches and security headquarters.
The Islamic State group affiliate has claimed responsibility for major attacks. However, a shadowy group called Hasm, or "Decisiveness," which the government suspects is linked to the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, has claimed responsibility for similar drive-by shootings and attacks targeting police, military, judges and pro-government figures.
The brotherhood won a series of elections in Egypt following the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, and Mohammed Morsi, a senior Brotherhood leader, became Egypt's first freely elected president the following year. His brief rule proved divisive, and the military overthrew him in 2013. Authorities outlawed the Brotherhood a few months later, declaring it a terrorist group.
Last Friday, IS claimed responsibility for a stunning attack on a remote Egyptian army outpost in the Sinai Peninsula with a suicide car bomb and heavy machine gun fire Friday, killing at least 23 soldiers. It was the deadliest attack in the turbulent region in two years. On the same day, Hasm claimed responsibility for shooting and killing a policeman as he was heading for Friday prayers.
Over the past days, the government announced killings of members of Hasm in alleged shootouts with security forces. In previous incidents, families of the slain suspects challenged authorities' accounts and accuse them of illegal detentions, torture, and executions of their beloved ones. Last week, Hasm accused authorities of killing its detained members and vowed to continue its attacks on security forces.
While Hasm distances itself from attacking Egypt's Christians, the IS affiliate has concentrated its campaign on Coptic Christians, calling them the group's "favorite prey" and over the past months, suicide bombers struck three churches and a bus carrying Coptic Christians killing more than 100 people. Egypt's Christians account for about 10 percent of the country's 93 million people and extremists use Christians' support for the military ouster of Morsi as a justification for attacks.
The attacks prompted the Egyptian churches to suspend religious festivals and group tours for the remainder after authorities warned them about possible attacks by Islamic militants. Troops backed by armored vehicles and snipers would be deployed outside monasteries hosting major religious festivals in coming weeks. At least two of these festivals will take place in Assiut, home to a sizeable Christian community. In addition to the major suicide bombings, militants have forced displacement of scores of Christian families in northern Sinai after a spate of shootings. | Riot | July 2017 | ['(ABC News)'] |
Black smoke rises from the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, signalling that Roman Catholic Cardinals had not elected a new pope in the first vote of their secret conclave. | Vatican City - Black smoke rose from the Vatican's Sistine Chapel on Tuesday, signalling that Roman Catholic cardinals had not elected a new pope in the first vote of their secret conclave.
The black smoke was seen by thousands of faithful in St Peter's Square and means the 115 cardinals will hold a new round of voting on Wednesday morning. They will remain sequestered behind the Vatican's medieval walls until they elect a successor to Pope Emeritus Benedict, who abdicated last month.
When the cardinals agree on a pontiff, white smoke will rise from the makeshift chimney on the chapel roof and the bells of St Peter's basilica will peal. The Vatican
uses a mixture of potassium perchlorate, anthracene and sulphur to produce
black smoke. For white smoke, potassium
chlorate, lactose and rosin is used.
| Government Job change - Election | March 2013 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters via News24)'] |
Several avalanches in Gorno–Badakhshan, Tajikistan, caused by heavy snowfall over the weekend, leave at least seven people dead. | Avalanches triggered by warm weather following heavy snowfall have killed at least seven people in Tajikistan's mountainous south.
A spokeswoman for Tajikistan's Emergencies Committee, Umeda Yusufova, told RFE/RL on January 30 that the death toll may rise as rescue teams continue working on the Dushanbe-Khujand highway and in the Gorno-Badakhshan region, where more than 40 major avalanches were registered over the weekend.
Officials said some 500 people stranded in their cars after avalanches blocked the highway were rescued on January 28.
Mountains cover 93 percent of the Central Asian nation, and avalanches and mudslides kill dozens of people every year.
| Hurricanes_Tornado_Storm_Blizzard | January 2017 | ['(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)'] |
Brazilian police detain fugitive Italian former left-wing guerrilla and convicted murderer Cesare Battisti, as he was attempting to flee across the border into Bolivia to avoid extradition back to Italy and facing his life sentence prison term for four murders in the 1970s. | BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian highway police on Wednesday detained Cesare Battisti, an Italian former left-wing guerrilla convicted of murder in his country, as he was attempting to cross the border into Bolivia in a taxi, federal police said.
Battisti was apparently trying to leave Brazil after Italy reportedly asked Brazil’s government to revoke his asylum status and extradite him to serve his prison sentence.
He was stopped by highway police as he was about to cross the border in a Bolivian taxi and was held for possession of a “significant” quantity of undeclared foreign currency, the federal police said in a statement.
Battisti faced life in prison in Italy, where he was convicted of four murders committed in the 1970s, when he belonged to a guerilla group called Armed Proletarians for Communism. He escaped from prison in 1981 and lived in France before fleeing to Brazil to avoid being extradited to Italy.
Battisti’s lawyer, Igor Sant’Anna, told Reuters that he had sought a habeas corpus injunction last week due to the risk that President Michel Temer’s government could agree to Italy’s request. Habeas corpus is a legal procedure that keeps a government from holding a person without showing cause.
The police statement said he was being held for breaking currency rules.
O Globo newspaper reported last week that Italy had asked the Temer government to review the status of Battisti, who was granted refugee status by former leftist President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva on his last day in office in 2010.
Lula had refused an Italian extradition request, a decision that upset relations between the two countries.
Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Susan Thomas and Sandra Maler
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | October 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Golden State Warriors shooting guard Klay Thompson sets a National Basketball Association record for most points in a single quarter with 37. He also sets a league record for most three–pointers in a quarter, with nine. | Klay Thompson set an NBA record for points in a quarter by scoring 37 points in the third quarter during Golden State's 126-101 home victory over Sacramento on Friday.
The previous mark of 33 points was shared by two renowned scorers: George Gervin and Carmelo Anthony. Gervin set his mark in the second quarter of an April 9, 1978 game between the Spurs and the New Orleans Jazz. Anthony's outburst came in the third quarter of a Dec. 10, 2008 game between the Nuggets and Timberwolves.
[youtube:http://youtu.be/jlQHEusnH60]
There's hot, there's scorching and there's whatever you want to call Thompson. The sharp-shooting two guard shot a perfect 13-for-13 from the field, 9-for-9 from beyond the arc, and 2-for-2 from the free-throw line during his record-setting period. | Break historical records | January 2015 | ['(Sports Illustrated)'] |
The head of Guinea's junta Moussa Dadis Camara and interim leader General Sékouba Konaté hold emergency talks with Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaoré. | Burkina Faso's president has held emergency talks with Guinea's injured junta leader Capt Moussa Dadis Camara and his deputy Sekouba Konate.
The discussions, held behind closed doors, were about the future role of Capt Camara following a failed assassination attempt last month. He arrived in Burkina Faso on Tuesday from Morocco, where he was being treated for a bullet wound. The opposition say they want Capt Camara out of politics for a while. Gen Konate, who has been in charge for the last six weeks while the coup leader was receiving medical treatment in Rabat, has already opened talks with the opposition. BBC West Africa correspondent Caspar Leighton says he has made it clear that he wants to steer Guinea towards elections and has said the junta will accept an opposition prime minister. Ba Ouri, deputy leader of the United Democratic Forces, told the BBC that "agitators" in Capt Camara's entourage were trying to use him to pursue their own interests. Burkina Faso officials have said Capt Camara will recuperate in Ouagadougou, but did not explain why he has not returned to Guinea. The country has been in turmoil since Capt Camara's December 2008 coup and international condemnation followed a crackdown by the security forces on pro-democracy protesters at a rally in September. A recent UN report on the stadium massacre held Capt Camara responsible for the brutal suppression. Rights groups say more than 150 people were killed when the military opened fire on protesters in Conakry on 28 September. When Capt Camara led the coup hours after the death of long-time ruler Lansana Conte, he initially promised to guide the country back to civilian rule. But he soon dropped hints that he would stand for president himself, which led to September's pro-democracy rally. | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | January 2010 | ['(AFP)', '(BBC)'] |
President-elect Donald Trump names retired United States Marine Corps general James Mattis as United States Secretary of Defense. | WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has selected James Mattis, a legendary, tough-talking retired Marine Corps general who favors a robust military and criticized the Obama administration's approach to war, to lead the Defense Department.
Trump joked about the announcement at a rally Thursday night in Cincinnati.
"We are going to appoint 'Mad Dog' Mattis as our Secretary of Defense," Trump said. "But we're not announcing it 'til Monday, so don't tell anybody."
Mattis retired in 2013 after leading the military’s Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East and Africa. He will require a waiver from Congress to become Defense secretary because the law prohibits veterans who have been retired for fewer than seven years from taking the job. That is expected to be a formality, given support for him from many in Congress, including Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., the influential chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Mattis made headlines at a series of prominent commands with blunt talk that appealed to troops and left no doubt about his approach to war. After leading troops in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, he told an audience in San Diego in 2005 that he relished fighting.
Mattis appointment as Defense secretary would signal wartime posture
"Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot," Mattis said. "It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling. You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."
Those remarks earned him a rebuke from his superiors but didn’t stop his ascent to the military’s most prestigious and taxing posts. Known as the “Warrior Monk,” Mattis also cultivates a bookish reputation.
Mattis is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and has continued to speak out about military policy in retirement. In 2014, he criticized the Obama administration’s plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2016, a stand that it has abandoned in favor of leaving about 10,000 troops there to train local forces and fight terrorists.
Deadlines for withdraw, Mattis said then, simply embolden American enemies.
Mattis, Marines balked on lifesaving MRAP vehicles
“We want to crush the enemy’s hope to win through violence,” Mattis said. “Yet we have now given the enemy hope that if they hang on until our announced withdrawal date they can perhaps come back.”
Mattis’ views may mesh with Trump’s calls to beef up the military and more aggressively prosecute the war against Islamic State terrorists.
As Defense secretary, Mattis will inherit the ongoing air war in Iraq and Syria, as well as the thousands of U.S. troops on the ground there who training local forces and elite commandos who are targeting leaders of the terrorist organization, also known as ISIL. The war against Taliban insurgents and al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Afghanistan will grind on as well.
He’ll be responsible for more than 1 million active-duty troops and a budget of more than $600 billion annually.
Also on his plate: the increasingly aggressive Russian military, which has seized Crimea from Ukraine and regularly harasses U.S. ships and warplanes operating in international waters and airspace in Europe; and China’s mounting ambitions in the South China Sea where it has built artificial islands and fortified them with landing strips and troops.
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in New York Thursday, and met with Michael Flynn, Trump's choice to be national security adviser. Gates' top priority at the Pentagon, while the wars raged in Iraq and Afghanistan, was the fielding of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to protect troops from roadside bombs.
| Government Job change - Appoint_Inauguration | December 2016 | ['(USA Today)'] |
American actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto meet to discuss the protection of the Vaquita porpoise. , |
For two decades, the vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise, has been on the verge of disappearing from Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, its only habitat.
The Mexican government has attempted to protect the animal, but its policies have utterly failed due to incompetence: the vaquita’s numbers have continued to dwindle in recent years, and are now down to 30. Authorities have so far been unable—or unwilling—to enforce rules barring practices that endanger the vaquita, and mismanaged programs designed to prevent those practices.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio is now trying to come to the vaquita’s rescue. Last month he started publicly pressing the Mexican government to do more to save the round-faced porpoise, whose name means “little cow” in Spanish. Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto immediately responded to him via Twitter, and on June 7 signed an agreement with DiCaprio’s foundation and that of Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim to launch a major last-ditch effort to save the vaquita.
| Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | June 2017 | ['(The Daily Mail)', '(Quartz)'] |
An Italian rescue helicopter, carrying an injured skier from Gran Sasso d'Italia, crashes amid thick fog, killing six people. | Six people have been killed in a rescue helicopter crash in a mountainous area of central Italy, officials say.
The aircraft came down in thick fog near the Campo Felice ski station after picking up an injured skier.
The rescue was not related to last week's avalanche that engulfed a hotel nearby, killing at least 15 people.
Rescue teams reached the wreckage "and they found the bodies of the six deceased in the snow", a police spokesman told the AFP news agency.
The helicopter was taking the injured skier to hospital in L'Aquila, the capital of Abruzzo province.
Some witnesses reported hearing a loud explosion before it crashed.
Gianluca Marrocchi, mayor of the nearby town of Lucoli, said he saw the helicopter flying very low. "After that it disappeared in the fog," he told RAI state TV.
Campo Felice is a small skiing resort popular with day-trippers from Rome, which is 120km (75 miles) to the west.
It is on the other side of Italy's 3,000m Gran Sasso mountain range from the four-star Hotel Rigopiano, which was engulfed by an avalanche on 18 January triggered by a series of earthquakes. Fourteen people remain unaccounted for there.
| Air crash | January 2017 | ['(BBC)'] |
President of the United States Barack Obama awards a Medal of Honor posthumously to Robert James Miller of the US Army Green Berets for "conspicuous gallantry ... at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty" while fighting in the War in Afghanistan on January 25, 2008. | Oviedo, Florida (CNN) -- President Barack Obama on Wednesday awarded the Medal of Honor -- the nation's highest military decoration -- to Staff Sgt. Robert J. Miller, a Green Beret who died after willingly taking fire to protect U.S. and Afghan soldiers.
The citation read at a solemn White House ceremony in Washington, D.C., honored Miller for "conspicuous gallantry ... at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty" and "extraordinary acts of heroism" on January 25, 2008, when a patrol he led was ambushed in Afghanistan.
Miller killed at least 10 insurgents and wounded dozens more in repeatedly exposing himself to enemy fire "in keeping with the highest traditions of military service," the citation said.
Miller is the seventh service member to receive the Medal of Honor for actions during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama gave a detailed account of the combat in which Miller was killed, describing how the small group of U.S. and Afghan soldiers came under fire in a narrow valley from protected enemy positions above.
Realizing the peril of the situation, Miller ordered his team to fall back, but then "did something extraordinary," Obama said.
"Rob moved the other way, toward the insurgents," to draw their fire so his team could back off safely, the president said. The others could hear Miller firing and calling out enemy positions amid overwhelming enemy fire, Obama said. "Then over the radio, they heard his voice," Obama continued. "He had been hit. But still he kept calling out enemy positions, still he kept firing, still he kept hurling grenades. Then they heard it. Rob's weapon fell silent."
Five members of his team were wounded, Obama said, but all survived. He quoted one of the survivors as saying, "I would not be alive today if not for his ultimate sacrifice."
Some of the dozen team members at the ceremony were red-eyed when Obama asked them to stand, and the president cited them and all U.S. fighting forces in Afghanistan for their commitment to the mission of preventing the country from again becoming a haven for terrorists to launch attacks on the United States.
"Every American is safer because of their service, and every American has a duty to remember and honor their sacrifice," Obama said.
Miller's parents, Maureen and Philip Miller, stood onstage with Obama as the citation was read. They earlier told how they take consolation that their son gave his life so others could live.
"If it wasn't for Robert's actions, they could have easily been killed," Maureen Miller said.
Miller's father added: "We have a sense of awe and amazement of what he did and a feeling of pride."
Sgt. James Lodyga, Miller's commander in Afghanistan, described the battle in the village of Barikowt, near the Pakistani border, as being like "fish in a barrel."
"Enemy on right, on the left. Robby immediately started firing," Lodyga said.
An Army commendation noted the young man's character.
"Only 24 years old, Miller impressed everyone on his team. Although the youngest member of A Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group [Airborne], Fort Bragg, N.C., he quickly earned a reputation for taking on difficult challenges," the Army said.
His mother relayed a perspective only a parent could have.
"I'm feeling humbled by it," Maureen Miller said. "He was just our kid, not too long out of the annoying teenager stage, and he was doing all this."
She had a notion, though, of her son's outlook on life.
"Robert wore his favorite shirt which said, 'Cowards die many time before their death. The valiant never taste of death but once,' " she said.
The fallen soldier's sister, Nancy, pointed out that "he was always concerned about looking out for others."
Lodyga said Miller did just that.
"Robby was shot in the side and he shot those who shot him," the sergeant said. "He kept firing until he succumbed to a shot under the armpit. I don't know how to put it into words. I know Robby saved our lives, Absolutely he's a hero. I thank him a lot."
The Medal of Honor is given for exceptional acts of gallantry, "bravery or self-sacrifice" and must involve risk of life, the White House said.
At Miller's home in Oviedo, Florida, his parents fly the U.S. flag -- and display two stars in a window.
"The blue star flag is anyone in active service. Gold star is designation that they are fallen in battle," Philip Miller said. "They are in memory of our son and a proud memorial for him."
For Miller's parents, Wednesday's ceremony at the White House was an important step on the long road to healing.
The parents were told at his funeral more than two years ago that the decorated Green Beret would be receiving another commendation.
"There was a sense that it wasn't finished and that there was something left to be done," Maureen Miller said. "Now this part of the chapter will be closed."
The slain warrior's mother said she was looking forward to "finally getting it over with and a sense of closure. We will always miss Rob and there will always be a hole in our heart." | Awards ceremony | October 2010 | ['(CNN)'] |
East African leaders call for 20,000 troops to be deployed across Somalia to support the United Nations-backed Transitional Federal Government and for the United Nations to replace the African Union Mission to Somalia. | East African leaders have renewed their calls to the UN to replace the beleaguered African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Somalia. At a meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Somalia's president said a radical strategy to end almost two decades of crisis in the country was needed.
The leaders of the regional grouping Igad also agreed to deploy 2,000 more AU peacekeepers to help the government.
AU troops have been battling Islamists who control most of southern Somalia.
The UN-backed government only runs a few parts of the capital, Mogadishu.
Fighting continued in Mogadishu while the summit was being held, with at least five people killed when militants attacked government positions in the north of the city, officials say.
Speaking at the hastily convened meeting in Addis Ababa, Somali President Sheikh Shariff Sheikh Ahmed said that his country was in the hands of al-Qaeda and extremist groups.
The main militant group, al-Shabab, has links to al-Qaeda.
The president also made an impassioned appeal for an urgent and radical strategy to end the crisis. Previous Igad meetings have also called on the UN to replace the 5,000-strong AU mission. The UN has agreed in principle but has not set a date for the switch.
Analysts say few countries will be willing to risk sending their soldiers to the chaos in Somalia.
Uganda's deputy foreign minister told the AFP news agency that his government could send extra troops but only if the AU mandate is toughened to let the peacekeepers go on the offensive.
"Uganda is prepared to put more troops on the ground only if the mandate is changed such that we can go after al-Shabab," said Okello Oryem.
Frustration with the Somali leadership's failure to contain day-to-day violence in the country has been growing, the BBC's Uduak Amimo in the Ethiopian capital reports. The major headache for Igad is that there does not seem to be much commitment from Somalia's political class or from the UN to helping the country out of the political violence. The government's mandate expires in one year but it still has not met most of its objectives on reconstruction and reconciliation. Igad has also reminded donors numerous times about their pledges to finance Somalia's reconstruction. Igad's members are Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.
| Famous Person - Give a speech | July 2010 | ['(AllAfrica.com)', '(BBC News)'] |
Thousands of students march peacefully through Rome as part of nationwide demonstrations in Italy prior to a Senate vote which threatens education funds. | Thousands of students have demonstrated in Italy ahead of a Senate vote on controversial education reforms. Protests in Rome remained orderly, though students clashed with police in Palermo, roads were blocked in Turin, and rubbish set on fire in Naples. Police prevented a repetition of last week's violent clashes in Rome by blocking off parts of the city centre.
The government says university education has become bloated and inefficient, and needs streamlining.
But critics say Italian universities are already severely under-funded.
In Rome, students in their thousands marched peacefully through the streets. "We are in the square to protest against [Education] Minister Gelmini and to show that after the 14th of December we are not divided, we are not violent, we are simply here to demonstrate and to validate our ideas," a student called Franco told Reuters TV. The demonstrators avoided a so-called "Red Zone" created by police blockades to avoid a repeat of last week's violent protests sparked by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi survival of a no-confidence motion.
But clashes were reported in Palermo, Sicily, where some students allegedly threw stones at police and tried to enter a local government building. In the northern city of Turin, protesters attacked a publishing house owned by the prime minister, while in Naples students reportedly brought traffic to a standstill. Demonstrations also took place in other cities across Italy, including Milan, Venice, and Perugia.
The reforms will cut the number of university courses, merge some smaller universities, reduce funding for grants, increase the role of the private sector and limit the duration of rectorships. The BBC's David Willey, in Rome, says there is excessive power in the hands of ageing professors and teachers. But while many agree that reforms of the education sector might be needed, there has been criticism of the swingeing cuts, thought to total around 9bn euros (£8bn, $12bn).
Italy spends less than 5% of its Gross Domestic Product on education - lower than many developed countries. But the cuts are part of wider austerity measures that the government is introducing in order to reduce its public debt.
Students have held a number of demonstrations in recent months over the cuts, which some estimate will lead to the loss of about 130,000 jobs in the education sector.
"We are asking for this bill to be blocked and for the whole public education system to be refinanced," the Student Network said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said she was open to talks on the reforms. But she has insisted the measures were urgently needed to equip Italian students for employment.
"It is essential to restore dignity and usability to Italian university degrees," she said in an open letter to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Our correspondent says there is heavy youth unemployment in Italy and many university graduates take years to find jobs. The education bill proposed by Ms Gelmini was discussed in the Senate on Wednesday, although, according to Italian media sources, the vote was delayed until Thursday afternoon.
If it is passed, Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano - who met a delegation of students on Wednesday - would then have to sign the bill into law. Fight over cuts outside La Scala
Students cause chaos around Italy
Students take over Tower of Pisa
Italian Senate
OECD Education figures
Setback for EU in legal fight with AstraZeneca
But the drug-maker faces hefty fines if it fails to supply doses of Covid-19 vaccine over the summer. | Protest_Online Condemnation | December 2010 | ['(Al Jazeera)', '(BBC)'] |
Saudi security forces arrest a number of protesters in Qatif. | The arrests took place in the city of Qatif after "rioters" set tyres on fire during an overnight demonstration, an interior ministry statement said.
It said there were no casualties, but witnesses said several people were wounded when police opened fire. Among those detained was Mohammed al-Shakouri, described by the interior ministry as a wanted fugitive.
In January, he was among 23 men named as suspects in connection with the disturbances in Eastern Province. They were accused of possessing illegal weapons, opening fire on the public and police, and of serving "foreign agendas".
The demonstration in Qatif was organised to demand the release of political detainees, including the Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
Two people were killed at a rally against his arrest earlier this month. Witnesses said they were protesters who had been shot dead by police, but the interior ministry denied that there had been any clashes.
The oil-rich Eastern Province is home to a Shia majority that has long complained of marginalisation at the hands of the Sunni ruling family.
Protests erupted in the region in March 2011 when a popular uprising in neighbouring Bahrain, which has a Shia majority and a Sunni royal family, was crushed with the assistance of Saudi and other Gulf troops. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Accuse | July 2012 | ['(BBC)'] |
Vice–President of Colombia Angelino Garzón gets sick two days into his term. | Colombia's new Vice-President, Angelino Garzon, has had emergency heart bypass surgery after falling ill just two days after taking office. Doctors said his condition was stable and he was recuperating in intensive care after the operation. Mr Garzon, 63, was taken to hospital in Bogota on Monday morning after complaining of persistent chest pains. Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos has visited his deputy and talked to the medical team. The two leaders were sworn into office on Saturday. Before his election, Mr Garzon had worked as a journalist and trade unionist. He was also governor of the Valle del Cauca region for three years from 2004.
New Colombian president sworn in
President of Colombia
| Famous Person - Sick | August 2010 | ['(BBC)', '(AFP via France24)', '[permanent dead link]', '(Reuters)'] |
At least five people died and 30 were injured when a passenger train derailed in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. |
At least five people died and 30 were injured on Wednesday when a passenger train derailed in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, media reported.
The accident took place in Harchandpur, located some 77 km (48 miles) south of the state capital Lucknow, Reuters partner ANI News said in a Tweet. | Train collisions | October 2018 | ['(Cyprus Mail)'] |
North Korean state media says the country has successfully tested a new type of submarine-launched ballistic missile off the coast of Wonsan. | SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Thursday it had successfully test-fired a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from the sea to contain external threats and bolster self-defense, ahead of fresh nuclear talks with the United States.
North Korea says test was submarine missile
01:24
The launch on Wednesday was the most provocative by North Korea since it resumed dialogue with the United States in 2018 and a reminder by Pyongyang of the weapons capability it has been aggressively developing, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, analysts said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “sent warm congratulations” to the defense scientists who conducted the test, state news agency KCNA said, indicating he did not attend the launch as he has during previous tests of new weapons systems.
The new type of SLBM, called Pukguksong-3, was “fired in vertical mode” in the waters off the eastern city of Wonsan, KCNA said, confirming an assessment by South Korea’s military on Wednesday that the missile was launched on a lofted trajectory.
“The successful new-type SLBM test-firing comes to be of great significance as it ushered in a new phase in containing the outside forces’ threat to the DPRK and further bolstering its military muscle for self-defense,” KCNA said.
DPRK is short for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The test “had no adverse impact on the security of neighboring countries,” KCNA said. It gave no other details about the launch.
Photos released in the North’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, whose front two pages featured the test, showed a black-and-white painted missile clearing the surface of the water, then the rocket engine igniting to propel it into the sky.
A U.S. State Department spokeswoman called on Pyongyang to “refrain from provocations” and to remain committed to nuclear negotiations. | Military Exercise | October 2019 | ['(SLBM)', '(Deutche Welle)', '(Reuters)'] |
Toronto's Sheraton Cadwell Orchestras closes and its management resigns following public backlash to a fat-shaming email that said only "physically fit and slim" singers would be featured in shows. | The Sheraton Cadwell Orchestras asked women who were not "fit & slim" to use loose dresses that hide their "dietary indulgences".
Many singers who had performed with the symphony expressed disgust at the email.
The management has since apologised and resigned, telling singers the orchestra would no longer be funded.
The controversy began on Monday when singer Victoria Leone, 23, received an email from Sheraton Cadwell Orchestras that left her astonished.
"Although almost all of our vocalists are fit and slim - the way our boutique orchestra would like our front line performing artists to be… two of our featured singers were not," the email read. "We hope that they would, as such, refrain from using tight-fitting dresses and use loose (less physically-revealing, less physically-accentuating) dresses instead."
The email went on at length to detail that they were only concerned with vocalists, not instrumentalists, because instrumentalists were "background".
Ms Leone had performed with the orchestra once two weeks beforehand as a volunteer at a local street festival. She told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that as someone who was bullied as a child for being a bit "curvy", she felt personally attacked.
The email, which was signed by "the management", also said that in the future, only "fit and slim" women would be hired.
"As per our highly selective casting requirements for vocal artists taking on a prominent leading role on stage, only singers who are physically fit and slim (or at the very least, those who know how to dress strategically/suitably in order to not bring attention to their temporary physical/dietary indulgences) would be showcased with our boutique orchestras."
Ms Leone says she sent an email back to the orchestra, expressing her frustration and quitting the organisation. Instead of apologising, she said they simply thanked her for her time and asked her to reread certain parts about dressing less revealingly, which it highlighted in red.
After news of this message went public, and many other singers complained, the management sent her a follow-up email notifying her that the orchestra would be shutting down.
"We sincerely apologize for any embarrassment/harassment that you may experience from media representatives or other individuals/parties as a result of misconstrued/malicious allegations and extremely negative/destructive/evil intent," the email read.
Speaking to the CBC, Ms Leone said she did not feel like that was the apology she was looking for. "It does suck for all the young women, all the young girls who are trying to aspire to anything," she said. | Organization Closed | August 2017 | ['(Fox News)', '(BBC)', '(Global News)'] |
The President of the United States, George W. Bush, acknowledges the deaths of approximately 30,000 Iraqi civilians since the commencement of the Iraq War. | US President George W. Bush has acknowledged for the first time that 30,000 civilians could have died since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, in another landmark speech ahead of elections in Iraq tomorrow.
"How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," Mr Bush said when questioned after his speech.
Mr Bush was addressing foreign policy experts in Philadelphia, which has symbolic significance because he spoke only a few blocks from where the US declared independence from Britain in 1776.
Mr Bush said that, while with the benefit of hindsight America's democratic experiment seemed almost inevitable, "at the time, however, that success didn't seem so obvious or assured", he said, attempting to link the uneven progress in Iraq to the founding of the US.
"No nation in history has made the transition to a free society without facing challenges, setbacks and false starts."
But it was a lengthy question-and-answer session in which Mr Bush offered a rare candid assessment of the progress in Iraq, including his estimate on the number of civilian casualties.
There was no indication of how the casualty number could be broken down in terms of deaths at the hands of the US-led forces or by the Iraqi insurgents, but the 30,000 mark equates to estimates of several organisations that have been attempting to track the civilian tragedy behind the war.
Later, Mr Bush's media aides were telling reporters it was not an official estimate. The Pentagon has refused to give any indication on civilian deaths, instead focusing only on the now more than 2100 US military deaths.
Mr Bush's speech is the third of four speeches on Iraq in the two weeks leading up to the country's national elections. Until now he has refused to take questions and his delivery has faltered. But yesterday, in a more persuasive performance, Mr Bush commanded the lectern when he surprised the audience by offering to take their questions.
When questioned over the administration's now discredited attempts to link Saddam Hussein with al-Qa'ida, Mr Bush said the former Iraqi dictator had posed a threat to the US, particularly in the post 9/11 world.
"And knowing what I know today, I'd make the decision again," he said. "Removing Saddam Hussein makes this world a better place and America a safer country."
Mr Bush again cautioned there would be further casualties in Iraq and continued to cast Iraq as the key battleground in a war with terrorist groups. He also flagged his concern about other countries that could be harbouring terrorist regimes.
"The long run in this war is going to require a change in governments in parts of the world," he said.
Mr Bush did not specify what countries he was referring to, but had cited elsewhere in his address his concerns about North Korea, Iran and Syria.
Mr Bush said "the call of liberty" was "echoing across the broader Middle East".
"From Damascus to Tehran, people hear it and they know it means something," he said. "It means that the days of tyranny and terror are ending and a new day of hope and freedom is dawning."
Mr Bush also admitted yesterday that the US had an image problem abroad, but he blamed Arab media.
"I recognise we got an image issue, particularly when you got television stations, Arabic television stations that are constantly just pounding America - saying America is fighting Islam, Americans can't stand Muslims, this is a war against a religion," he said.
"And we've got to, obviously, do a better job of reminding people that ours is not a nation that rejects religion; ours is a nation that accepts people of all faith and that the great strength of America is the capacity for people to worship freely. | Armed Conflict | December 2005 | ['(The Australian)'] |
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is expected to call a special session on gun control following the deadly shooting Friday afternoon in Virginia Beach that killed 12 people plus the shooter. | Follow NBC News VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is summoning lawmakers back to the state Capitol to consider a package of gun-control legislation, saying Friday's mass shooting in Virginia Beach calls for "votes and laws, not thoughts and prayers."
Northam also said Tuesday that he wants every state lawmaker go on record for or against his proposals during the special session this summer, rather than let leaders shield them from tough votes by killing them subcommittees.
"I ask that the members of the General Assembly engage in an open and transparent debate and that the bills brought before the legislature are put to a vote by the entire General Assembly," Northam said. "The nation will be watching."
The Democrat said in an Associated Press interview ahead of his announcement that he wants the Republican-controlled legislature to hear from the public about the need for "common-sense" laws. A top GOP lawmaker signaled Monday that he's open to a legislative debate, but doesn't expect Northam's bills to pass.
"Show Virginians that it doesn't matter what party you are in, we all our Virginians first, and we care about the safety and security of every Virginian no matter who they are or where they live," he added.
Virginia Beach city employee DeWayne Craddock used two semi-automatic handguns, a silencer and extended ammunition magazines on Friday to kill 12 people, all but one them colleagues he had worked with for years. Craddock was mortally wounded in an intense gunbattle with police.
Northam's bills include legislation that directly relates to Friday's shooting, such as a ban on silencers and high capacity ammunition magazines, as well as broadening the ability of local governments to limit guns in city buildings. But he said other recent shootings, including the death last month of a 9-year-old girl who was shot at a community cookout in Richmond, are also driving his call for a special session.
"It's an emergency here in Virginia, and it's time to take action," Northam told the AP. "Every one of these pieces of legislation will save lives."
Northam said he also wants votes on mandating universal background checks before gun purchases, limiting purchases to one handgun per month and a so-called red flag bill that would allow authorities to temporarily seize someone's guns if they are a shown to be threat to themselves or others.
The governor has long advocated for stricter gun control. He made the issue a top priority of his 2017 gubernatorial campaign, drawing from his experience as a pediatrician and Army doctor who has treated children and soldiers wounded by firearms.
Most of the legislation already proposed by Northam and other Democrats has failed in Virginia, where Republicans hold slim majorities in the House and Senate. This is a closely watched election year in the state, when all 140 legislative seats are up for grabs.
Virginia law doesn't give a governor any say in how a special session is conducted. While GOP Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment indicated Monday that there's some willingness to debate whether to ban large-capacity magazines, according to the Virginia Gazette, he told gun-control advocates outside his office on Monday that "nothing would have helped us in Virginia Beach."
Craddock appeared to have had no felony record, making him eligible to purchase guns. Government investigators identified two .45-caliber pistols used in the attack and all indications are that he purchased them legally in 2016 and 2018, said Ashan Benedict, the regional special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Friday's shooting has been Northam's first major test since a scandal over a racist photo in his medical school yearbook nearly drove him from office four months ago. The governor has been active in helping coordinate the state's response and comforting victims, while also pressing the case for stricter gun control.
A top gun rights advocate denounced the special session as "political theater," and called it "pure baloney" that silencers mask the sound of gun shots. Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, said "there's really nothing other than allowing people to protect themselves until the police get there that would have worked." | Diplomatic Talks _ Diplomatic_Negotiation_ Summit Meeting | June 2019 | ['(NBC News)'] |
2004 U.S. Presidential Election: Ralph Nader declares his candidacy for the position of President of the United States as an independent candidate. | "I've decided to run as an independent candidate," Mr Nader told NBC television's Meet the Press programme.
He stood as a Green Party candidate in the 2000 election and many Democrats blame him for handing the election to George W Bush. An anti-establishment figure, Mr Nader won less than 3% of the vote in the last US presidential election.
But many Democrats believe he took just enough support from Al Gore to hand the contest to Mr Bush, especially in the crucial state of Florida, where Mr Nader won 97,488 votes.
Mr Bush beat Al Gore by just 537 votes in Florida.
Announcing his decision, Mr Nader said: "This country has a lot of problems and injustices which it doesn't deserve.
It's time to change the equation
"There is too much power and wealth in too little hands."
Mr Nader said he made his decision "after careful thought".
"Both parties are flunking, Republicans with a D minus and Democrats with a D plus," he said. "It's time to change the equation."
There has been an angry backlash against Mr Nader, who turns 70 this month, since the controversial results in the 2000 election. Thousands of people have cancelled donations to consumer groups Mr Nader founded or supported. A website has been set up called '
And with this election forecast to be every bit as close as the last, friends and leading Democrats pleaded with him to stay out of the race, says the BBC's Jon Leyne in Washington. "It's an act of total ego," said New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a Democrat and former member of President Bill Clinton's Cabinet.
Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National
Committee, said: "The fact is that if Ralph Nader runs, President Bush is going to be re-elected, and if Ralph Nader doesn't run, President Bush is going to be
re-elected."
Mr Nader said those arguing against him running were contemptuous about democracy.
"This is a fight for all third-party candidates," he said. "This is not a democracy that can be controlled by two parties in the grip of corporate interest."
But our correspondent says that with so much antagonism towards Mr Nader, even among his former supporters, the independent candidate's first problem will be getting enough signatures even to get himself onto the ballot in many states. Super Tuesday visits
The two leading Democrats hoping to challenge Mr Bush in the November election campaigned on Sunday in states conducting primaries on 2 March - so-called Super Tuesday, when 10 states are holding contests.
Both men visited black community churches. John Edwards, the senator for North Carolina, visited a church in Columbus, Ohio, while the frontrunner, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, visited a church in Atlanta, Georgia, where Martin Luther King Jr once preached.
He also held a town hall meeting in the city, where he criticised Mr Bush over what he called the biggest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy in the country's history. | Government Job change - Election | February 2004 | ['(Guardian)', '(BBC)'] |
Three muslim rebels are killed following a clash with government security forces in the Southern Philippines. | Three Muslim rebels were killed following a clash with the government security forces in Southern Philippines Wednesday, military officials said Thursday.
A soldier meanwhile was wounded as a result of the hour-long firefight that started past 10:00 p.m. in the township of Pagalungan in Maguindanao, regional military spokesman Col. Prudencio Asto said.
Asto said the incident with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was a violation to the parties ceasefire agreement ahead of the resumption of peace talks in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 9 and 10.
The MILF has been fighting government troops for decades to establish a self-rule Muslim state in the south of the predominantly Catholic country.
Peace talks between the government and the MILF remain stalled since August 2008 following the aborted signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain.
However, efforts are being undertaken by both sides to revive the talks. A final peace deal with the government will touch the issues of autonomy and the civil settlement of the rebel group's some 11,800-strong guerrilla fighters. | Armed Conflict | January 2011 | ['(China Xinjiang)'] |
The Red Cross estimates that the death toll from North Korean floods has reached 220. North Korea estimates that it has wiped out a tenth of its farmland. | The province of Kangwon suffered the highest toll, with 181 confirmed deaths, the International Federation of the Red Cross's Terje Lysholm said.
Aid agencies are working with the Pyongyang government to get emergency relief to the many thousands affected.
But power cuts and washed out roads are complicating the aid effort.
The heavy flooding of recent days has left as many as 300,000 people without homes and destroyed one-tenth of the country's much-needed farmland, North Korea said on Wednesday.
How many people are still completely without shelter at this point is difficult to say because communication lines are down
Terje LysholmIFRC, Pyongyang
International aid workers have been carrying out assessments in the four worst-affected provinces and say the damage is extensive.
In one county alone, near the South Korean border, some 4,500 homes have been completely destroyed, affecting 18,000 people, Mr Lysholm told BBC News.
Many people will have been able to seek refuge in neighbours' homes and in public buildings such as schools and clinics, he said.
"How many people are still completely without shelter at this point is difficult to say, because communication lines are down," he added.
Red Cross teams and other agencies are trying to deliver more than 20,000 tarpaulins, kitchen sets, blankets and water purification tablets to the worst-hit areas.
Aid considered
Terje Lysholm said the assessment teams had confirmed figures of 221 dead and 82 missing in the southern provinces of Kangwon, North Hwanghae, South Pyongan and South Hamgyong.
But it is feared the death toll could rise. Last year's flooding, which affected a much smaller area, killed at least 500 people although the exact death toll was never officially released by the normally reclusive state. In pictures: N Korea floods
International agencies and governments were also waiting for Pyongyang to confirm what is needed in terms of food aid.
Michael Dunford of the World Food Programme in Pyongyang said they were waiting for the government to finalise its assessment of what is needed and where, so they can start diverting their stocks of food supplies already in the country for emergency use.
South Korea, a key donor of aid to its impoverished northern neighbour, has offered emergency humanitarian assistance. Japan and the US are also said to be considering what aid to send.
Pyongyang made a rare plea for international help after announcing on Monday that storms since 7 August had led to "huge human and material damage". | Floods | August 2007 | ['(BBC)', '(NYT)'] |
The Health Minister of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabiah, is dismissed as the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus rages in the nation, killing 81 people to date. | The Saudi health minister has been sacked without explanation, as the Mers coronavirus death toll there climbed to 81.
Abdullah al-Rabiah was dismissed just days after visiting hospitals in Jeddah to calm a public hit by panic over the spread of the respiratory virus.
Saudi has registered the largest number of infections of Mers (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome).
The ministry said it had registered 261 cases of infection across the kingdom.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says it has been informed of 243 laboratory-confirmed cases worldwide, including 93 deaths since the virus was first discovered in September 2012. The WHO, which has been monitoring the global situation, says there is currently no reason to impose any travel restrictions because of the virus.
Public Health England said the recent rise in the number of Mers infections in Saudi could be the result of a number of factors: a change in the virus itself, a consequence of more active surveillance or some sort of, as yet unexplained, seasonality.
| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | April 2014 | ['(BBC)'] |
2013 World Series, Game 3 ends on a controversial obstruction call, giving the Cardinals a 2–1 series lead over the Red Sox. | ST. LOUIS — Of all the teams participating in this sloppy World Series, only the one in blue seems at the top of its game.
In Game 1, the Cardinals made a series of mistakes, the Red Sox countered in Game 2, and both looked suspect in Game 3. So it was left to the umpires to make the decisive call in the game — perhaps the series — and by most accounts they made the right one, even celebrating it after the game.
Ed Armbrister, Carlton Fisk and Larry Barnett, the three central characters in a World Series interference controversy from 1975, can now step aside.
In one of the more confusing and disputed endings to a World Series game, the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-4, in Game 3 on Saturday night, on a game-ending obstruction call on third baseman Will Middlebrooks, made by the third-base umpire, Jim Joyce, with two outs in the ninth inning.
Upon seeing Joyce’s call, the home plate umpire Dana DeMuth signaled Allen Craig safe at home, even though he had clearly been tagged out before touching the plate. Unsure of exactly what had happened, the Cardinals came pouring out of their dugout to celebrate. The Red Sox, led by John Farrell, their stunned manager, came out, too, but their purpose was to argue.
For several chaotic moments, all parties were on the field by home plate, arguing, explaining or celebrating as the Cardinals took a two-games-to-one lead in the Series.
“I think maybe 75 percent of the guys didn’t know what happened,” Cardinals outfielder Carlos Beltran said of his teammates. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
But once he came into the clubhouse, he asked the coach Jose Oquendo about it, then saw for himself on the video screen.
The play evoked memories of the famous noncall in the 1975 World Series between the Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds, which also went against Boston. The Red Sox claimed that Armbrister had interfered with Fisk on a bunt play, and pleaded with the home plate umpire Barnett for the call, which never came. The Red Sox lost that game, too.
The setting for Saturday’s ending, which will be added to World Series lore, was a tie game with one out in the ninth inning after the Red Sox scored twice in the eighth to draw even. The Cardinals had Yadier Molina at third and Craig at second, so Boston brought the infield in for Jon Jay, who slapped a grounder up the middle.
Dustin Pedroia made a great play to snare the ball and throw home to catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who tagged Molina out. But for the second time in the series, the Red Sox made the costly mistake of forcing a throw to third base. Saltalamacchia’s throw was wide and forced Middlebrooks to lunge to the second-base side of the bag.
He dived but couldn’t get it, and the ball went into foul territory as Red Sox closer Koji Uehara squatted and put his hands to his head, assuming the game was over on the throwing error. Then Uehara saw left fielder Daniel Nava pick up the ball, throw it back to Saltalamacchia, who applied the tag to the sliding Craig in plenty of time.
It appeared the Red Sox had squeezed out of it and had a reprieve, despite their mistake. But while he was on the ground, Middlebrooks was in the path of Craig, who tripped over him on his way home, got up and scampered home.
Joyce, the same umpire who blew the call at first base to prevent Armando Galarraga from getting a perfect game in 2010, saw the play clearly and immediately made the call. Middlebrooks, on his stomach, lifted up his legs. Whether or not it was intentional didn’t matter. Craig, who called his route home an obstacle course, stumbled over him.
“The base runner has every right to go unobstructed to home plate,” Joyce said. “and unfortunately for Middlebrooks, he was right there. There was contact, so he could not advance to home plate naturally.”
The rule states that if a fielder who is not in the act of fielding a ball — including if he dives for a ball that gets past him — obstructs a runner, he gets the next base, regardless of his intent.
“I don’t see how it’s obstruction,” Saltalamacchia said.
DeMuth did. He saw Joyce’s call, and despite seeing Craig tagged out, he pointed to Joyce and then made the safe call. The left-field umpire and crew chief John Hirschbeck saw the play develop from the outfield, and was certain Joyce made the right call, which also received the endorsement of Joe Torre, baseball’s vice president for operations, including the umpires.
“We’re trained to look for those things,” Hirschbeck said. “It’s out of the ordinary, but when it happens and it’s the World Series, you expect to get it right.”
Farrell didn’t see it quite the same way, echoing Middlebrooks’s claim that there was nothing he could have done differently.
“I don’t know how he gets out of the way when he’s lying on the ground,” he said. “And when Craig trips over him, I guess by the letter of the rule you could say it’s obstruction. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”
Pedroia, who was incredulous in the immediate aftermath, scampering about on the field with his arms held out in disbelief, was asked how he became aware something was amiss.
“The guy at home called him safe,” he said. “He was out by three feet.”
In Game 1, DeMuth made a bad call on a play at second base when he called a runner out when the ball clearly never landed in Pete Kozma’s glove. But the umpires huddled and reversed the call to get it right.
In Game 3, they were all in agreement on what happened, and that the initial call was the correct one. So when the arguments and the celebrations were over, they retreated into their own locker room and held their own form of celebration.
“Immediately after we got off the field and into our locker room, we congratulated Jim,” Hirschbeck said, “and said, ‘Great call.’ “
Only in this World Series, where mistakes are piling up, would the umpires come away having had the best game of all. | Sports Competition | October 2013 | ['(NY Times)'] |
At least 14 people die in Malaysia's Sabah province when rebels open fire on government security forces. | At least 14 people have died in clashes to end the siege of a village in Malaysia's Sabah province by a Philippines clan, police say.
Sabah Police Chief Hamza Taib said two police officers and 12 Filipino rebels had been killed at Lahad Datu.
Lahad Datu was occupied in early February by members of a Muslim royal clan from the Philippines calling itself the Royal Army of Sulu.
They are demanding recognition as the rightful owners of Sabah province.
The group - some of them armed - had been urged to end their siege by both the Malaysian and Philippine governments.
Hamza Taib said the killings happened during a 30-minute shoot-out on Friday morning, when members of the clan opened fire as the security forces were tightening a security cordon around the village.
He told the Associated Press that the stand-off was continuing. "We don't want to engage them but they fired at us. We have no option but to return fire," he said.
But confusion remains over what exactly has happened in the remote part of Sabah.
The leader of the gang, Agbimuddin Kiram, told a Philippines radio station that police had surrounded them and opened fire.
"They are here, they entered our area so we have to defend ourselves. There's shooting already," he told Manila-based DZBB radio.
"We're surrounded. We will defend ourselves," he said. The group has put its death toll at 10.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed that two police officers had died and three were wounded, and said between 10 and 12 clan members had been killed.
He said he had given the security forces "full power" to do what was necessary to "defeat" the group, according to Malaysia state news agency Bernama.
"I am very sad over the incident because what we had wanted to prevent, which is bloodshed, had actually happened," the prime minister said. Mr Kiram, the younger brother of the self-proclaimed Sultan of Sulu Jamalul Kiram III, led the gang of at least 100 from their home on the Philippine islands of Sulu in early February to the shores of Sabah.
The Sulu Sultanate once spread over several southern Philippine islands as well as parts of Borneo, and claimed Sabah as its own before it was designated a British protectorate in the 1800s.
Sabah became part of Malaysia in 1963, and the country still pays a token rent to the Sulu Sultanate each year.
The Royal Army of Sulu wants Malaysia to recognise it as the rightful owner of Sabah, and to renegotiate the terms of the old lease - something Malaysia has made clear it has no intention of doing.
| Armed Conflict | March 2013 | ['(BBC)'] |
Google co–founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announce they are stepping down as CEO and president respectively from the company. Sundar Pichai will become the new CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc. effective immediately. | Page and Brin stepping down from their executive roles. Googles founders step down as CEO and president
Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin -- who built the tech giant 20 years ago with servers in a garage -- announced on Tuesday that they are stepping down as CEO and president, respectively, from the company.
Sundar Pichai will be the new CEO of Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc., effective immediately, according to a statement from the company.
Page and Brin co-founded the company in 1998 and led it to becoming the international tech industry leader it is today. The two will remain active at Alphabet Inc. as co-founders, shareholders and board members, the company said.
In a joint open letter announcing their decision to leave, Page and Brin equated Google to their child, who would now be 21.
"Today, in 2019, if the company was a person, it would be a young adult of 21 and it would be time to leave the roost," the letter stated. "While it has been a tremendous privilege to be deeply involved in the day-to-day management of the company for so long, we believe it’s time to assume the role of proud parents - offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!"
The letter added that they believe "Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President," and Pichai will take on the role of CEO for both Alphabet and Google, saying they "plan to continue talking with Sundar regularly, especially on topics we’re passionate about!"
The founders added that they could have never imagined what Google would become when they started it in a dorm room and then a garage.
"We are deeply humbled to have seen a small research project develop into a source of knowledge and empowerment for billions - a bet we made as two Stanford students that led to a multitude of other technology bets," the letter said.
It continued: "We could not have imagined, back in 1998 when we moved our servers from a dorm room to a garage, the journey that would follow."
Pichai said in statement that he is "looking forward to continuing to work with Larry and Sergey."
"Thanks to them, we have a timeless mission, enduring values, and a culture of collaboration and exploration," Pichai added. "It’s a strong foundation on which we will continue to build.” | Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | December 2019 | ['(ABC News)'] |
The government of Sudan signs an accord with the main Darfur rebel group, the Alliance of Revolutionary Forces of West Sudan, reached through mediation in Abuja, Nigeria. | The deal, which follows intense talks in Nigeria, calls for the disbandment of rebel forces and the disarmament of the pro-government Janjaweed militia.
The conflict has killed about 200,000 and left about two million homeless.
The peace plan, brokered by the African Union, creates a temporary regional government for Darfur, in which rebels will take part.
The Janjaweed are to be disbanded and the rebels incorporated into the security forces.
Deadlines came and went in recent days, as diplomats exerted pressure on parties after all the rebels had rejected the original draft.
Delayed signing
In the end the Khartoum government and the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) said they were willing to sign, despite reservations on both sides over power sharing and security.
There will be tests because not all have shown courage and leadership today
Robert ZoellickUS Deputy Secretary of State
"We are reaffirming that the fighting ends now in Darfur," SLM leader Minnawi said at Friday's signing ceremony in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
"We shall go ahead with peace and we shall be serious." US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who helped broker the deal, said it was a first step on what could still be a difficult path.
"This agreement, implemented by all of you, creates an opportunity for peace for your people," he said. | Sign Agreement | May 2006 | ['(BBC)'] |
A power–sharing agreement between Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is officially signed, making Tsvangirai Prime Minister of Zimbabwe and chair of cabinet meetings. Mugabe maintains his position as president and remains in control of the country's army. | Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai have signed a power-sharing deal in Harare designed to solve the political and economic crisis crippling the country.
South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, who brokered the agreement, smiled and laughed as he watched the bitter rivals put their names to a sheaf of papers.
The audience watching the signing ceremony in a top Harare hotel then cheered. Although details of the agreement have not been revealed, it is widely expected to split control of the security forces between Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The deal has made Mr Tsvangirai prime minister and given him the chair of cabinet meetings. The two rivals must now share out cabinet posts between their allies.
The state security ministry has been abolished while the justice ministry was split in two, creating a new prisons department. The MDC is seeking to gain control of the police force through winning the home affairs ministry, and of the economy through the finance ministry. The party is offering Mr Mugabe control of the defence ministry.
The president, who contested a violent election with Mr Tsvangirai earlier this year, was forced into the deal by crippling economic sanctions.
Despite the deal, however, the embargo might not be lifted for some time. Javier Solana, the EU's head of foreign policy, welcomed the deal but said he needed to see "much more detail" and would not lift sanctions for at least a month.
"It still is not very clear what will be the outcome," Mr Solana said before a meeting of EU foreign ministers. "The first reaction is positive. | Sign Agreement | September 2008 | ['(The Telegraph)'] |
An attack on civilians in the village of Mbau, Democratic Republic of the Congo, using bladed weapons, kills over 18 civilians. Islamic militants are the suspected attackers. | MBAU, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 15 people overnight in eastern Congo, local officials said on Saturday, in the latest massacre since the army launched a major offensive against the rebels last month.
Democratic Republic of Congo’s army initiated its latest campaign, with support from U.N. peacekeepers, on Oct. 30 to root out fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) from the dense forests near the Ugandan border.
As was the case during previous military operations against the ADF, its fighters have retaliated by attacking civilians, killing more than 40 since last week, according to local civil society activists.
Attacks blamed by the government on the ADF have killed hundreds of civilians since 2014.
The attacks on Friday in and around the village of Mbau were carried out with bladed weapons, local officials said. Among the eight victims in Mbau were six members of a single family.
Seven members of a Pygmy ethnic group living in the nearby forest were also killed, officials said. Their bodies were found tied up and their throats had been slit.
“The rebels are attacking civilians in order to spread confusion and panic among the population,” said Donat Kibwana, the regional administrator in the nearby city of Beni.
Mbau residents said it had taken many hours for soldiers based nearby to respond, a common complaint after attacks in the area.
Army officials were not immediately available for comment.
Researchers and rights groups say some Congolese soldiers and other rebel groups have also participated in massacres since 2014 for a variety or motives often related to competition for power in lawless zones dominated by dozens of militia groups.
Several of the previous attacks by the ADF, which was founded in Uganda in 1995, have been claimed by Islamic State, but the extent of their relationship remains unclear. The ADF is not known to have publicly pledged loyalty to Islamic State.
Reporting by Djaffar Djaffar Al Katanty in Mbau and Fiston Mahamba in Goma; additional reporting and writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Aaron Ross and David Evans
| Armed Conflict | November 2019 | ['(Reuters)'] |
Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain signs into law the official merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative province. | Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain has signed legislation that merges the country's tribal regions with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and therefore grants some 5 million people in the regions the same rights as other Pakistanis.
Hussain signed the law in Islamabad on May 31.
The bill had previously been passed by the lower and upper houses of parliament as well as the assembly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with the necessary two-thirds majority.
The legislation rids the northwestern tribal areas of what were seen as discriminatory laws under which those regions have been governed since the colonial rule of Britain.
Pakistan was granted independence from London in 1947.
The Federaly Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) include seven territorial agencies: Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan, and South Waziristan. They are mainly rugged, mountainous areas along the border with Afghanistan.
Pakistan's government, led by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, formally steps down on May 31, the end of its five-year term. | Sign Agreement | May 2018 | ['(RFE/RL)'] |
The Spanish Attorney General seeks jail terms for Catalan independence leaders for the crime of rebellion with the highest requested penalty being 25 years against Oriol Junqueras. The State's Advocacy is asking for prison sentences for only the lesser crimes of sedition and embezzlement. | MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s public prosecutor on Friday sought jail terms of up to 25 years on rebellion charges for nine leaders of Catalonia’s independence movement over an illegal secession bid they spearheaded last year.
The recommendation drew an angry response from the region’s leader, who also dismissed moves by the State Attorney - a separate, government-appointed body prosecuting in the case - to push for the lesser charge of sedition.
Madrid imposed direct rule on the wealthy northeastern region in October 2017 after it declared its independence on the basis of a referendum that Spanish courts ruled was unconstitutional.
The nine Catalan politicians were jailed without bail for their role in that secession drive, which laid bare deep divisions between the region’s pro- and anti-Spain camps, and remain in custody pending their Supreme Court trial.
The prosecutor, which also filed a charge of misuse of public funds against the nine, sought the longest term of 25 years for Oriol Junqueras, the leader of pro-Catalan-independence party ERC.
The State Attorney, which is part of the justice ministry, said it was seeking maximum sentences of 12 years.
Reiterating calls for all charges to be dropped, Catalonia’s pro-secession government head Quim Torra said the pursuit of the campaigners through the courts showed “absolute disdain for imprisoned democrats”.
“Today, the government has missed a golden opportunity to take this conflict out of the courts and return it to a political matter,” he said.
The prosecutor has precedence in the trial, expected to begin in January.
The Attorney’s bid for the lesser charge of sedition coincides with efforts by the Socialist government of Pedro Sanchez to reduce tensions between Madrid and Barcelona. Justice Minister Dolores Delgado said it was acting purely on judicial criteria.
While refusing to countenance any move toward Catalan independence, Sanchez has adopted a more conciliatory approach toward the region than his predecessor Mariano Rajoy.
With the Socialists holding only 84 of 350 parliamentary seats, he is also relying on the support of Catalan lawmakers to get his 2019 budget passed through the house.
The ERC’s Junqueras was deputy to the then Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont during the vote for independence last year. Puigdemont fled the country after Madrid took control of the regional government - which it handed back in December - and has been in self-imposed exile since.
The prosecutor recommended sentences of up to 17 years on rebellion and misuse of funds charges for the other eight jailed Catalan politicians, and is seeking lesser charges for nine others accused of involvement in the campaign who are not in custody.
The leaders’ defense team must present its case in the next few weeks and the trial is expected to begin in January.
The prosecutor is also seeking up to 11 years in prison for four others, including the head of the Catalan police at the time of the independence declaration, in a separate High Court case.
| Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence | November 2018 | ['(Reuters)'] |
A Taliban prisoner kills eight policemen after seizing their weapons. The condition of the Taliban gunman is unknown. | ISLAMABAD - Officials in Afghanistan confirmed Monday a Taliban prisoner has killed at least eight policemen, including three seniorofficers, after covertly seizing an assault rifle from a guard at the detention facility in southern Zabul province.
The incident happenedwhile security guards were offering evening prayers late Sunday at the Shar-e-Safa district jail, apolice officer told VOA. Ghulam Jilani said the assailant sprayed the unarmed group of personnel with bullets. The officerpromised to provide more details later in the day.
A security official in Shar-e-Safa,disclosed to VOA on the condition of anonymity thatAfghan forces swiftly engaged the armed prisonerand the firefight with him continued into Monday morning.
The official suspected the Taliban detainee hadmanaged to seize weapons from otherslain officers, preventing prisonguards from ending the siege,though the assailant’s fate was still notknown.
The latest security forces'casualtiescame a day after the Afghan ministers of defense and interior acknowledged that Taliban battlefield attacks in recent weekshave inflicted some of the worst casualties on Afghan National Army (ANA)and police forces.
While briefing the upper house of parliament or Senate on Sunday, Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak disclosed that "daily, 30 ANAand police personnel get killed.”
Afghan Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami told the Senate session that in the last one month alone, the ANA hassuffered 1,231 casualties, including 513 fatalities.
Around 14,000 Afghan security forces were killed between April 2016 and July 2018, according to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Insurgents have since intensified battlefield attacks around Afghanistan, inflicting more losses and capturing new territory.
Meanwhile, security forces raided a Taliban-run detention center in the central-eastern Maidan Wardak province late Sunday and rescued eight prisoners, mostly personnel of the Afghan Special Forces.
General Wais Samimi, the provincial police commander, told VOA the rescue operation also killed 40 insurgents, including their shadow district chief.
Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujuahid, claimed Afghan and U.S. forces jointly conducted the raid and it targeted a civilian compound. He went on to assert that the security action in the Jaghato district killed 14 civilians, including women and children. The Taliban’s claims are often inflated.
Afghanistan’s Pajhwok news agency quoted villagers as telling it that foreign forces were part of the raid and those killed in it were all civilians. | Armed Conflict | September 2018 | ['(Voice of America)'] |
Former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee wins the Kansas Republican Party caucus and the Louisiana primary. | Republican Presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee delivers his morning speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington February 9, 2008. Huckabee won the Louisiana Republican primary on Saturday, notching up another Southern victory in his bid to become the party's presidential candidate in the November general election, CNN projected early Sunday. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won the Louisiana Republican primary on Saturday, notching up another Southern victory in his bid to become the party’s presidential candidate in the November general election, CNN projected early Sunday.
Front-running Arizona Sen. John McCain leads the race for the Republican nomination and is almost certain to win after his chief rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, dropped out on Thursday.
Huckabee is his chief remaining challenger and is running a distant second. The Baptist minister, whose appeal to social conservatives has kept his shoestring campaign alive, won four Southern states and West Virginia on Tuesday, when nearly half of U.S. states chose candidates for the November election. | Government Job change - Election | February 2008 | ['(The Washington Post)', '(Reuters)'] |
The state legislature of North Carolina repeals the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, more commonly known as the "transgender bathroom bill." In its place, the legislature enacts a ban on cities in North Carolina from enacting "civil rights" protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people through 2020. | (Reuters) - North Carolina on Thursday repealed a law restricting bathroom use for transgender people, hoping to bring back businesses and sports leagues that boycotted the Southern state because they saw the year-old measure as discriminatory.
However, the new law replacing the old one bans cities in the state from passing their own anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people until 2020, drawing scorn from civil rights advocates and casting doubt on whether boycotting businesses will return to the state.
Democratic Governor Roy Cooper signed the replacement bill into law after the Republican-controlled state Senate and House of Representatives approved it in separate votes in the capital, Raleigh.
The new measure rescinds House Bill 2, the so-called bathroom bill also popularly known as HB 2, which required transgender people to use the bathrooms, changing rooms and showers in state-run buildings that correspond to the sex on their birth certificate rather than their gender identity.
HB 2’s enactment a year ago prompted boycotts that cost the state economy hundreds of millions of dollars. Deutsche Bank AG and PayPal Holdings Inc reversed expansion plans in the state. Entertainers such as Bruce Springsteen and Itzhak Perlman canceled concerts.
In basketball-crazed North Carolina, the withdrawal of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament games and the National Basketball Association All-Star game, which had been awarded to Charlotte, reverberated throughout the state.
Under the new law, transgender people are once again free to use the bathroom of their choice, but they lack any recourse should a person, business or state entity eject or harass them.
The new law also denies LGBT people state legal protections in other areas such as employment and housing.
Outraged LGBT advocates, who had wanted an unconditional repeal of HB 2, were already pressuring business and sports organizations not to return.
“This (is) the end of HB 2 in name only. The bill that was passed today is a disgrace, not a ‘fix,’ a ‘reset,’ or a ‘compromise,’ and certainly not a repeal,” Mara Keisling, director of the Washington-based National Center for Transgender Equality, said in a statement.
“Putting any kind of moratorium on civil rights, whether six months or three years long, is dangerous and wrong,” she said.
Deutsche Bank, which in response to HB 2 froze plans to create 250 jobs at its location in Cary, North Carolina, declined to comment on Thursday.
Elected political rivals on both sides of the issue claimed at least partial victories in reaching the compromise that produced the new law. Both Cooper and the Republican House speaker said they expected the NCAA to once again schedule championship events.
NCAA President Mark Emmert said at a news conference posted online by the Raleigh News and Observer newspaper that the board of directors would decide whether the change is sufficient to spur a return.
The deal to replace HB 2 came together on Wednesday night, just ahead of an NCAA deadline to amend the law.
The governor told reporters the law was imperfect but said Thursday’s action would help begin repairing North Carolina’s damaged reputation.
“I wish this were a complete, total repeal, and whenever I get the chance to do that I will do that. ... I’m going to fight every single day for LGBT protections,” Cooper said.
HB 2 was passed in response to an ordinance in Charlotte, the state’s largest city, that permitted transgender people to use the bathrooms matching their gender identity. The Charlotte ordinance alarmed social conservatives who, without evidence, feared it would endanger women and girls in intimate spaces.
House Speaker Tim Moore said the new state law protected bathroom safety, but some social conservatives were unsatisfied.
“The truth remains, no basketball game, corporation, or entertainment event is worth even one little girl losing her privacy and dignity to a boy in the locker room, or being harmed or frightened in a bathroom,” said Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the NC Values Coalition in Raleigh and an outspoken supporter of HB 2.
Cooper, the former state attorney general, has opposed HB 2 from the outset. He unseated former Republican Governor Pat McCrory last year in large part because of the law’s political and economic fallout, political analysts say.
Reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Daniel Trotta in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney and Lisa Shumaker
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 | March 2017 | ['(Reuters)'] |
A report from Human Rights Watch claims that the Israeli army unlawfully destroyed civilian property in the Gaza War of 2008 and 2009, while the Israeli army asserts they only targeted property used for combat or terrorist activities. (Ha'aretz) | Human Rights Watch said Thursday it had evidence of cases from a 2008-09 conflict in which the Israeli army wantonly destroyed civilian property in the Gaza Strip, even if there was no military necessity.
Israel should investigate the alleged cases of destruction during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, and those who committed or ordered them should be prosecuted for war crimes, the international human rights organization said.
The New York-headquartered group criticized Hamas and other Palestinian groups for firing rockets from populated areas, noting that, in such cases, property damage caused by Israeli counterstrikes "may have been lawful 'collateral damage.'"
But in a 116-page report published Thursday, titled "'I lost everything': Israel's Unlawful Destruction of Property in the Gaza conflict," the group described 12 cases in which troops destroyed homes, factories and orchards "without any lawful military purpose."
In those cases, HRW said it found no indication of nearby fighting at the time of the destruction. In all cases, the fighting in the area had stopped and, in most, Israeli bulldozers destroyed the property after Israeli soldiers had dispersed Palestinian militants in the area and consolidated control, said the group.
HRW said it documented the complete destruction of 190 buildings, including 11 factories, 8 warehouses and 170 residential buildings - which it said was roughly 5 per cent of the total property destroyed in Gaza - leaving at least 971 Palestinians homeless.
It also condemned Israel's economic blockade of Gaza as illegal collective punishment, which prevented proper reconstruction. In this, it also held Egypt responsible.
Although Israel had "valid" security concerns that Hamas could use cement to build or strengthen military bunkers and weapons smuggling tunnels, Israel should "urgently" create a mechanism to independently monitor the use of cement for civilian reconstruction, it said. "The United States, the European Union and other states should urgently call upon Israel and Egypt to open Gaza's borders to reconstruction materials and other supplies essential for the civilian population," said Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director at HRW.
An Israel Defense Forces spokesman in Jerusalem said the army was formulating a response to the report. | Armed Conflict | May 2010 | ['(BBC)'] |
The Pentagon confirms that 52 detainees of the Guantanamo camp have gone on hunger strike. | Hundreds are being held without charge at Guantanamo Fifty-two inmates being held by the US at the Guantanamo Bay prison on suspicion of terror-links have begun a hunger strike to protest against their detention. The detainees, among some 500 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects held at the US Navy base, have refused at least nine consecutive meals, the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo said in a statement on Thursday. Attorneys for some detainees said Guantanamo prisoners had planned in late June to begin a hunger strike to express frustration over "their indefinite detention and the inhuman conditions at Guantanamo", according to a statement from the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Human rights groups have repeatedly criticised the United States for indefinitely detaining suspects at the Guantanamo prison camp, which was opened on the base in January 2002. Legal limbo Former prisoners have said they were tortured there. Many of the prisoners at Guantanamo, accused of having ties to the al-Qaida group or the ousted Taliban in Afghanistan, have been held for more than three years. Only a handful have been charged. "[The US] government continues to deprive them of the basic dignities that every human being is entitled to"Barbara Olshansky,Centre for Constitutional Rights CCR, citing recently declassified notes taken by attorneys who visited inmates, said the hunger strike is a "peaceful, nonviolent strike until demands are met" and calls for "starvation until death".
"[The US] government continues to deprive them of the basic dignities that every human being is entitled to"Barbara Olshansky,Centre for Constitutional Rights US military officials said detainees who refuse food are given medical treatment including intravenous hydration, water, the sports energy drink Gatorade, a nutritional supplement called Ensure and are admitted to hospital if needed. "Indications are that this is a temporary effort by some detainees to protest their continued detention," they said in the statement. Group boycottCCR, which helps represent Guantanamo inmates, said the hunger strikers also planned to boycott showers and recreational time and some would refuse to wear clothes. The prisoners are demanding clean food and water, better medical care, more access to sunlight, contact with relatives, greater respect for their religion - including an end to desecration of the Koran - and fair trials with proper legal representation, the CCR statement said. "They have languished in legal limbo for years with no fair trial and no definitive resolution of their legal status," CCR deputy legal director Barbara Olshansky said. "All the while, our government continues to deprive them of the basic dignities that every human being is entitled to." The US government has released more than 200 detainees from Guantanamo, some of whom were transferred to detention centres in their home countries. Home | | Protest_Online Condemnation | July 2005 | ['(New York Times)', '(BBC)', '(Al–Jazeera)'] |
New Zealand's Mount Tongariro erupts for the first time in a century, spreading volcanic ash across the central North Island and affecting airports. | On the go and no time to finish that story right now? Your News is the place for you to save content to read later from any device. Register with us and content you save will appear here so you can access them to read later.
Hydrothermal activity at Mt Tongariro following last night's eruption. Photo / Supplied
Can you help? If you have tips, photos or video of the eruption, please email us.
QUICK READ:
- Mt Tongariro erupted at 11.50pm last night, hurling rocks up to 1km.
- Ash cloud drifting to the east of Tongariro, landing as far as Napier city
- SH1 and SH46 have reopened. Flights to and from Napier cancelled, while other North Island services have been delayed.
- GNS: It was a hydrothermal-driven eruption, rather the magmatic
- It was the first eruption in more than a century
- Turoa and Whakapapa skifields remain open
---
The aviation colour code around Mt Tongariro has been downgraded from red to orange, but the volcanic alert level remains where it was after the mountain burst into action last night.
Shortly after midday today GeoNet downgraded the aviation colour code, but it has maintained the volcanic alert level at 2.
GeoNet this morning said the plume from the eruption last night was steam-driven, coming from the hydrothermal system rather than from new molten lava rising to the surface.
It shot almost 7000m into the air, "which is not insignificant'', Civil Aviation Authority manager of meteorology Peter Lechner said.
The plume was now sitting over the volcano and to the east towards Hawkes Bay.
"So that block of plume is just quietly drifting away to the east where it will be right off the coast later this evening,'' Mr Lechner said.
GeoNet spokesman John Callan said the seismic activity had died away, as well as the steam plume.
The downgrade of the colour code - which is used to alert aviation operators to activity around a particular volcano - was because there was less ash in the air and the plume was much smaller.
However, it was difficult to predict what would happen next.
"It is too early to predict the next series of events, but we expect heightened activity may continue for several weeks. There are likely to be specific signals of future magma movement beneath the volcano and we continue to monitor the situation through the GeoNet volcano-seismic network of instruments,'' GeoNet said in a statement.
"As with any volcano, an eruption could occur at Tongariro at any time with little or no warning and there is an elevated level of risk, particularly on the northern slopes and valleys of the mountain.''
The aviation colour code uses a traffic light system to alert aviation operators to volcanic activity.
Orange means the volcano is experiencing heightened unrest with increased likelihood of an eruption, while red means eruption is forecast to be imminent.
The volcano alert system rates volcanic activity from zero to five - with zero meaning it was usually dormant and seismic deformation and heat flows were at a low level, while five meant there was a large hazardous eruption in progress.
Level 2 means there is minor eruptive activity.
Helipro pilot Toby Clark took a group of scientists up Mt Tongariro at first light this morning to evaluate the situation.
Bad weather made it difficult to get up to the mountain, but Mr Clark eventually found a space in the weather to the west.
Once above the mountain it was difficult to see because it was covered about 90 per cent by cloud.
"We were able to see the ash plume, or part of the ash plume that was coming up through the cloud, so that was extending up to about 9000 feet.''
They also flew down to check that one of the Department of Conservation huts did not have people in it.
"To be fair, we didn't manage to see the origin of the eruption or the crater.''
The scientists on board were a bit disappointed that they could not see the origin of the eruption, he said.
"But they were pretty happy to see that there was activity there and that it was coming from the area that they thought it was.''
Mr Clark had flown up around the Mt Ruapehu eruption in 1995.
"This, in the GNS words, is nothing like the event of Ruapehu. It was a relatively small event at the moment, but they wouldn't be drawn to the fact that it potentially could go again, or it may not go again, it's really early days.''
The weather for the rest of the day was "not that good'' and there was still a lot of low clouds and drizzle around the mountains, he said.
Ash for one kilometre
Rocks and ash were thrown up to a kilometre from the central North Island mountain after it erupted last night for the first time in more than a century.
The eruption forced the closure of roads and disrupted flights, while nearby residents were advised to stay indoors.
Ash has reached as far as the Napier CBD, as the ash plume drifted to the east of the mountains over the course of the morning.
The volcanic alert level for Mt Tongariro has risen from 1 to 2, while the aviation colour code has been raised to red.
Brent Crowe of the Bay of Plenty police told the press conference that ash and rock was ejected from the volcano in a 1km radius.
The police focus remained on public safety, he said.
Three Department of Conservation huts on Mt Tongariro are being cleared.
All locals residents were urged to remain calm and check water supplies to make sure they were not contaminated.
The eruption was reported to police just before midnight by a member of the public who reported seeing explosions on the northern face of the mountain.
The witness told police the eruption had created "a new hole in the side of the mountain".
Police had received no reports of injury or damage, but the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management advised people in affected areas to stay indoors.
There have been no mandatory evacuations ordered by authorities, but some residents have chosen to leave the area.
A "potential threat to New Zealand advisory" is in place for Waikato, Hawkes Bay, Gisborne, Manawatu-Wanganui, Bay of Plenty and Taranaki.
Local resident David Bennett said this eruption was "just about as spectacular" as Ruapehu's eruption in 1995. Mr Bennett lives about 6km away from the eruption on the southern shores of Lake Rotoaira
HYDROTHERMAL ERUPTION
GNS Science volcanologist Brad Scott told reporters it had not detected any increased activity in the 12-14 hours before the eruption.
"There has been no escalation coming into the eruption and we've seen no escalation post the eruption," Mr Scott said. "The eruption gave us no warning ... it just crept up on us."
A flyover of the mountain this morning revealed a steam plume coming from the mountain but there was no indication of volcanic ash this morning.
Scientists were unable to see the immediate impact of the eruption on the mountain because of bad weather and low cloud.
"We were unable to see the impact immediately around the craters so we still can't confirm just which crater the eruptions occurred from,'' he said.
"We've had a small-scale volcanic eruption. It appears to be driven in the hydrothermal rather than the magmatic process, there's been an ash plume, there's been ash-fall down wind.''
Mr Scott said the eruptions are expected to continue for "at least days".
Auckland University volcanologist Phil Shane said the small eruption this morning could signal the start of a pattern of explosions at the central North Island mountain.
He drew a comparison to the Caribbean volcano Montserrat, which rumbled to life in 1995 and has continued to erupt until today.
A more violent eruption in the coming days or a drop off in all volcanic activity was also possible, Associate Professor Shane said.
"We don't know how long it could go. It could be a one off or it could go weeks, months years or even a decade."
ROADS
Police closed State Highway 1 and State Highway 46 as a precautionary matter overnight but they have since reopened.
New Zealand Herald reporter Jamie Morton said the ash this morning on SH46 at Lake Rotoaira, just north of Tongariro is a "thick, clay-like mud", about half a centimetre thick.
"It's just carpeted everything, all the fields, cars, trees - the whole landscape looks quite murky and grey," he said.
"Roofs in this area, they're all absolutely coated in this ash."
Contractors are currently sweeping the ash from State Highway 46, Mr Morton said."There is also quite a noticeable smell ... quite a murky smell. We've had reports in Waiouru that there is a sulphur-like smell in the area. That is not the case here."
Truck driver Bryn Rodda was one of the first to see the eruption.
"As I was coming up from Waiouru .... I saw this beautiful, big cloud and I thought 'gee that looks like a volcanic plume'. Just as I thought that there was a great big orange flash," he told National Radio.
He said he saw a thick cloud of ash develop and fine grey ash started falling.
"(The cloud) looked like a fist, basically, at an angle across the sky. About the wrist section of the fist there was an orange ball of flash I could see.
"It was quite impressive."
AVIATION
Air New Zealand has announced all flights in and out of Hawke's Bay airport are cancelled today due to the ash cloud from the Mt Tongariro eruption.
Further regional flights to and from destinations east of Tongariro could be delayed or cancelled and passengers should check its website for updates.
Captain David Morgan, Air New Zealand general manager airline operations and safety and chief pilot, said the airline is working with the relevant authorities to make adjustments to flight routes to ensure aircraft remain clear of any ash.
"We will not fly through ash and are constantly taking guidance from the CAA and the MetService to ensure we can continue to carry passengers where safe routes and altitudes are available."
Civil Aviation Authority manager of meteorology Peter Lechner said that ash can build up in the turbines of aeroplanes and helicopters, causing engines to stall.
"It can result in significant flight risk."
FARMING
Federated Farmers said initial reports indicated the eruption had had little impact on farm pasture or stock drinking water.
Four farms had been contacted in different parts of Hawkes Bay, including one on the Taupo-Napier highway, and they were yet to report any ash.
"While we are waiting on reports from our Ruapehu province, GNS predicted ashfall indicates it will largely fall on National Park or forested areas," the group said in a statement.
SKIFIELDS
Skifields on Mount Ruapehu were open this morning, with operators saying the eruption of Mt Tongariro posed no threat to the Whakapapa and Turoa ski areas.
The volcanic vents on Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, and Ruapehu were independent of each other and there was no reason or indication of volcanic activity on Ruapehu, a Mt Ruapehu spokesman said.
"The Te Maari crater where the eruption occurred is at least 20km away from the ski area."
The ash was blowing to the east, away from the skifields.
WALKING TRACKS
Nic Peet of the Department of Conservation said facilities around Mt Tongariro were currently closed for public use and he suggested trampers make use of the Whakapapa and Ohakune ends of the mountain.
"Over the next 24 to 36 hours we will make a series of risk assessments about the appropriate time to reopen the facilities," said Mr Peet.
EARTHQUAKES AND ERUPTION
A joint agency incident management centre has been established at the Whakapapa Department of Conservation Visitor Centre.
GNS volcanologist Brad Scott told Radio New Zealand the eruption began from the Te Maari craters at the north end of Mt Tongariro at 11.50pm yesterday.
An earthquake lasting about five minutes accompanied the eruption and residents reportedly heard the explosions.
"When they went outside to have a look they saw the volcano starting to erupt. They saw incandescent blocks - glowing hot blocks - and they saw an eruption column being developed and within about five minutes they were experiencing a light local ash fall."
GNS had been aware of some issues at Mt Tongariro for a few weeks, "but to be honest we didn't see anything in the latest data up until last night that indicated it was ready to erupt", Mr Scott said.
He said there was likely to be further activity.
"There's not showing any escalation - the earthquake activity hasn't increased or anything like that - but we would probably anticipate some more activity now that the craters have broken through."
Mt Tongariro last erupted between 1896 and 1897.
WEATHER AND AREAS AFFECTED
Weatherwatch said where the ash would go depended on the wind.
"We've updated our wind predictions - made more difficult by the fact a large low from the Tasman Sea is expected to cross over Central Plateau. The winds around the centre of the low are very light - which is good news for any further potential ash clouds, as it would decrease the chances of significant drift," the forecaster said in an update.
---Mt Tongariro eruption: Where will the ash go?---
Civil defence spokesman Vince Cholewa told NewstalkZB ash could reach those living in Waikato, Hawkes Bay, Gisborne, Manawatu-Wanganui, Bay of Plenty and Taranaki.
"The advice to people is to stay indoors, because volcanic ash can obviously be a health hazard, if they're indoors please close windows and doors to try and limit the entry of ash."
Mr Cholewa said not all areas alerted were affected by ash but that situation could change.
"We're working actively with GNS Science who operate the monitoring equipment on the mountains, and with police so all the information from the ground is being gathered, and decisions will be based on that information.
"Evacuations have not been ordered, please listen to the radio for advice from local authorities and police, any evacuations would be issued at that level, and based on the evidence from GNS Science."
Police say the wider community's health is not currently at risk from the eruption of Mt Tongariro.
There was no need for the wider community to remain indoors with closed doors and windows.
"At this time the only risk is minimal and would only be to people in the local vicinity of the eruption who have a predisposition to respiratory issues.
"The only other advice is in relation to water supplies of the rural community in the immediate local area," police said in a statement.
WHITE ISLAND
New Zealand's other high profile active volcano, White Island, also had its alert level raised from 1 to 2 on Monday after a small eruption was recorded in its crater lake.
GNS Science said the increased activity on White Island is not related to the Tongariro eruption. | Volcano Eruption | August 2012 | ['(New Zealand Herald)', '(Stuff.co.nz)'] |
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirms that the plane debris recovered from Reunion Island on July 29 is from Flight 370. This is the first direct evidence that the missing March 2014 flight crashed. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott says that the search for MH370 will continue. , , | KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 6 (Reuters) - A piece of a wing that washed up on an Indian Ocean island beach last week was part of the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, Malaysia said on Thursday, confirming the discovery of the first trace of the plane since it vanished last year.
"Today, 515 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed from MH370," Prime Minister Najib Razak said in an early morning televised address.
The announcement, by providing the first direct evidence that the plane crashed in the ocean, closes a chapter in one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history but still gives families of the 239 victims little clue as to why.
"Although they found something, you know, it's not the end," said Jacquita Gonzales, whose husband Patrick Gomes was a flight attendant on the aircraft.
"They still need to find the whole plane and our spouses as well. We still want them back," she said.
Sara Weeks, the sister of crash victim Paul Weeks, said she was "disgusted" to have been told by a reporter who called her.
"Any time anything happens, it takes you right back to the beginning, the same feelings, same everything, but again this time it has been a week of turmoil and that's going to continue for some time," she told Australia's Fairfax Media.
The airline described the find as "a major breakthrough."
"We expect and hope that there would be more objects to be found which would be able to help resolve this mystery," it said in a statement.
The fragment of wing known as a flaperon was flown to mainland France after being found last week covered in barnacles on a beach on France's Indian Ocean island of Reunion.
Despite the Malaysian confirmation, prosecutors in France stopped short of declaring they were certain, saying only that there was a "very strong presumption."
Paris Prosecutor Serge Mackowiak said this was based on technical data supplied by both the manufacturer and airline but gave no indication that experts had discovered a serial number or unique markings that would put the link beyond doubt.
Boeing representatives confirmed that the flaperon came from a 777 jet, he said, and Malaysia Airlines provided documentation of the actual aircraft used on flight MH370.
"On this basis, it was possible for a connection to be made between the object examined by the experts and the flaperon of the Boeing 777 of MH370," Mackowiak told reporters in Paris.
He said more analysis would be carried out on Thursday, and a fragment of luggage also found in Reunion would be examined by French police as soon as possible.
"A LOT TO BE TOLD"
Investigators looking at the wing flap are likely to start by putting thin slices of metal under a high-powered microscope, to see subtle clues in the metal's crystal structure about how it deformed on impact, said Hans Weber, president of TECOP International, Inc., an aerospace technology consulting firm.
Investigators would probably then clean it and "do a full physical examination, using ultrasonic analysis before they open it up to see if there's any internal damage," Weber said. "That might take quite a while. A month or months."
John Goglia, a former board member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, told Reuters much could be learned from examining the metal and how the brackets that held the flaperon in place had broken.
"From that they can tell the direction and attitude of the airplane when it hit," he said.
However, other experts cautioned that the cause of the disaster may remain beyond the reach of investigators until other debris or data and cockpit voice recorders are recovered.
Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at industry publication Flightglobal, said the amount of time that has elapsed and the dearth of recovered debris made it harder.
"The real key to finding out what, exactly, happened to MH370 is finding the debris field in the seas west of Australia ... Debris such as the flaperon can only increase our understanding of the last seconds of the flight," he said.
Officials from Malaysia, the United States, Australia, China, Britain, Singapore, and manufacturer Boeing are on hand for the examination at an aeronautical test facility in the French city of Toulouse.
Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8 last year en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, about 3,700 km (2,300 miles) east of Reunion.
Investigators believe that someone may have deliberately switched off the aircraft's transponder, diverted it off course and deliberately crashed into the ocean off Australia.
An initial search of a 60,000 sq km patch of sea floor has been extended to another 60,000 sq km (23,000 sq miles).
"The fact that this wreckage does now very much look like it is from MH370 does seem to confirm that it went down in the Indian Ocean, it does seem very consistent with the search pattern that we've been using for the last few months," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.
(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher, Siva Govindasamy, Praveen Menon, Emmanuel Jarry, Ebrahim Harris, Alwyn Scott and Lincoln Feast; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Ken Wills and Paul Tait) | Air crash | August 2015 | ['(BBC)', '(Reuters via MSN)', '(Nine News - Australia)'] |
The Phoenix, Arizona area has had 11 confirmed shootings on and around Interstate 10 in less than two weeks. No lifethreatening injuries have been reported, though a 13yearold girl was cut by flying glass from a shattered window. Arizona Department of Public Safety confirm that a man is being questioned. , | Follow NBC News A bullet pierced the side of a tractor-trailer on a Phoenix freeway Thursday, and police said they were treating it as the 11th attack in a string of shootings over the past two weeks that have terrorized drivers.
The governor pleaded for the public’s help earlier Thursday, and authorities said they could be dealing with more than one gunman.
The bullet hole in the semi was reported Thursday morning, and police were checking out at least one other report that could be related, a projectile that damaged the window of a car.
INVESTIGATION: Troopers and Detectives on scene conduction investigation into projectile hitting semi.#DPSNews pic.twitter.com/5KTccXW7SO
In less than two weeks, 10 other shootings have been reported on or near Interstate 10. Seven have been bullet strikes, and the others were unspecified projectiles, which could mean BBs or pellets.
Police say drivers have been lucky so far: The only injury was a 13-year-old girl who was cut by flying glass when the window of her car was shattered by a bullet.
Robert McDonald was driving an empty tour bus when a bullet came through and sliced into the seat just behind him. He said it would have grazed his shoulder if it had been a little more powerful.
“And if I would have moved my head,” he said, “I would have got hit.”
There are no suspects, not even a description of the suspect’s car. Billboards along the interstate have flashed a phone number for drivers to report tips.
Col. Frank Milstead, the state director of public safety, referred to the attacks as “domestic terrorism crimes.”
And he said there may be more than one person behind them.
“I am of the opinion right now that we have multiple shooters just because the M.O.’s have changed,” he told NBC News.
Authorities offered a $20,000 reward, and Gov. Doug Ducey appealed to the public for help.
The shootings have drawn comparisons to the sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in the fall of 2002. Ten people were killed in those shootings, which targeted drivers pumping gas and people out for other ordinary errands.
One gunman, John Allen Muhammad, was executed in 2009, and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, is serving life without the possibility of parole.
The Phoenix gunman is similarly feeding on terror, said Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI profiler and NBC News analyst.
“He knows the time he wants to be out there. He knows the location,” he said. “He, in his mind, is playing this chess game with the authorities.”
Erin McClam is a senior writer for NBC News, responsible for reporting, writing and editing general news for NBCNews.com. Prior to joining the site in January 2013, McClam worked at The Associated Press, where he spent 13 years and was most recently financial markets editor. In that role, McClam was responsible for a team of five reporters and a deputy editor that covered the stock and bond markets, financial regulation and the nation's largest banks.
Prior to that role, McClam held a variety of jobs at AP, including being a national correspondent and an original member of its Top Stories Desk editing operation. | Armed Conflict | September 2015 | ['(ABC 15)', '(NBC News)', '(FOX10 Phoenix)'] |
Prime Minister of Somalia Abdi Farah Shirdon is voted out of office by the Federal Parliament of Somalia from a vote of 184–65. | MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalia’s Parliament voted the prime minister out of office on Monday in a no-confidence motion, with 184 of 249 lawmakers in favor, after what was termed a “constitutional dispute” between the president and the prime minister, Somali officials said.
More than 100 members of Parliament filed the motion on Saturday against the prime minister, Abdi Farah Shirdon, accusing him of “ineffectiveness.” Debate on the motion started on Sunday as security in and around Parliament was tightened.
An earlier version of this article misstated the month in 2012 in which Somalia’s current prime minister took office. It was October, not November.
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| Government Job change - Resignation_Dismissal | December 2013 | ['(The New York Times)'] |
Jason Kidd is arrested by Southampton Town police for alleged drunken driving. | .
The 10-time All-Star point guard, who on Thursday signed his three-year, $9.5 million contract with the Knicks, was arrested early Sunday for alleged drunken driving, according to police in Southampton Town (N.Y.) .
Kidd, 39, was arraigned on a misdemeanor DWI charge and released.
Police said Kidd's 2010 Cadillac Escalade struck a telephone pole and went into the woods near the intersection of Cobb Road and Little Cobb Road in Water Mill. Kidd's house in the Hamptons was nearby. Kidd was the lone passenger in the accident, which reportedly took place around 2 a.m.
Kidd was transported to the Southampton Hospital for treatment of minor injuries before dealing with the police.
Kidd's attorney, Eddie Burke Jr., did not elaborate on the incident released Sunday evening.
"Jason was involved in a single vehicle accident on his way back home from a charity function last night," Bruke said. "He suffered minor injuries and was treated and released from a local hospital. Jaosn has pleaded not guilty to a DWI charge and awaits further court proceedings."
TMZ reported that Kidd was carried out of the club he was partying at before he crashed because he was so intoxicated.
Kidd has faced trouble with the law before. He was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty for a domestic violence charge in January of 2001.
See photos of: New York Knicks, Jason Kidd
Reid Cherner has been with USA TODAY since 1982 and written Game On! since March 2008.
He has covered everything from high schools to horse racing to the college and the pros. The only thing he likes more than his own voice is the sound of readers telling him when he's right and wrong.
Michael Hiestand has covered sports media and marketing for USA TODAY, tackling the sports biz ranging from what's behind mega-events such as the Olympics and Super Bowl to the sometimes-hidden numbers behind the sports world's bottom line. | Famous Person - Commit Crime - Arrest | July 2012 | ['(USA Today)'] |